Thank you for waiting for this one! I fell behind on work last week. Lot on my plate. Please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! Thanks for reading!

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[Transcript]

        Zarei stared at Miss Baxter in uncertain silence for what felt like several seconds. She had dreaded this encounter every single time that she’d returned home since she’d first left for the mainland... but despite the flawless poise and fierce one-liners she was certain she’d prepared, now that she and her high school bittersweetheart had finally crossed paths, Mina found herself disarmed of every single weapon she had sharpened.

        “OH WOWWWW,” squeaked Sophie Sybil. She bumped into Mina as she hurried towards the door. “Now it’s a REAL high school reunion! SUCH a shame that three’s a crowd even with s-such DELIGHTFUL company—”

        “Oh, Sophie! Don’t be silly!” beamed Miss Baxter, shifting to block her sudden exit. “We’re more like two point five with you here. Let’s round down!” Rose leaned in close, dropping to a private whisper, and Sophie’s saucer eyes snapped to the hand that had been set upon her shoulder. “...Or should I ROUND UP every sneaky little RAT who’s slinking about somewhere she’s not supposed to be? I’m a little worried that BOTH options would ELIMINATE YOU, Sophie...”

        “Eliminate me later, babe! Ha ha you’re sooo sexy when you’re paranoid!” a sweaty Sophie stammered in hushed tones. “Y’know, um... our goddess works in wacky ways, and so, uh, so do I. For Her. And I will, like, t-totally explain why I was here. Later. I’ll tell you later.”

        “...Fine,” sighed Rose, returning to an audible volume. “Leave me at Mina’s mercy if you must!” Her (mostly) figurative claws retracted, and she released the prey she’d pinned. “Run along, my tricky mouse!” As Sophie hurriedly scurried away, the voice of Sister Cat pursued her, adding a fearful stutter to Sophie’s step. “...I’ll catch up with you SOON.”

        Miss Baxter turned back to Zarei with a satisfied, and now expectant, smile. Mina flinched first in the silence, standing straighter and looking away. 

        “...Still hissing orders at Sophie, I see. Some things never change.”

        Miss Baxter tilted her head, giving Zarei a look of mild, condescending sympathy. 

        “Mina,” she said, admonishing her with amusement.

        “What?” Zarei snapped back. 

        “Hello,” Miss Baxter laughed. “It’s nice to see you.”

        Zarei scowled and crossed her arms. Picking a fight while her ex stayed civil would only make Mina feel even more like she’d regressed to age sixteen.

        “...Hello, Mary Rose.”

        “I mostly go by Rose now,” grinned Miss Baxter, striding into the room uninvited. “Mary Rose was just so church camp, you know?” She’d folded her arms behind her back and was examining the office’s decor as though she’d just entered Mina’s fancy new apartment, nodding in approval and admiring faded posters that Nurse Brittle had hung up back in the seventies. “Some things really should change... and some things have. You’re looking better than I left you, too!” she said, and then winked at Zarei.

        “...You’re too kind,” Mina grumbled. “That’s certainly new. The fake smile and lack of a third name do wonders for concealing your serial killer sociopathy.” The comeback was reflexive: Rose’s wink had struck her like a mallet to the knee.

        “Mina,” sighed Miss Baxter. “We’re not children anymore.” She cocked an eyebrow. Right? it seemed to say. “Can’t we just catch up as friends? Clear the air a little, maybe? I think we’d laugh about a lot of what we put each other through.” She sat back on Zarei’s desk, smiled at Mina until she faltered, then shrugged, laughing lightly to herself. “Really, it’s such a nice surprise to have you back. I mean, who gets the chance to reconnect with their first messy schoolgirl crush like this, you know?” 

        A messy schoolgirl crush. Sure, that was one way to dismiss it and be done with it. Mina looked Miss Baxter up and down, spinning a story from her put-together outfit, her pristine makeup, and her perfectly unruffled hair (not knowing that all three had been refreshed for her specifically). She could see Rose settled down behind a picket fence, abandoning her childish games of love with toys like Mina, married to a fireman or some other hometown himbecile while she slowly and horrifically transformed into her mother. Teasing her old “crush” about their past was surely just a fun indulgence—a brief excursion back down memory lane before she charged ahead on life’s well-tread median path. 

