The School for Good and Evil (20 page)

The students stopped tittering.

“But I suppose we’ll do,” Yuba said. “Who wants to go first?”

Everyone raised their hand except two. Agatha, who was praying now more than ever that Sophie had a plan to get home. And Sophie, who was too busy writing her next lecture (“‘Bath’ Is Not a Four-Letter Word”) to care about any of this.

By the third day on her stump, Sophie had 30 freshly bathed Nevergirls attend “Just Say No to Drab.”

“Now Professor Manley says a Never must be ugly. That ugly means uniqueness, power, freedom! So here’s my question to Professor Manley. How do you expect us to feel unique, empowered, or free . . . in
this
?” she roared, waving the dumpy black robes like an enemy flag. The cheer was so loud that across the Clearing, Beatrix’s pen slipped and ruined her ball gown sketch.

“It’s that mentally ill Sophie,” Beatrix snapped.

“Still looking for a Ball date, is she,” murmured Tedros, aiming his next horseshoe throw.

“Worse. Now she’s trying to convince the Nevers they’re not losers.”

Tedros missed his shot in surprise.

Agatha didn’t even try to see Sophie after lunch, with Nevergirls mobbing her for style advice. She didn’t try the next day, either, when an impromptu shoe burning erupted after Sophie’s lecture on “Abandon All Ye Clumps!” and wolves ran around whipping students back to the tower. And she certainly didn’t try the next, when every Nevergirl showed up for Sophie’s talk on “Fitness for the Unfit,” except Hester and Anadil, who cornered Agatha after lunch.

“This idea keeps getting more rotten,” Anadil said. “So rotten we’re not your friends anymore.”

“Boys, balls, kisses—all your problem now,” Hester snarled, demon twitching on her neck. “As long as it doesn’t mess with me winning Captain, I could give a hog’s behind what you two do. Got it?”

The next day, Agatha hid in the Tunnel of Trees, waited for the sound of high heels on dead leaves, and tackled Sophie in a flying leap. “What is it today? Cuticle creams! Teeth whiteners! More abdominal exercises!”

“If you want to talk to me, you can wait in line with everyone else!” Sophie yelled.

“‘Malevolent Makeovers,’ ‘Black Is the New Black,’ ‘Yoga for Villains’! Do you
want
to die here?”

“You said show him something
deeper
. Isn’t this compassion? Isn’t this kindness and wisdom? I’m helping those who can’t help themselves!”

“Excuse me, Saint Teresa, but the goal here is Tedros! How is this accomplishing anything!”

“Accomplishment. Such a vague word. But I’d consider
that
an accomplishment, wouldn’t you?”

Agatha followed Sophie’s look out the tunnel. The crowd in front of her stump was a hundred Nevers deep. Only there was one hovering in back who didn’t look like the rest.

A golden-haired boy in a blue rugby sweater.

Agatha released Sophie in shock.

“You should come,” Sophie called as she flounced out of the tunnel. “Today’s about dry, damaged hair.”

In front of the stump, Arachne’s one eye glowered at Tedros. “Why is Prince Prettyface here?”

“Yeah, back to your side, Everboy,” Mona sniped, pelting him with tree mold.

More Nevergirls started to heckle him and Tedros shrank back anxiously. He wasn’t used to being unpopular. But just as he was booed away—

“We welcome
everyone
,” Sophie admonished as she swept to her stump.

Tedros came back every day that week. He told his mates he just wanted to see what Sophie was wearing, but there was more to it. With each new day, he watched her teach misshapen villains how to straighten their hunches, hold eye contact, and enunciate their words. He watched Neverboys skeptically skulk on the fringes at first, only to soon badger Sophie for advice on sleeping better, masking body odor, and managing their tempers. At first the wolves yawned through these assemblies, but Tedros could see them listening as more and more Nevers showed up for Sophie’s lectures. Soon the villains began to debate her prescriptions at supper and over dreggy tea in common rooms. They started to sit together at lunch, defend each other in class, and stopped making jokes about their losing streak. For the first time in two hundred years, Evil had
hope
. All because of one girl.

By the end of the week, Tedros had a seat in the front row.

“It’s working! I can’t believe it!” Agatha gushed as she walked Sophie to the Tunnel of Trees. “He might say he loves you! He might kiss you this week! We’re going home! What’s tomorrow’s topic?”

“‘
Eating Your Words
,’” Sophie said, swishing ahead.

