The School for Good and Evil

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Her reflection tensed. “I don’t know. Do I?”

Agatha gritted her teeth and met her own eyes. “You’re too ugly to have friends.”

Her reflection turned sad. “Definitely Evil,” it said, and vanished.

Agatha reached out her hand to touch the barrier. This time it went straight through.

By the time the fairy patrol made it onto the Bridge, the fog had erased her tracks.

The moment Agatha stepped foot into Evil, she had the feeling this was where she belonged. Crouched behind the statue of a bald, bony witch in the leaky foyer, she scanned across cracked ceilings, singed walls, serpentine staircases, shadow-masked halls. . . . She couldn’t have designed it better herself.

With the coast clear of wolves, Agatha snuck through the main corridor, soaking in the portraits of villainous alumni. She had always found villains more exciting than heroes. They had ambition, passion. They made the stories happen. Villains didn’t fear death. No, they wrapped themselves in death like suits of armor! As she inhaled the school’s graveyard smell, Agatha felt her blood rush. For like all villains, death didn’t scare her. It made her feel alive.

She suddenly heard chatter and shrank behind a wall. A wolf came into view, leading a group of Nevergirls down the Vice staircase. Agatha heard them twitter about their first classes, catching the words “Henchmen,” “Curses,” “Uglification.” How could these kids be any uglier? Agatha felt the blush of shame. Looking at this parade of sallow bodies and repugnant faces, she knew she fit right in. Even their frumpy black smocks were just like the one she wore every day back home. But there was a difference between her and these villains. Their mouths twisted with bitterness, their eyes flickered with hate, their fists curled with pent-up rage. They were wicked, no doubt, and Agatha didn’t feel wicked at all. But then she remembered Sophie’s words.

Different usually turns out Evil.

Panic gripped her throat. That’s why the shadow didn’t kidnap a second child.

I was meant to be here all along.

Tears stung her eyes. She didn’t want to be like these children! She didn’t want to be a villain! She wanted to find her friend and go home!

With no clue where to even look, Agatha hurtled up a staircase marked MISCHIEF to the landing, which split in two scraggy stone paths. She heard voices from the left, so she dashed right, down a short hall to a dead end of sooty walls. Agatha backed against one, petrified by voices growing louder, then felt something creak behind her. It wasn’t a wall but a door blanketed in ash. Her dress had wiped enough clean to reveal red letters:

THE EXHIBITION OF EVIL

It was pitch-dark inside. Coughing on dust and cobwebs, Agatha lit a match. Where Good’s gallery was pristine and vast, Evil’s sparse broom closet reflected their two-hundred-year losing streak. Agatha examined the faded uniform of a boy who became Rumpelstiltskin, a broken-framed essay on “Morality of Murder” by a future witch, a few stuffed crows hanging off crumbled walls, and a rotted vine of thorns that blinded a famous prince, labeled VERA OF WOODS BEYOND. Agatha had seen her face on Missing posters in Gavaldon.

Shuddering, she noticed flecks of color on the wall and held her match to it. It was a panel in a mural, like the one of Ever After in the Good Towers. Each of the eight panels showed a black-robed villain reveling in an inferno of infinite power—flying through fire, transmuting in body, fracturing in soul, manipulating space and time. At the top of the mural, stretching from the first panel to last, were giant letters set aflame:

NEVERMORE

Where Evers dreamt of love and happiness, the Nevers sought a world of solitude and power. As the sinister visions sent thrills through her heart, Agatha felt the shock of truth.

I’m a Never.

Her best friend was an Ever. If they didn’t get home soon, Sophie would see the truth. Here they couldn’t be friends.

She saw a snouted shadow move into her match light. Two shadows. Three. Just as the wolves pounced, Agatha wheeled and whipped Vera’s thorns across their faces. The wolves roared in surprise and stumbled back, giving her just enough time to scramble to the door. Breathless, she dashed down the hall, up the stairs, until she found herself on Malice Hall’s second floor, hunting for Sophie’s name on the dormitory doors—Vex & Brone, Hort & Ravan, Flynt & Titan—Boys’ floor!

Just as she heard a door open, she sprinted up the back stairs to a dead-end attic filled with murky vials of frog’s toes, lizard legs, dog tongues. (Her mother was right. Who knew how long these had been sitting here.) She heard a wolf slobbering up the steps—

Agatha climbed out the attic window onto the soaring roof and clung to the rain gutter. Thunder detonated from black clouds, while across the lake, the Good Towers twinkled in perfect sunshine. As the storm drenched her pink dress, her eyes followed the long, twisted gutter, shooting water through the mouths of three stone gargoyles that held up its brass beams. It was her only hope. She climbed into the gutter, hands struggling to keep grip on the slippery rails, and craned back to the window, knowing the white wolf was coming—

But he wasn’t. He stared at her through the window, hairy arms folded over red jacket.

