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[Transcript]

        Mayview’s transformation into Bayview had done little to alter the School Store’s inner workings. The café did, however, have a touch more wicker to its furniture, a neon sign sporting a sunbathing flamingo in cool shades (insistently blinking “IT’S A SNOW DAY SOMEWHERE” from the wall), and an ever so slightly more tropical mocktail selection.

        Though an arresting stare from Lisa had stopped Max from stealing a drink, he still enjoyed full access to the menu—and why wouldn’t he enjoy it? Unlike in all other aspects of his life, where he was, for example, being blackmailed with photographic evidence that he had jumped through a moving school bus, Max had LOTS of options as a dutiful consumer. It didn’t really matter that he couldn’t afford any of his multiple choices: freedom wasn’t free, and tasting it was less important than the fact that wealthy freaks were free to sell it and/or let it go to waste.

        As he waited for Johnny to finish his fight with the jukebox (the bully had tried to punch it “like the Fonz” to make it play his favorite song—the brawl had escalated quickly after that), Max perused the daily specials. The Sticky Note had sweet notes, too, a dash of lemon juice and honey. As its namesake suggested, however, it would soon serve as a vivid reminder of the poor choice to consume it, when at last its sugar high gave way to an unpleasant sugar hangover. The Highlighter’s listed ingredients left unanswered questions about the source of its striking color; the smoothie’s fruit punch kick came in a slurry with a shade that poison dart frogs would have proudly used to flaunt their lethal toxins. Then there was the Ruler, a golden, foot-tall beverage crowned with a jagged beartrap ring of sculpted pineapple. The menu warned that it would get the measure and the better of anyone who dared to try and drink it in one go... and yet, despite the risks, there was a leaderboard for those who’d chugged it fastest. Lisa clearly favored competition and dethroning titleholders in all provinces besides the one where she was Shadow Empress.

        “What’s good?” a skeptical Max asked his bartender and blackmailer, looking up from several inches of fine print about her potions’ likely side effects.

        “Not much, bro,” Ollie answered, slapping down a sack of coins upon the counter. “S’good with you?”

        “Not what I was asking but you’re probably right.”

        Ollie, all business, simply pushed the brim of Max’s hat down like the visor of a knight. He had just arrived from shaking down his fief of debtor nerds, and was more concerned with cashing out than bullying the spectral.

        “Chess Club made the right move, boss,” Ollie grunted down at Lisa. He gestured to the satchel of spare change that he had set down on the counter. “Paid in full. The Brass Band sold their triangles to get square, too—I told ’em it’s the better shape to be in.”

        “Wow, sounds like they really learned their lesson. Passing on what you’ve retained from your fun preschool for enormous mutant babies?” Max sarcastically cut in, lifting his hat back into place. “And they said knowing two plus two and red plus blue would never serve a purpose in the workforce.”

        “I’m rubber, you’re broke: I flex and bounce while you blow smoke. Sorry you can’t get your money up, little man,” Ollie smirked. “Jealousy’s a disease.” This time the hulking bully rotated Max’s baseball hat one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, which Stephen swiftly followed up by launching it across the School Store like a trebuchet with one swift, downward slap. “Disease nuts,” Ollie added for good measure.

        Max blinked with crocodilian torpidity. He was beset on all sides by exhausting enemies here at the School Store; he almost wished that Isaac hadn’t scurried off to class. Sadly, the stormy spectral had sententiously announced that he “didn’t drink, and wouldn’t EVER drink” when they had first arrived outside the secret speakeasy, to which Johnny had replied “Not even water?”—an exchange which had led to Johnny calling Isaac “waterboy” when he’d emphatically insisted he drank water all the time. Needless to say, the skirmish had ended as an utter rout for Isaac, and he’d swiftly beat a hasty and extremely red retreat.

        “...You’re conspicuously silent while I suffer,” Max droned as he glanced over at RJ, who was sitting at the bar. “I heard you were some kind of heavy metal renegade. Saving your voice for a more radical cause than boring anti-bullying?”

        RJ gave him a thumbs up.

        “The first speechless rebel to be all talk. And here I thought that MY left wing was useless,” Max lamented, brandishing his cast. “Y’know, there’s this famously antifascist saying: ‘If you see something, say something’—”
        
        “I see nothing,” RJ said, “’cause you’re a zero.”

        “HEH HEH, GOT ’IM!” Stephen cackled, puppeteering his pet weiner dog to give RJ a high five. “And here’s your CASH REWARD!”