        Doctor Zarei pushed her slipping glasses back in place. Before they’d broken up like a bisected iceberg, Mina had asked for more commitment than Rose had been willing to risk on a “fling” with a girl that she could see a simple future with... dazzled as she was by her own undefined potential for extravagant success. Zarei had been this close to complicating her ex’s unimpressed impression of what life past high school had in store for them by sharing the truth about the world of ghosts and spirits she was part of. Teen Mina, blessedly, had dodged the bullet she had begged for. Still, though, she couldn’t help but suspect and resent that Rose might have been a little less uncompromising for a love that looked a little less like her.

        Zarei foolishly allowed her gaze to fall and check her ex’s finger for a wedding ring. Rose’s riposte lay in swift proof that she could still pierce Mina’s fumbling stabs at subtlety—Baxter scoffed and settled back to gawk at her and bask in her amusement.

        “My eyes are up here, Mina. Where are yours?”

        “What? Go away. I mean, n-nowhere. You’re sitting on my desk. I was just checking if you’d crumpled something.”

        Rose’s skeptical smirk was the finishing blow.

        “...I guess you haven’t changed that much, Mina. Still such a stiff and proper princess! You could at least let your eyes wander somewhere slightly less old-fashioned.” She turned to cast a glance across the office, mercifully sparing Mina from slowly turning scarlet while she watched. “Oops, is it safe for us to flirt here? Let me tell you, Mina, as a teacher, it is SO hard to find anywhere that you can curse or gripe or act a little human without some snitching BRAT sending their helicopter parents on a strafing run. Every nook and cranny in this school is just infested with eavesdropping children!”

        Doctor Zarei cast a frazzled glance down at her eavesdropping children.

        “This fair milady is a vixen,” Handprince warbled, gawking upwards at Miss Baxter. “Why, I’d start a schism if the church did not allow me to remarry her!”

        “I HATE this creep!” Hotwire growled through his gnashed teeth. Zarei was of more than two minds on the subject of her ex, and a number of those minds had been personified as candid cartoon boogermen. “I hate MYSELF!” Hotwire added for good measure, overreacting to some simplified guilt synapse he’d inherited.

        Doctor Zarei cleared her throat.

        “...I’m sure that your students return your fond feelings.”

        “You did when you were a student,” smirked Rose.

        “I had a lot to learn.”

        “I had a lot to teach.”

        “...I did learn MANY lessons from dating you, yes,” Zarei droned sarcastically. “I really should have guessed that you would end up as a permanent part of the school system’s punishing educational gauntlet—sorry, as a teacher.”

        “And you’re a nurse! Fun roles to play so close together.”

        “...I’m a substitute,” Mina deflected, pushing up her glasses.

        “You’re an upgrade!” laughed Miss Baxter. “Gosh, can you relax? I’m not going to bite you, Mina.”

        “YOU relax!” Mina hissed back, more conscious of the open door than her transfixed homunculi. “You’re acting like we’re—! We didn’t part on pleasant terms, if you’ll recall!”

        “That was almost a decade ago, Mina. I’m flattered you’ve had trouble getting over me, but we had good times you could get hung up on, too—”

        “GOOD TIMES that you blackmailed Wendy Wobble to KEEP SECRET,” Mina reminded her.

        “The secrecy was fun, and you were in the closet too,” Rose sighed, folding her arms. “You swooned about it at the time, Mina, and Wendy Wobble was a weaselly little—”

        “You ASKED ME TO JUNIOR PROM and then ARRIVED ON THE ARM of a BOY WE BOTH HATED,” Mina snarled.

        “...Oh my days,” gasped Handprince, who had locked in for the drama.

        “That,” Rose hissed, “was an overreaction to the silent treatment YOU gave me for—HEY! Don’t roll your eyes at me! You said YOURSELF that you—!” Miss Baxter held both of her hands out to shut herself up, just like she always tried and failed to do with her unruly students. “Okay. Okay. That’s fine. Yes, I was awful. I was a HORMONE-DRENCHED, CONFUSED, and DEEPLY IMMATURE young woman who believed she had to hurt the things she liked to hurt HERSELF for liking anything but football boys. I’m very sorry, Mina, that I was PRETTY and could sell my PERSONALITY to someone with exquisite taste like you. LUCKILY,” she said, forcing a pleasant grin as wide as the one on her Death Cult mask, “I’m NORMAL now, and both my looks and personality have only been improving.” Rose took a breath and donned a less-strained smile. “I would simply love to put them to the test of trying to make it up to you, Mina, if you’d allow me to—”

        “Are you about to ask me out?!” Zarei interrupted in offended disbelief.