At lunch the next day, Agatha stood in line for a basket of artichoke and olive tartines, dreaming about the heroes’ welcome she and Sophie would get when they returned home. Gavaldon would erect statues of them in the square, fete them in sermons, stage a musical about their lives, and teach schoolchildren about the two girls who saved them from the curse. Her mother would have a thousand new patients, Reaper fresh trout every day, and she would have her pictures in the town scroll and anyone who had ever dared to mock her would now grovel at her—

“What a joke.”

Agatha turned to Beatrix, who was watching Nevers throng around Sophie in a revealing black sari and sharp-heeled fur booties for her lecture on “How to Be the Best at Everything (Like Me!).”

“As if
she’s
the best,” Beatrix snorted.

“I think she’s the best Never I’ve ever seen,” a voice said behind her.

Beatrix whirled to Tedros. “Is she now, Teddy? And I think it’s all a big
fairy tale
.”

Tedros followed her eyes to the ranking boards, smoldering in soft sunlight on the Blue Forest gates. On the Nevers board, Sophie’s name hung off the bottom, pecked to holes by robins. Number 120 out of 120.

“
The Empress’s New Clothes
, to be precise,” Beatrix said, and strutted away.

Tedros didn’t go to see Sophie that day. Word spread that he found it sad to watch Nevers pin their hopes on the “worst girl in school.”

The next day, Sophie showed up to a deserted stump. The wooden sign had been defaced.

“I told you to pay attention!” Agatha shouted as they waited in pouring rain after Yuba’s class for wolves to open the gates.

“Between sewing new outfits, brewing new makeup, preparing new lectures, I can’t worry about
class
!” Sophie sobbed under a black parasol. “I have my
fans
to think about!”

“Of which you now have none!” Agatha yelled. She could see Hester smirking at her from the Group 6 huddle. “Three bottom ranks and you fail, Sophie! I don’t know how you’ve survived this long!”

“They don’t
let
me fail! No matter how bad I am! Why do you think I stopped studying!”

Agatha tried to make sense of this, but couldn’t focus with her fingertip burning. Ever since Yuba unlocked it, it glowed whenever she was angry, as if raring to do a spell.

“But how did you get all those high ranks before?” she said, hiding her hand in her pocket.

“That was before they made us
read
. I mean, do I
look
like I care how to poison a comb, how to pluck toad eyes, or how to say ‘May I cross your bridge’ in Troll? Here I am trying to
improve
these villains and you want me to memorize the recipe for Children Noodle Soup? Agatha, did you know that to boil a child you have to wrap them in parchment first? Otherwise they won’t be properly cooked and might wake up in your pot. Is that what you want me to learn? How to hurt and kill? How to be a
witch
?”

“Listen, you need to win back respect—”

“Through intentional Evil? No. Shan’t.”

“Then we’re doomed,” Agatha snapped. Sophie exhaled angrily and turned away.

Suddenly her expression changed. “What in the—”

She gawked at the Evers ranking board, tacked to the gates.

“But—but—you’re . . .
you
!” Sophie cried.

“And
I
do my homework!” Agatha barked. “I don’t want to learn dove calls or practice fainting or sew handkerchiefs, but I’ll do whatever it takes to get us home!”

But Sophie wasn’t listening. A naughty grin spread across her face.

Agatha crossed her arms. “No
way
. First of all, teachers will catch us.”

“You’ll love my Curses homework, it’s all about tricking princes—and you
hate
boys!”

“Second, your roommates will tell on you—”

“And you’ll love my Uglification homework! We’re learning to scare children—and you
hate
children!”

“If Tedros finds out, we’re dead—”

“And look at your finger! It glows when you’re upset! I can’t do that!”

“It’s a fluke!”

“Look, it’s even brighter now! You’re born to be a vill—”

Agatha stomped. “WE’RE NOT CHEATING!”

Sophie fell silent. Wolves unlocked the Blue Forest gates and students surged into the tunnels.

Neither Sophie nor Agatha moved.

“My roommates say I’m 100% Evil,” Sophie said softly. “But you know the truth. I don’t know
how
to be Evil. Not even 1%. So please don’t ask me to go against my own soul, Agatha. I can’t.” Her voice caught. “I just can’t.”

She left Agatha under the umbrella. As Sophie joined the herd, the storm rinsed the sheen out of her hair, the glitter off her skin until Agatha couldn’t tell her from the other villains. Guilt flushed through her, burning her finger bright as the sun. She hadn’t told Sophie the truth. She had the same idea to do Sophie’s Evil work and squashed it. Not because she was afraid she’d get caught.