        Stephen’s recent suspension was the longest sentence he had ever served (at least on paper, where he mostly only ever wrote short answers like “Fake false becuase the world is flat” and “Who freaking CARES what X equals, Miss Baxter? The Romins solved that it means TEN way back before the Superbowl at LEAST”). Evidently, though, he planned to beat his previous criminal record soon. Smuggling in a dachshund violated several oddly specific bylaws of the Biddle School’s strict code of conduct, as did offering a Cash Reward to other students for discourteous behavior.

        By now, Johnny had skulked back from the jukebox looking slightly worse for wear.

        “Well?” Max asked him. “Did you win?”

        “It ate my lunch money,” Johnny grumbled in a huff.

        “Imagine that,” Max scoffed. “Taking some poor student’s pocket change. What kind of bully would do that?”

        “I would. That’s how I got it,” Johnny answered with sincerity.

        “Well, Johnny, it’s not a total loss. In fact, I’d say it’s an accomplishment to somehow lose a fight with an inanimate opponent. Was it the juking or the boxing that your brawling couldn’t beat?”

        “I’m ever so delighted that you’re all getting along so well,” Lisa interrupted with a smile as she counted Ollie’s earnings. “I’m sure that it will make your first patrol together all the more enjoyable.”

        “Patrol?” Max scoffed. “Together?”

        Lisa beamed like a blood moon through the slats of a boarded-up window.

        “There’s always more collections to be done, Max... and plenty of time before class to get started!”

        Max scoffed again.

        “You want ME to shake down random kids for Starchman Stars with Johnny?”

        “Oh, no, of course not!” Lisa chuckled like a talentless ventriloquist. “The list will be specific, and I meant with Johnny’s friends. Johnny doesn’t work for me. He never has, and likely never will.”

        “What? Why not?”

        “Johnny is an apex bully, Max. A truly proud and noble beast,” Lisa wistfully opined in admiration. “He can’t be tamed... and should he be? Some wild stallions are diminished by a saddle.”

        “...Thanks, Lisa,” Johnny moped, doing his best to fit the image she had illustrated. “I needed that.”

        “You needed that?” a bewildered Max shot back at him.

        Ollie and the rest of the gang put their hands on Johnny’s shoulders sympathetically. Stephen and his wiener gave the jukebox an intimidating stare—its days were now as numbered as its song selection.

        “But hey,” Johnny shrugged, perking up ever so slightly, “I don’t mind consultin’ if Max wants to be a bully. He’s been tryin’ to teach me to NOT be one, I’m pretty sure... so it’s like only frickin’ fair I do the same but in reverse.”

        “Flawless logic, Johnny,” grumbled Max through gritted teeth. “We can high five as we fall from grace and rise from hell together.”

        “Dude,” Johnny said. “That’s sick.”

        RJ reluctantly agreed by making devil horns and nodding.

        “What an unprecedented opportunity!” Lisa cheerfully proclaimed. “I knew that recruiting you was a good business move, Max... but to think that you would lure in Johnny, too! It’s always such a gift to get the blood of two birds from one stone!”

        “That is SO not the expression,” Max protested in dismay.

        It was around then that a Starchman Star was slapped down on the School Store’s counter, stealing Lisa’s full attention.

        “Violet!” Lisa said in singsong as she turned to her best friend. She was looking just as prickly and pink today as ever... and wasn’t it so funny that she hardly ever wore the shade that she was named after? Delightful. But why, then, was she frowning? Lisa had decided that Violet never had to pay at the School Store... but clearly SOMEONE had to, if they’d made her sweet friend sad. Lisa smiled at the Starchman Star she’d set down on the counter. “Now what’s that for? You know you drink for free here when I’m not helping you to regulate your sugar intake—”

        “I’ll take my usual... to go,” sighed Violet, tossing back a braid; Lisa tracked it like a cat would track the movement of a mouse. “What I need to buy from you is information, Lisa. Have you seen Cody yet today?”

        Lisa frowned. She didn’t like to lie to Violet... but she knew too much about the Biddle School’s dark underbelly to stop herself from meddling by omission.

        “I’m afraid not,” Lisa answered, giving Violet an apologetic shrug. “Why do you ask?”

        Violet sighed and slid her Starchman Star back off the bar, tucking it into her pocket.

        “’Cause I can’t find him anywhere, and he’s not answering my texts.” Violet scowled and nibbled at her nail with her front teeth, a habit Lisa knew that she could normally resist. “And I need Cody to tell me where he hid JEFF... because HE isn’t answering me either.” She glanced up at Lisa self-consciously, tucking the thumb that she’d been chewing out of sight. “I wouldn’t pry if I didn’t, like, have a bad feeling about it or whatever. Jeff stopped texting me back out of nowhere this morning. That’s just not like him, y’know?”

        “...I’m sure it’s nothing,” Lisa lied, giving Violet the most reassuring smile she could fabricate. “For you, though, I will happily look into it.”