        “Yes, Mina. Obviously.” She slinked from her seat on the desk to stand beside her. “Oh, don’t be such a teen. I’m not inviting you to prom. I’m asking you to get a coffee sometime. That’s what old friends and Biddle School work buddies do. It’s perfectly platonic.” Rose flashed a winning smile. “Sophie and I meet for bottomless mimosas every Sunday. You should come! You’re exactly what we’re missing.”

        “...You know I don’t drink alcohol,” Zarei grumbled, wishing she’d refused outright instead when Baxter grinned.

        “That’s why I invited you for coffee, silly,” Rose teased, tossing back her hair. “Unless... you had other plans with Sophie I should know about. Honestly, I was more surprised to see HER here than YOU!” Miss Baxter sighed when Zarei shot her a skeptical look. “...I didn’t sic her on you, Mina. I don’t need a classmate to pass love notes for me anymore. Honestly,” Rose winced, “and I thought I was stuck in middle school—”

        “No, I don’t have plans with Sophie, though it’s a treat to see you jealous for a change. You can wait your turn. My homecoming dance card is a little more full than my lineup was at prom.” Mina scowled defiantly at Rose while trying to ignore their toxic chemistry’s return. One way to break eight years of ice, it seemed, was to pummel each other to pieces. “Since it appears I have my pick of Bayview’s litter, I think I’ll be conscientious and keep you neatly separated. After all, Sophie didn’t seem too eager to share my time with you... but I would love her number, if you two are still in touch.”

        “I’ll trade it for yours,” Rose proposed with a shrug.

        Mina scoffed and rolled her eyes.

        “...That was your cue to say ‘no’ if you weren’t enjoying yourself, Mina,” Miss Baxter smirked, shaking her head. “This is SO nostalgic, honestly, and much less vexing with a little more perspective. We were always so oblivious about why we didn’t just avoid each other. I looked down on you, and you looked down on me, but we were BOTH mean girls at heart... and we had so much fun when we were mean together! We could still have fun like that, you know, or we could try out being sweet, if you would put aside that precious grudge I always had to fight for your obsession.”

        “Mom iiis kinda obsessed with that grudge...” mumbled Hitbox, thinking of his unborn sister in her ectoplasm tube.

        “HEY. Unified front, bro,” Horseplay reprimanded him, “or it’s THE MAN who wins the arguments between us!” Horseplay briefly wondered if an underpaid teacher who was a woman could count as The Man, decided that social politics were coded by more complex equations than a newborn homunculus could simply solve with unilateral prescription, and resolved to bolster her convictions with a well-read repertoire of practical and academic knowledge (right after she learned how to read).

        “I don’t intend to subject myself to you, or to this school, for any longer than I have to,” Mina grumbled, putting her foot down (she’d briefly considered kicking Rose before deciding that they both might enjoy it a little too much). “I’m here for one day, and for only one purpose. I will not be staying past the bell. We are not going to be friends.”

        “You’re conspicuously leaving other options on the table, Meeny,” Miss Baxter began, but then the Doctor seized her by the shoulder. Before Rose’s “Oh thank god I’ve been so lonely please kidnap me to a city with a subway and a soul” could leave her brain and reach her lips, Zarei had rather unromantically spun her around and pushed her to the exit of the nurse’s office. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding! God, you’re still so sensitive—OW! Watch what you’re PINCHING!” Miss Baxter sputtered, bracing herself in the doorframe like a cat that did not want to take a bath.

        “Goodbye, Rose,” Doctor Zarei said with (what she hoped passed for) resolute finality.

        “...Aha! You finally said it,” Miss Baxter replied, grinning at Mina over her shoulder. 

        “Goodbye? Yes, but it didn’t stick the first time—”

        “You called me Rose. It has a lovely ring, doesn’t it? Unlike me.” She wiggled her fingers. “I’m single! By the way!”

        “I’m not surprised.”

        “But you were curious!”

        KTHONKK! The office door slammed in Miss Baxter’s face.