“There are worse things than wolves, you know.”

He walked away, leaving her agape.

What? What could possibly be worse than—

Something moved in the rain.

Agatha shielded her eyes and peered through the sparkling blur to see the first stone gargoyle yawn and spread his dragon wings. Then the second gargoyle, with a snake’s head and lion’s trunk, stretched his with a gunshot crack. Then the third, twice as big as the others, with a horned demon head, man’s torso, and studded tail, thrust out jagged wings wider than the tower.

Agatha blanched. Gargoyles! What did the dog say about gargoyles!

Their eyes turned to her, viciously red, and she remembered.

Orders to kill.

With a collective shriek, they leapt off their perches. Without their support, the gutter collapsed and she plunged into its water with a scream. The tidal wave of rain slammed her through harrowing turns and drops as the loose beam lurched wildly in the rain. Agatha saw two gargoyles swoop for her and she swerved in the gutter slide just in time. The third, the horned demon, rose up high and blasted fire from its nose. Agatha grabbed onto the rails and the fireball hit in front of her, searing a giant hole in the beam—she skidded short just before she plummeted through. A crushing force tackled her from behind and the dragon-winged gargoyle grabbed her leg in his sharp talons and hoisted her into the air.

“I’m a student!” Agatha screamed.

The gargoyle dropped her, startled.

“See!” Agatha cried, pointing at her face. “I’m a Never!”

Sweeping down, the gargoyle studied her face to see if this was true.

It grabbed her by the throat to say it wasn’t.

Agatha screamed and stabbed her foot into the burnt hole, deflecting rushing water into the monster’s eye. It stumbled blindly, claws flailing for her, only to fall through the hole and shatter its wing on the balcony below. Agatha held onto the rails for life, fighting terrible pain in her leg. But through the water, she saw another one coming. With an ear-piercing screech, the snake-headed gargoyle tore through the flood and snatched her into the air. Just as its massive jaws yawned to devour her, Agatha thrust her foot between its teeth, which smashed down on her hard black clump and snapped like matchsticks. Dazed, the monster dropped her. Agatha crash-landed in the flooding gutter and gripped the rail.

“Help!” she screamed. If she held on, someone would hear and rescue her. “Helll—”

Her hands slipped. She careened down eaves, jerking and heaving towards the last spout, where the biggest gargoyle waited, horned like the devil, jaws wide over the spout like an infernal tunnel. Clawing, gurgling, Agatha tried to stop herself, but the rain bashed her along in gushing bursts. She looked down and saw the gargoyle blast fire from its nose, which rocketed across the pipe. Agatha ducked underwater to avoid instant cremation and bobbed back up, clinging to the rail’s edge above the final drop. The next rush of rain would send her right into the gargoyle’s open mouth.

Then she remembered the gargoyles when she first saw them: guarding the gutter, spewing rain from their mouths.

What goes out must come in.

She heard the next wave coming behind her. With a silent prayer, Agatha let go and fell into the demon’s smoking jaws. Just as fire and teeth skewered her, rain smashed through the spout behind her, shooting her through the hole in the gargoyle’s throat and out into the gray sky. She glanced back at the choking gargoyle and let out a scream of relief, which turned to terror as she free-fell. Through the fog, Agatha glimpsed a spiked wall about to impale her, and an open window beneath it. She curled into a desperate ball, just missed the lethal blades, and crashed on her stomach, dripping wet, and coughing up water on the sixth floor of Malice Hall.

“I—thought—gargoyles—were—decoration,” she wheezed.

Clutching her leg, Agatha limped down the dorm hall, hunting for signs of Sophie.

Just as she was about to start pounding on doors, she caught sight of one at the end of the hall, grafittied with a caricature of a blond princess, splashed with painted slurs: LOSER, READER, EVER LOVER.

Agatha knocked hard. “Sophie! It’s me!”

Doors started opening at the other end of the hall.

Agatha pounded harder. “Sophie!”

Black-robed girls started emerging from their rooms. Agatha jiggled Sophie’s door handle and shoved against the frame, but it wouldn’t budge. Just as the Nevergirls turned, poised to discover the intruder in pink, Agatha took a running start, threw herself against the defaced door of Room 66, which swung open and slammed shut behind her.

“YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WENT THROUGH TO GET HE—” She stopped.

Sophie was crouched over a puddle of water on the floor, singing as she applied blush in her reflection.

