After dinner, Mena and Caligari scoured the depths of the Lollypop Clothing Drive. Mena hadn’t been back since she discovered her mother’s homecoming gown, but now, she was on a quest to deck out her hapless teacher. “How about this one?” Caligari asked, pulling out an enormous frilly hoop skirt, covered in lacey bows. It was on the level of something Mena’s second caretaker Deidre Love would have worn.

“Are you going to a country ball?” Mena asked, disregarding it while searching through another rack. “Or a hot date with the Clown Prince of your Dreams?

Mena’s eyes glistened as they caught onto some black fabric. “How about this?”

She removed a slim night gown. It was low-cut and velvety, resembling something a Snazz singer would wear during a moonlight serenade. “Gee, I dunno,” Caligari responded, looking more uncertain than ever. “I…”

Mena’s thick eyebrows fluttered again. “This will really make Gemini go, “Whoa mama.” After all, it accentuates every curve.”

Caligari looked at her bone thin body. “I don’t have any curves…”

“Nonsense,” Mena said, and she held her hand to her head. “Time for a magic make-over. Let’s turn this poor girl from retchy to drop dead sexy.”

Mena cast her hands on the night gown and some cosmetics and sent them flying at Caligari. They wrapped around her as her body spun faster and faster. “I’m going to get vertigo,” Caligari whined, as she held her hand to her mouth. But right when the half-phantom was about to lose her dinner, Mena stopped her right in front of a mirror.

Caligari’s black dress draped awkwardly on her stick-like frame. The heavy blush and blue-red eyeshadow stuck out clownishly on her lilywhite skin. Her short black hair was rendered into a coconut-like bob. “Wowie zowie,” Mena exclaimed, “You look hubba hubba.”

“Are you sure?” Caligari asked, timidly holding her ruby red nails to her face. “It’s not too much?”

“That’s what we’re going for, baby,” Mena said. “You’re going to be so excessive, you’re going to overload his brain. He’ll only be thinking about you when we’re done.”

Mena began to parade and held her hand up in the air. “Now strut for me, teach. Strut in those heels.”

Caligari clomped loudly behind her, stumbling back and forth. “I don’t know how Gemini does it,” the half-phantom moaned. “These aren’t even that high…”

Mena looked back as she walked. “Remember what you told during the last semester: Think only of the goal at hand, and your feet will move on their own…Or do what I do and where platform shoes.”

“Can I wear platform shoes, please?” Caligari asked with discomfort.

But Mena had already left the room, envisioning Caligari as the protagonist of the latest hot romance.

Tonight, she wouldn’t only get to first base, but a total home-run as well.

Once she had clicked and clomped her way up the spiral staircase, Mena lectured her teacher from the shadows. “If you really want to be that powerful Phantominatrix or simply a powerful WUMIN, take my advice, or rather Melina Penwell’s.”

“Ok,” Caligari said, removing her heels to shake her feet free of their tight confines.

“First,” Mena said, and she lowered her chirpy voice. “Deepen your voice until it’s thick and husky like this.”

“Uh ok,” Caligari said, dropping her already low voice another octave.

“Now say things like, ‘Hey there, big boy’ as you slowly strut towards him, wiggling your hips.”

Caligari mimed her shadow, moving her non-existent hips.

“Oh,” Mena added quickly, “And make sure you have a guy with a saxophone following you around too. Nothing says ‘sexay’ like a saxy tune on the sax.”

Caligari looked around anxiously, looking for a saxophone. “Uh oh, we didn’t hire the Lollypop Snazz Trio.”

“Drat rats,” Mena said in her imaginary swear, “We’ll forget the sax. But remember what I said about the deep voice and the sultry words. If you wanna be a big foxy phantom mama, you gotta go baritone. Now go, sway and swagger over to the door.”

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Caligari crammed her big feet into her heels and tried swinging her small rear back and forth, before tripping over her heels. “Watch it,” Mena laughed from the shadows. “Try not to go head over heels before you even meet Gemini.”

Caligari followed Mena’s words, regained her composure and rapt at the door with more manners this time. Surprisingly, the door creaked open. There, standing in the doorway, was Gemini with his curly perm draped over his left eye, and a pitch-dark tuxedo and cape. Chains hung from his swooping cape, and he held one side of it with his hand. Caligari did a double gulp, but fortunately, the fake blush on her face disguised her real blush. She choked, before uttering, “hey there, large male.”

“Ah, it’s you, Caligari,” Gemini said, oblivious to Calgari’s ‘sultriness.’ “I gotta tell you, I’m really digging that makeup you’re wearing, it reminds me of my mother.”

Caligari gasped and Mena flinched in the shadows. “Your m-mother?”

“Why yes,” Gemini smiled winsomely. “She was the queen of clowns.”

Not even the make-up could disguise Caligari’s beat red face. She blurted, “Why are you dressed in all black?”

