“Thanks,” Marissa cheerfully replied. She definitely wasn’t dressed for this lesson. Holland seemed to have the right idea to cover up. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything she could put on to cover up besides the gloves she’d already put on. She was suddenly quite aware at how bare her arms and legs were. The professors needed to do a better job at telling students what was going to happen when they were randomly summoned to a surprise class. Last time, she and Russell needed to escape from the baby class because Nope. This time, she was way under dressed and would probably get stung and then everyone would see up her skirt when she floated up into the air.

Sometimes, Marissa reconsidered going to a magical school.

“Definitely not what I had planned for today, but I guess that Defense lesson with the Lurlinas prepared us for this. At least we can see the billywigs.”

“Yeah, I guess Aunt Cindra did something right with Defense after all.” The red-head doubted that her blonde aunt knew she’d been hired for Defense Against the Dark Arts. Almost everything Cindra had planned thus far dealt with magical creatures. Her aunt kept talking about these creatures called Pappiliodya that were supposed to hatch soon – something that happened only once every hundred and twenty years – and hoped to bring some of the eggs to campus for students to see. While it sounded like a big deal and really cool, it hardly seemed like a Defense lesson.

She arranged her hair to cover more of her neck. At the very least, a billywig would have to work really hard to sting her through her hair. They might as well try to capture a few billywigs together. Or… Marissa grinned.

“Okay, so I’ve been thinking,” she got really close to Holland so it’d be easier to hear each other, “We all really need a group outing.” They hadn’t really done one since they all saw a movie together on Pearl Street. She worried about it feeling like a double date plus Holland, which was totally unfair to them, so she didn’t want to do a movie. She’d noticed, though, that the group wasn’t as cohesive as before. She thought that once she and Danny started dating and being normal with each other, the group would be normal again, but it wasn’t.

In fact, Danny and Holland seemed more distant than usual. They didn’t hang out with each other like before. Marisa wasn’t sure if either of them would tell her what was going on, so she didn’t bring it up. Plus, Danny kept getting extra affectionate lately, and that was really nice. Asking about the weird tension between the two Lyras wasn’t something that stuck around in her brain when Danny was being so sweet.

Marissa didn’t like it when her friends were having issues, though. She was a fixer. This was the perfect opportunity to start helping! “We don’t have to do a movie like last time, but it’s been forever since all of us spent time together. I don’t want to go off for summer and realize we’ve spent, like, all term too busy to hang out. Do you think you could help me plan something?” She smiled a little sheepishly. “I know things have been weird lately. I don’t know what’s going on, all Danny said was that there had been A Thing, but I bet it’d help clear the air to do something fun together.”