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Sophie’s smile evaporated.
“But I’ll be your new friend,” said Radley.
“I’m full on friends at the moment,” Sophie snapped.
Radley turned the color of a raspberry. “Oh, right—I just thought—” He fled like a kicked dog.
Sophie watched his straggly hair recede down the hill. Oh, you’ve really done it now, she thought. Months of good deeds and forced smiles and now she’d ruined it for runty Radley. Why not make his day? Why not simply answer, “I’d be honored to have you as my friend!” and give the idiot a moment he’d relive for years? She knew it was the prudent thing to do, since the School Master must be judging her as closely as St. Nicholas the night before Christmas. But she couldn’t do it. She was beautiful, Radley was ugly. Only a villain would delude him. Surely the School Master would understand that.
Sophie pulled open the rusted cemetery gates and felt weeds scratch at her legs. Across the hilltop, moldy headstones forked haphazardly from dunes of dead leaves. Squeezing between dark tombs and decaying branches, Sophie kept careful count of the rows. She had never looked at her mother’s grave, even at the funeral, and she wouldn’t start today. As she passed the sixth row, she glued her eyes to a weeping birch and reminded herself where she’d be a day from now.
In the middle of the thickest batch of tombs stood 1 Graves Hill. The house wasn’t boarded up or bolted shut like the cottages by the lake, but that didn’t make it any more inviting. The steps leading up to the porch glowed mildew green. Dead birches and vines wormed their way around dark wood, and the sharply angled roof, black and thin, loomed like a witch’s hat.
As she climbed the moaning porch steps, Sophie tried to ignore the smell, a mix of garlic and wet cat, and averted her eyes from the headless birds sprinkled around, no doubt the victims of the latter.
She knocked on the door and prepared for a fight.
“Go away,” came the gruff voice.
“That’s no way to speak to your best friend,” Sophie cooed.
“You’re not my best friend.”
“Who is, then?” Sophie asked, wondering if Belle had somehow made her way to Graves Hill.
“None of your business.”
Sophie took a deep breath. She didn’t want another Radley incident. “We had such a good time yesterday, Agatha. I thought we’d do it again.”
“You dyed my hair orange.”
“But we fixed it, didn’t we?”
“You always test your creams and potions on me just to see how they work.”
“Isn’t that what friends are for?” Sophie said. “To help each other?”
“I’ll never be as pretty as you.”
Sophie tried to find something nice to say. She took too long and heard shoes stomp away.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends!” Sophie called.
A familiar cat, bald and wrinkled, growled at her across the porch. She whipped back to the door. “I brought biscuits!”
Shoesteps stopped. “Real ones or ones you made?”
Sophie shrank from the slinking cat. “Fluffy and buttery, just like you love!”
The cat hissed.
“Agatha, let me in—”
“You’ll say I smell.”
“You don’t smell.”
“Then why’d you say it last time?”
“Because you smelled last time! Agatha, the cat’s spitting—”
“Maybe it smells ulterior motives.”
The cat bared claws.
“Agatha, open the door!”
It pounced at her face. Sophie screamed. A hand stabbed between them and swatted the cat down.
Sophie looked up.
“Reaper ran out of birds,” said Agatha.
Her hideous dome of black hair looked like it was coated in oil. Her hulking black dress, shapeless as a potato sack, couldn’t hide freakishly pale skin and jutting bones. Ladybug eyes bulged from her sunken face.
“I thought we’d go for a walk,” Sophie said.
Agatha leaned against the door. “I’m still trying to figure out why you’re friends with me.”
“Because you’re sweet and funny,” said Sophie.
“My mother says I’m bitter and grumpy,” said Agatha. “So one of you is lying.”
She reached into Sophie’s basket and pulled back the napkin to reveal dry, butterless bran biscuits. Agatha gave Sophie a withering stare and retreated into the house.
“So we can’t take a walk?” Sophie asked.
Agatha started to close the door but then saw her crestfallen face. As if Sophie had looked forward to their walk as much as she had.
“A short one.” Agatha trudged past her. “But if you say anything smug or stuck-up or shallow, I’ll have Reaper follow you home.”
Sophie ran after her. “But then I can’t talk!”
After four years, the dreaded eleventh night of the eleventh month had arrived. In the late-day sun, the square had become a hive of preparation for the School Master’s arrival. The men sharpened swords, set traps, and plotted the night’s guard, while the women lined up the children and went to work. Handsome ones had their hair lopped off, teeth blackened, and clothes shredded to rags; homely ones were scrubbed, swathed in bright colors, and fitted with veils. Mothers begged the best-behaved children to curse or kick their sisters, the worst were bribed to pray in the church, while the rest in line were led in choruses of the village anthem: “Blessed Are the Ordinary.”
Fear swelled into a contagious fog. In a dim alley, the butcher and blacksmith traded storybooks for clues to save their sons. Beneath the crooked clock tower, two sisters listed fairy-tale villain names to hunt for patterns. A group of boys chained their bodies together, a few girls hid on the school roof, and a masked child jumped from bushes to spook his mother, earning a spanking on the spot. Even the homeless hag got into the act, hopping before a meager fire, croaking, “Burn the storybooks! Burn them all!” But no one listened and no books were burned.
