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It was so funny to her that she when she heard of people doing poorly in classes, her first reaction was one of disbelief, followed shortly by the tiniest hint of disdain. It was funny how old habits died hard, even if you fell head-first into new ones without the slightest bit of notice. Her palms felt clammy when she remembered her last year, how from an E averaging student, she dropped to Ps and even the occasional D. How she'd likely have been put on some kind of probation or even expulsion if Dianna hadn't gone to such pains to tutor her, drill academics into her head, and even, on those days where Penelope was walking dead, forge her writing herself. She felt the telltale sting of threatening tears and shook her head slightly, though she could do nothing about the closing of her throat.

But even those feelings, though she grieved to have them, were new to her. No matter what her brother or anyone else thought, she had not been stuck in some perpetual cycle of grief. She just had the inability to feel anything, driftless, really, waking dead herself. She had to wake up some time, she knew that intellectually, but it just sort of happened when this strange man with his funny moods just barged into her closet.

It was unhealthy, or unrealistic, or both, to think that by seeing him again, she'd feel the same way. But she did, and she was, and even though it terrified her, definitely overwhelmed her, Penelope had the sinking feeling she would not stop herself.

None of that, of course, excused the fact that she'd been surreptitiously staring at his lips the entire time, finding herself both intrigued and disturbed by how much inner-monologue she could generate about them based on one short experience in a closet that, by any other person's standards, hardly even classified as clandestine.

It was this same inner-monologue Penelope yanked herself from as she realized she was staring at his mouth again but still hadn't responded. She jerked her gaze back upwards, hoping it went unnoticed, and murmured noncommittally. "I—er, came close to failing once," she said, mostly truthfully. In point of fact, she herself had failed, but through the good graces of a friend she truly did not deserve, no one else beside them knew that. "But here you are star-gazing, so I suppose somewhere, Professor Sinistra is very proud."