Dr. Everest, got up and gave us a little pep talk. Mostly it boiled down to the fact that it was autumn, and everyone was back, and while that was a great thing, people better not get cocky or misbehave or he'd personally kill us all. He didn't actually say those words, but that was the subtext.

Prefects. I had learned this one. Student council types, but with superpowers. They who must be obeyed.

She didn't even notice right away that a small animal had come out from behind a nearby car and was slowly making its way toward the trash can she was standing near. She flipped through some old files in her mind, trying to come up with what this thing might be, and after a few seconds decided that--impossible as it seemed--it was a fox.

It makes you very cool," he said, taking big, jumping steps to get in front of me. "CNN would interview you, for sure. Daughter of Flobie! But don't worry. I'll keep them back!

Something about her suggested that her leisure activities included wrestling large woodland animals and banging bricks together.

It was clearly one of those mornings when I was particularly American.

The whole "weak in the knees" thing,which she always thought was just some idiotic expression back from the golden age of idiotic expressions,was real. -Suite Scarlett