“I’m a pretty princess, sweet as a pea,

Waiting for my prince to marry me. . . .”

Three bunk mates and three rats watched from across the room, mouths open in shock.

Hester looked up at Agatha. “She flooded our floor.”

“To do her makeup,” said Anadil.

“Whoever heard of anything so evil?” Dot grimaced. “Song included.”

“Is my face even?” Sophie said, squinting into the puddle. “I can’t go to class looking like a clown.” Her eyes shifted. “Agatha, darling! About time you came to your senses. Your Uglification class starts in two minutes and you don’t want to make a poor first impression.”

Agatha stared at her.

“Of course,” Sophie said, standing up. “We have to switch clothes first. Come, off they go.”

“You’re not going to class, darling,” Agatha said, turning red. “We’re going to the School Master’s tower right now before we’re stuck here forever!”

“Don’t be a boob,” said Sophie, tugging at Agatha’s dress. “We can’t just break into some tower in broad daylight. And if you’re going home anyway, you should give me your clothes now so I don’t miss any assignments.”

Agatha wrenched away. “Okay, that’s it! Now listen to—”

“You’ll blend right in here,” Sophie smiled, studying Agatha next to her roommates.

Agatha lost her fire. “Because I’m . . . ugly?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes, Aggie, look at this place,” Sophie said. “You like gloom and doom. You like suffering and unhappiness and, um . . . burnt things. You’ll be happy here.”

“We agree,” said a voice behind Agatha, and she turned in surprise.

“You come live here,” Hester said to her—

“And she drowns in the lake,” Dot scowled at Sophie, still wounded by her jibe at the Welcoming.

“We liked you the moment we saw you,” Anadil cooed, rats licking Agatha’s feet.

“You belong here with us,” Hester said, as she, Anadil, and Dot crowded around Agatha, whose head swung nervously between this villainous threesome. Did they really want to be her friend? Was Sophie right? Could being a villain make her . . . happy?

Agatha’s stomach churned. She didn’t want to be Evil! Not when Sophie was Good! They had to get out of this place before it tore them apart!

“I’m not leaving you!” she cried to Sophie, breaking away.

“No one’s asking you to leave me, Agatha,” Sophie said tightly. “We’re just asking you to leave your clothes.”

“No!” Agatha shouted. “We’re not switching clothes. We’re not switching rooms. We’re not switching schools!”

Sophie and Hester exchanged furtive glances.

“We’re going home!” Agatha said, voice catching. “We can be friends there—on the same side—no Good, no Evil—we’ll be happy forev—”

Sophie and Hester tackled her. Dot and Anadil pulled the pink dress off Agatha’s body, and the four of them shoved Sophie’s black robes on in its place. Shimmying into her new pink dress, Sophie threw open the door. “Goodbye, Evil! Hello, Love!”

Agatha stumbled to her feet and looked down at a putrid black sack that fit just how she liked.

“And all is right in the world,” Hester sighed. “Really, I don’t know how you were ever friends with that tram—”

“Get back here!” Agatha yelled, pursuing Sophie in pink through the hall’s hordes of black. Shocked by an Ever in their midst, Nevers swarmed around Sophie and started to beat her about the head with books, bags, and shoes—

“No! She’s one of us!”

All the Nevers turned to Hort, in the stairwell, including dumbstruck Sophie. Hort pointed at Agatha in black.

“That’s the Ever!”

The Nevers unleashed a new war cry and mobbed Agatha as Sophie shoved Hort away and escaped down the stairs. Agatha scraped through the gauntlet with a few well-placed kicks and slid down the banister to cut Sophie off. With Sophie in sight, she tracked her through a tight corridor, reached out her hand to grab her by the pink collar, but Sophie turned a corner, ran up snaking steps, and veered off the first floor. Agatha swerved into a dead end, saw Sophie magically jump through a wall, blood-splattered “NO STUDENTS!” and with a flying leap, Agatha jumped through the portal right after her—

And landed on the Evil end of Halfway Bridge.

But this was where the chase ceased, for Sophie was too far to Good to catch. Through the fog, Agatha could see her glowing with joy.

“Agatha, he’s King Arthur’s son,” Sophie gushed. “A real-life prince! But what do I say to him? How do I show him I’m the one?”

Agatha tried to hide her hurt. “You’d leave me here . . . alone?”

Sophie’s face softened.

“Please don’t worry, Aggie. Everything is perfect now,” she said gently. “We’ll still be best friends. Just in different schools, like we planned. No one can stop us from being friends, can they?”

Agatha gazed at Sophie’s beautiful smile and believed her.