"Pen spirit, pen spirit, what's the answer to question three?" I said, gripping the cheap ballpoint between my fingers. "Ethel, stop chanting like a cult leader," Marie said from the bunk above, then immediately jumped down and joined our circle. "Shh," Ethel hissed, eyes bright. "Laure, do it right. You start, I finish. Like last time." "I didn't start anything last time," I muttered, but the pen was between us now and the textbook had a crease under question three. We needed a miracle and we knew where to look. "Okay," I said, because one of the perks of being a journalism student is asking questions. "Pen spirit, pen spirit, give us the answer to question three." The pen moved. It didn't slide on its own like in movies. It twitched. The tip tapped the page once and then wrote: 7/2 e^(3x) + C. "Wait—what?" Ethel snatched the paper. "That's exactly—" "Stop," Marie said, steady and flat, the kind of person you trusted with the pizza money. "Read it out loud, Laure. We need proof." I read the line. My voice was steady. The room smelled like instant ramen and the faint bleach from the communal sink. The pen wrote again, neater: integrate by parts; choose u = e^(3x), dv = 7/2 dx. "Okay that's not even trying," Ethel crowed. "Pen, you're a genius." The pen wrote the next steps in a single flowing stroke and then paused as if waiting for applause. "Is it talking