Gemini’s face darkened like the edge of twilight. “After that embarrassment that happened yesterday, that’s how I’m feeling on the inside.”

Gemini extended a gallant hand clothed in a jet-black glove. “But never mind that, come inside and we can have our date. We are dressed for the occasion after all.”

“Yes, of course,” Caligari said with bob of her head, and she walked inside.

All the planetoids and stars had dimmed in Gemini’s solar system with the sole exception of one: A glowing red moon tinted the room with its crimson aura. Caligari stopped to gape at it. (Mena did too from the shadows.)

“What is this moon?” Caligari asked stupidly as Gemini prepared his hovering L-S-tea.

“Ah, this one,” Gemini said, as he heated, not only the tea, but a levitating pot as well. “The red moon of Aristillus. Otherwise known as the Moon of Misfortune. A fitting lunar body for my current state if I might add.”

Caligari frowned. Mena was aware that the half-phantom professor didn’t like to see Gemini so sad.

“Come,” Caligari said in a peculiar baritone voice. “Let us have a voluptuous night.”

“Ooh, voluptuous,” Mena applauded from the shadows. “That’s a good word for a Phantominatrix to use.”

A small smile formed on Caligari’s face as she tried her hardest to slink over to the table in her heels. She stomped a bit, but she was getting better.

“What’s lookin’, good cookin?” Caligari responded in her new-found husky tone. She pulled out a seat and tried to sexily slide into it, but nearly fell out instead.

“Well,” Gemini remarked. “Since you asked, rainbow-colored rotini. Perfect to accompany a fine cup of LS-Tea.”

“Sounds hallucinogenic,” Caligari said, with a slightly look of concern.

Gemini chuckled as the pot threw some pasta up in the air and caught it. “Don’t worry. The second I’m not thinking about my career going down in flames, the better company I’ll be.”

Two plates shot out of the darkness like a discus and landed right in front of Gamini and Caligari. Gemini poured out the boiling pot of steaming pasta onto their plates. “Bon hallucinate,” he said, before blowing the food with some wind he conjured out of nowhere. Caligari stared nervously at the plate. Even the steam was giving off rainbows.

“Should I?” Caligari thought so loudly Mena could hear her.

“Uh,” Mena stammered. “Not sure. After all, they do tell us in school not to eat angel hair pasta when it’s made of angel dust.”

Caligari took one more tentative glance at Gemini and swallowed. “I’ve got to be a tough Phantominatrix. I’ll do it for him”

Caligari casually took a fork, speared some rotini, and closed her eyes as she bit it. Her eyes shot open, and she chewed frantically. Mena probably should have reminded her it was hot.

Gemini laughed though. “Your antics never cease to amuse me, Cali. You’re a true bright star in my night of endless darkness.”

“You’re welcome, big fella,” Caligari said, pursing her thin lips after finally getting a hang of the deep voice. Gemini laughed again.

As the night drew on, the two grew more enraptured in each other and their rotini. Gemini, no doubt a heavy user of rainbow rotini from the years, retained a slight tint in his irises and a nonsensical demeanor, but Caligari’s entire eye sockets displayed a bevy of rainbows. “Uh Cali,’ Gemini said, looking at his date with great concern. “Maybe you should stop.”

Caligari laughed hysterical as rainbow drool seeped from her mouth. “The entire universal plane stuffed in a smelly buttcrack,” she giggled and raised a finger. “Alas, rutabagas”

“Err…Cali,” Gemini said, slowly standing up. “Maybe I should call the Lollypop infirmary. “You don’t look so well.”

“Not well?” Caligari hissed. “Of course, I’m not well. I’m a grown woman asking a thirteen-year-old child for love advice. All because father never let me have a childhood.”

Caligari took her plate off the table and smashed it screaming at the top of her lungs, "Yea verily vindeloo!"

Mena wondered if she should emerge from the shadows and get help. But before she could do anything, an ominous knock rapt at the door.

“Hold tight,” Gemini said to Caligari who was now sobbing into her chair. He approached the door. He was greeted with a truly loathsome sight standing in the doorway. It was Cumberson with a smile as wide and boisterous as a bullfrog.

A short man stood beside her. He was as high as Gemini’s kneecap but his outfit and stature told a different story. He wore a magnificent suit tailored to his height with a red and white pinwheel lollypop badge and a matching top hat. An orange goatee and mustache framed a confident smirk. “Gemini, it is I, Mayor of Wormwood and President of the Lollypop Magical Education Committee, Law Pops.”

Gemini’s mouth hung open, but he managed a few words. “W-why are you here?”

The man strolled inside, letting himself in. “I’ve come to talk about your role in this fine establishment. Your job is in a precarious position. Do not dally, we are here to discuss whether you are worthy of the position of headmaster at all.”