She was afraid she might like it. All 100%.

That night, Sophie had nightmares. Tedros kissing goblins, Agatha crawling from a well with cupid wings, Hester’s demon chasing her through sewers, until the Beast rose out of dark water, bloody hands snatching, and Sophie lunged past him and locked herself in the Doom Room. Only there was a new torturer waiting. Her father in a wolf mask.

Sophie jolted awake.

Her roommates were fast asleep. She sighed, nestled into her pillow—and bolted back up.

There was a cockroach on her nose.

She started to scream—

“It’s me!” the roach hissed.

Sophie closed her eyes.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.

She opened them. It was still there.

“What’s my favorite muffin?” she wheezed.

“Flourless blueberry bran,” the roach spat. “Any more stupid questions?”

Sophie picked the bug off her nose. It had the same bulging eyes and sunken cheeks.

“How in the world—”

“Mogrification. We’ve been learning it for two weeks. Meet me in the common room.”

Agatha the Cockroach glared back as she skittered for the door.

“And bring your books.”

18

The Roach and the Fox

“S
uppose mine glows green or brown or something?” Sophie yawned, scratching her legs. Everything in the Malice Common Room was made of burlap—the floors, the furniture, the curtains—like some barbarous itch chamber. “I’m not doing it if it clashes with my clothes.”

“Just focus on an emotion!” barked the roach on her shoulder. “Like anger. Try anger.”

Sophie closed her eyes. “Is it glowing?”

“No. What are you thinking about?”

“The food here.”

“Real anger, you oaf! Magic comes from
real
feelings!”

Sophie’s face scrunched with effort.

“Deeper! Nothing’s happening!”

Sophie’s face darkened and her fingertip flickered hot pink.

“That’s it! You’re doing it!” Agatha hopped excitedly. “What are you thinking about!”

“How infuriating your voice is,” Sophie said, opening her eyes. “Should I think about you every time?”

For the next week, the Malice Common Room turned into a cockroach’s night school. The Mogrify spell only lasted three hours, so Agatha worked Sophie like a slave, driving her to make her fingerglow stronger, to fog a room and flood a floor, to tell a Sleeping Willow from a Weeping Willow, and to even say a few words of Giant. Sophie’s ranks immediately improved, but by the fourth day, the long nights had taken their toll.

“My skin looks
gray
,” Sophie croaked.

“And you’re still ranked 68, so pay attention!” berated the roach on her book, swan crest glistening on abdomen. “The Woodswide Plague began when Rumpelstiltskin stamped so hard the ground cracked—”

“What made you change your mind? About helping me?”

“And from the ground, a million poisonous bugs crawled out and infested the Woods, sickening scores of Nevers and Evers,” Agatha said, ignoring her. “They even had to close this school, since the bugs were highly contagious—”

Sophie flopped back on the couch. “How do you
know
all this?”

“Because while you stare in mirrors, I read
Poisons and Plagues
!”

Sophie sighed. “So they closed the school for bugs. Then what happ—”

“
This
is where you’ve been sneaking to?”

Sophie swiveled to Hester at the door in black pajamas, flanked by Anadil and Dot.

“Homework,” Sophie yawned, holding up her book. “Need light.”

“Since when do
you
care about homework?” said Hester, looking greasier than ever.

“Thought beauty was a ‘full-time job,’” mimicked Anadil.

“Rooming with you is such inspiration,” Sophie said, smiling. “Makes me want to be the best villain I can be.”

Hester eyed her for a long moment. With a growl, she turned and led the others out.

Sophie exhaled, blowing Agatha off the couch.

“She’s up to something,” they heard Hester snarl.

“Or she’s changed!” piped Dot, waddling behind. “Roach on her book and she didn’t even notice!”

By the sixth night of schooling, Sophie had risen to #55. But each new day, she looked more like a zombie, skin sickly white, eyes glassy and bruised. Instead of a fancy new frock or hat, now she loped around with dirty hair and a wrinkled dress, trailing study notes all over the tower like bread crumbs.

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Tedros mumbled to her during Yuba’s lesson on “Insect Cuisine.”

“Too busy trying not to be the ‘worst girl in school,’” Sophie said as she took notes.

“Insects are often available when meerworms are not,” Yuba said, holding up a live cockroach.

“Look, you can’t expect anyone to listen to you when you’re ranked lower than Hort,” Tedros whispered.