Agatha gawped at all this in disbelief. “How can a whole town believe in fairy tales?”
“Because they’re real.”
Agatha stopped walking. “You can’t actually believe the legend is true.”
“Of course I do,” said Sophie.
“That a School Master kidnaps two children, takes them to a school where one learns Good, one learns Evil, and they graduate into fairy tales?”
“Sounds about right.”
“Tell me if you see an oven.”
“Why?”
“I want to put my head in it. And what, pray tell, do they teach at this school exactly?”
“Well, in the School for Good, they teach boys and girls like me how to become heroes and princesses, how to rule kingdoms justly, how to find Happily Ever After,” Sophie said. “In the School for Evil, they teach you how to become wicked witches and humpbacked trolls, how to lay curses and cast evil spells.”
“Evil spells?” Agatha cackled. “Who came up with this? A four-year-old?”
“Agatha, the proof’s in the storybooks! You can see the missing children in the drawings! Jack, Rose, Rapunzel—they all got their own tales—”
“I don’t see anything, because I don’t read dumb storybooks.”
“Then why is there a stack by your bed?” Sophie asked.
Agatha scowled. “Look, who’s to say the books are even real? Maybe it’s the bookseller’s prank. Maybe it’s the Elders’ way to keep children out of the woods. Whatever the explanation, it isn’t a School Master and it isn’t evil spells.”
“So who’s kidnapping the children?”
“No one. Every four years, two idiots sneak into the woods, hoping to scare their parents, only to get lost or eaten by wolves, and there you have it, the legend continues.”
“That’s the stupidest explanation I’ve ever heard.”
“I don’t think I’m the stupid one here,” Agatha said.
There was something about being called stupid that set Sophie’s blood aflame.
“You’re just scared,” she said.
“Right,” Agatha laughed. “And why would I be scared?”
“Because you know you’re coming with me.”
Agatha stopped laughing. Then her gaze moved past Sophie into the square. The villagers were staring at them like the solution to a mystery. Good in pink, Evil in black. The School Master’s perfect pair.
Frozen still, Agatha watched dozens of scared eyes bore into her. Her first thought was that after tomorrow she and Sophie could take their walks in peace. Next to her, Sophie watched children memorize her face in case it appeared in their storybooks one day. Her first thought was whether they looked at Belle the same way.
Then, through the crowd, she saw her.
Head shaved, dress filthy, Belle kneeled in dirt, frantically muddying her own face. Sophie drew a breath. For Belle was just like the others. She wanted a mundane marriage to a man who would grow fat, lazy, and demanding. She wanted monotonous days of cooking, cleaning, sewing. She wanted to shovel dung and milk sheep and slaughter squealing pigs. She wanted to rot in Gavaldon until her skin was liver-spotted and her teeth fell out. The School Master would never take Belle because Belle wasn’t a princess. She was . . . nothing.
Victorious, Sophie beamed back at the pathetic villagers and basked in their stares like shiny mirrors—
“Let’s go,” said Agatha.
Sophie turned. Agatha’s eyes were locked on the mob.
“Where?”
“Away from people.”
As the sun weakened to a red orb, two girls, one beautiful, one ugly, sat side by side on the shore of a lake. Sophie packed cucumbers in a silk pouch, while Agatha flicked lit matches into the water. After the tenth match, Sophie threw her a look.
“It relaxes me,” Agatha said.
Sophie tried to make room for the last cucumber. “Why would someone like Belle want to stay here? Who would choose this over a fairy tale?”
“And who would choose to leave their family forever?” Agatha snorted.
“Except me, you mean,” said Sophie.
They fell silent.
“Do you ever wonder where your father went?” Sophie asked.
“I told you. He left after I was born.”
“But where would he go? We’re surrounded by woods! To suddenly disappear like that . . .” Sophie spun. “Maybe he found a way into the stories! Maybe he found a magic portal! Maybe he’s waiting for you on the other side!”
“Or maybe he went back to his wife, pretended I never happened, and died ten years ago in a mill accident.”
Sophie bit her lip and went back to cucumbers.
“Your mother’s never at home when I visit.”
“She goes into town now,” said Agatha. “Not enough patients at the house. Probably the location.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” Sophie said, knowing no one would trust Agatha’s mother to treat diaper rash, let alone illness. “I don’t think a graveyard makes people all that comfortable.”
“Graveyards have their benefits,” Agatha said. “No nosy neighbors. No drop-in salesmen. No fishy ‘friends’ bearing face masks and diet cookies, telling you you’re going to Evil School in Magic Fairy Land.” She flicked a match with relish.
Sophie put down her cucumber. “So I’m fishy now.”
“Who asked you to show up? I was perfectly fine alone.”
“You always let me in.”
“Because you always seem so lonely,” said Agatha. “And I feel sorry for you.”