“When I’m #1, you’ll ask me to forgive you.”

“You get to #1 and I’ll ask you anything you want,” he snorted.

Sophie turned to him. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“If you’re still awake.”

“First remove the inedible bits,” Yuba said, and tore off the roach’s head.

Agatha shuddered and hid behind a pine shrub the rest of the lesson. But that night, she almost jumped from her thorax when Sophie told her what happened with Tedros.

“Everboys always keep their promises!” she said, bouncing on knobby roach legs. “It’s the Prince Code of Chivalry. Now you just have to get to #1 and he’ll ask you to the . . . Sophie?”

Sophie answered with a snore.

By the tenth day of Cockroach College, Sophie was only at #40 and the circles under her eyes were so black she looked like a raccoon. By the next, she’d slipped back to #65 when she napped during Lesso’s test on Nemesis Dreams, fell asleep during Henchmen, knocking Beezle off the Belfry, and lost her voice in Special Talents for another low rank.

“Your talent is progressing,” Sheeba said to Anadil, who managed to make her rats grow a full five inches bigger. Then she turned to Sophie. “Here I thought
you
were our Great Witch Hope.”

By the end of the week, Sophie was the worst villain in school again.

“I’m sick,” Agatha said, coughing into her hand.

Professor Dovey didn’t look up from her parchment-strewn desk. “Ginger tea and two slices of grapefruit. Repeat every two hours.”

“I tried that,” Agatha said, increasing the volume of her coughs.

“Now is not the time to miss class, Agatha,” Professor Dovey said, stacking papers under sparkling pumpkin weights. “Less than a month before the Ball and I want to make sure our fourth-ranked student is prepared for the most important night of her young life! Do you have an Everboy in mind?”

Agatha exploded in a paroxysm of hacks. Professor Dovey looked up, alarmed.

“Feels like . . .
plague
,” Agatha wheezed.

Professor Dovey went white.

Quarantined in her room, Agatha the Roach now accompanied Sophie to all her classes. Tucked behind Sophie’s ear, she whispered the first sign of a Nemesis Dream (answer: tasting blood), steered Frost Giant negotiations during Henchmen, and told Sophie which scarecrows were Good or Evil in Yuba’s Forest challenge. On the second day, she helped Sophie lose a tooth in Uglification, match monsters during Sader’s exam (Lalkies:
sweet-talkers
; Harpies:
child eaters
), and determine which of Yuba’s beanstalks was poisonous, which was edible, and which was Dot in disguise. There were hairy moments, of course. She almost ended up on the bottom of Hester’s clump, barely survived a hovering bat, and nearly turned back into herself in Special Talents before finding a broom closet just in time.

By the third day, Agatha hardly glanced at her Good homework and spent all her free time learning Evil spells. Where her classmates struggled to make fingers flicker, she could keep hers glowing by thinking about things that made her angry: school, mirrors, boys. . . . Then it was a matter of following a spell’s precise recipe, and just like that, she could do magic. Simple stuff, nothing more than playing with water and weather, but still—
real magic
!

She would have been paralyzed by the incredibility, the impossibility, except that it came so naturally. Where the others couldn’t summon a drizzle, Agatha conjured thunderclouds in her room and splashed the odious murals off her wall with a squall of lightning and rain. Between sessions, she stole into bathrooms to try out new
Spells for Suffering
—the Lights-Out Jinx to briefly darken the sky, the Sea Swell Curse to summon a giant wave. . . . Time evaporated when she studied Evil, so rife with power and possibility, she could never get bored.

While waiting for Pollux to deliver her Good homework one night, Agatha whistled while she doodled—

“What pray tell is
that
?”

She turned to Pollux in her doorway, head on a hare’s body, staring at the drawing.

“Oh, um, me at my wedding. See, there’s my prince.” She crumpled the page and coughed. “Any homework?”

After chastising her for slipping in the Ever ranks, explaining every assignment thrice, and berating her to cover her mouth when she coughed, Pollux finally left in a circus of hops and falls. Agatha exhaled. Then her eye caught the crumpled doodle of herself flying through flames and she saw what she’d been drawing.

Nevermore
. Evil paradise.

“We have to get home,” she mumbled.

By the end of the week, Agatha had led Sophie on a magnificent winning streak in all her classes, including Yuba’s Trial Tune-Ups. In these one-on-one duels to prepare for the upcoming Trial by Tale, Sophie beat every person in her group using approved spells, whether stunning Ravan with a lightning bolt, icing Beatrix’s lips before she could call for animal help, or liquefying Tedros’ training sword.

“Someone’s been doing their homework,” Tedros said, agog. Hidden under Sophie’s collar, Agatha blushed with pride.

“Before it was dumb luck. This is different,” Hester griped to Anadil as they bit into a lunch of charred cow tongues. “How is she
doing
it?”

“Good old-fashioned hard work,” Sophie said, swishing by in shimmering makeup, ruby-red hair, and a black kimono, sparkling with gems that spelled “F is for
Focused
.”

Hester and Anadil choked on their tongues.

By the end of the third week, Sophie was up to #5 and her Lunchtime Lectures had resumed due to popular demand. So had her black-robed fashions, bolder and more extravagant than before, in a grand pageant of scalloped plumage, fishnet bodices, faux monkey fur, sequined burkas, leather pantsuits, powdered wigs, and even a chain-mail bustier.

“She’s
cheating
,” Beatrix hissed to anyone who would listen. “Some rogue fairy godmother or time-turning spell. No one has time to do all this!”

But Sophie had time to design a satin jumper with matching nun’s wimple, a sparkled clamshell dress, and matching shoes for every new look. She had time to beat Hester in the “Uglify a Ballroom” challenge, write a report on “Wolves vs. Man-Wolves,” and prepare Lunchtime Lectures on “Wicked Success,” “Ugly Is the New Beautiful,” “Building Your Body for Sin.” She had time to be one-girl fashion show, rabble-rouser, rebel priestess—and still wrestle her way past Anadil to #2 in the rankings.

This time Beatrix couldn’t stop Tedros from falling for Sophie. But Tedros tried valiantly to stop himself.

She’s a Never! So what if she’s beautiful? Or smart? Or creative and kind and generous and—

Tedros took a deep breath.

Evers can’t like Nevers. You’re just confused.

He felt relieved when Yuba hosted another “Good or Evil” challenge. This time the gnome turned all the girls into blue pumpkins and hid them in the forest’s voluminous patch.

Just find an Ever
, Tedros scolded himself.
Find an Ever and forget all about her.

“This one’s Good!” Hort yelled, and flicked a blue shell. Nothing happened. The other boys couldn’t tell the difference between pumpkins either and started debating the merits of each.

“This is not a group assignment!” Yuba bellowed.

Clinging to Sophie’s blue vine, Agatha’s roach watched as the boys split up. Tedros headed west towards the Turquoise Thicket and stopped. Slowly he turned to Sophie’s pumpkin.

“He’s coming,” Agatha said.

“How do you know?” Sophie whispered.

“Because that’s the way he looked at me.”

Tedros walked up to a pumpkin. “This one. This one’s an Ever.”

Yuba frowned. “Look closely first—”

Tedros ignored him, clasped its blue skin, and in a burst of glitterdust the pumpkin turned into Sophie. A “16” puffed in slimy green smoke over the prince’s head and a “1” in black over Sophie’s.

“Only the best Evil can disguise as Good,” Yuba commended, and with a wave of his staff, erased the red
F
off Sophie’s dress once and for all.

“And as for you, son of Arthur, I suggest you study your rules. Let’s hope you don’t make such a terrible mistake when it
counts
.”

Tedros tried to look ashamed.

“We can’t find any!” a voice called.

Yuba turned to see all the boys with low ranks smoking over their heads. “Should have marked them,” he sighed and waddled into the patch, jabbing pumpkins to see if they yelped.

With the gnome gone, Tedros let himself smile. How could he tell a teacher he didn’t care about rules? Rules that had led him to that god-awful Agatha
twice
? For the first time, he had found a girl who had everything he wanted. A girl who wasn’t a mistake.

“I’d say you owe me a question, son of Arthur.”

Tedros turned to find Sophie wearing the same smile. He followed her eyes to the Nevers scoreboard above the Forest, where Albemarle had pecked her name at the very top.

The next day, she found a note in her lunch pail.

Wolves don’t like foxes. Blue Brook at midnight. T.

“What does it mean?” she whispered to the roach in her palm.

“It means we go home tonight!” Agatha gushed, antennae beating so fast that Sophie dropped her.

The roach paced the mildewed burlap of the Malice Common Room floor, eyeing the clock as it ticked towards midnight. At last she heard the door open and Sophie entered in a seductive black sheath dress, accented with long black gloves, beehived hair, a necklace of delicate pearls, and black-tinted spectacles. Agatha nearly burst her carapace.