“Wrong! Dot!”
“Because it’s easier to get ready in the morning?” Dot asked, mixing her juice with chocolate.
“Wrong and stupid!” Manley scorned. “Only once you give up the surface can you dig beneath it! Only once you relinquish vanity can you be yourself!”
Sophie crawled behind desks, lunged for the door—the knob burnt her hand and she yelped.
“Only once you destroy who you think you are can you embrace who you truly are!” Manley said, glaring right at her.
Whimpering, Sophie crawled back to her desk, past villains exploding in shingles. Smoky-green ranks popped out of thin air around her—“1” over Hester, “2” over Anadil, “3” over oily, brown-skinned Ravan, “4” over blond, pointy-eared Vex. Hort drank his draught excitedly, only to see a wee zit spurt from his chin. He smacked away a stinky “19,” but the rank smacked him right back.
“Ugliness means you rely on intelligence,” Manley leered, slinking towards Sophie. “Ugliness means you trust your soul. Ugliness means freedom.”
He flung a bowl onto her desk.
Sophie looked down into black tadpole juice. Some of it was still moving.
“Actually, Professor, I believe my Beautification teacher will object to my participation in this assign—”
“Three failing marks and you’ll end up something uglier than me,” Manley spat.
Sophie looked up. “I really don’t think that’s possible.”
Manley turned to the class. “Who would like to help our dear Sophie taste freedom?”
“Me!”
Sophie whipped around.
“Don’t worry,” Hort whispered, “you’ll look better this way.”
Before Sophie could scream, he plunged her head into the bowl.
Lying in a puddle on the banks of Good, Agatha replayed the scene from Evil. Her best friend had called her a boob, flying tackled her, stolen her clothes, left her to witches, and then asked for love advice.
It’s this place, she thought. In Gavaldon, Sophie would forget about classes and castles and boys. In Gavaldon, they could find a happy ending together. Not here. I just need to get us home.
And yet, something still bothered her. That moment on the Bridge—Sophie in pink against the School for Good, she in black against the School for Evil … “Everything is perfect now,” Sophie said. And she was right. For a brief moment, the mistake had been corrected. They were where they belonged.
So why couldn’t we stay?
Whatever happened, it was a close call. Because once Sophie made it to Good, she’d never leave. Agatha’s breath shallowed. She had to make sure the faculty didn’t discover the mix-up! She had to make sure they weren’t switched to the right schools! But how could she make sure Sophie stayed put?
Go to class, her heart whispered.
Pollux said the schools kept an even number of students to preserve the balance. So for the mistake to be corrected, they both would have to be switched. As long as Agatha held her place in the School for Good, then Sophie was stuck in the School for Evil. And if there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that Sophie couldn’t possibly last as a villain. A few more days there and she’d beg for Gavaldon.
Go to class. Of course!
She would find a way to last at this horrid school and wear Sophie down. For the first time since they were kidnapped, Agatha opened her heart to hope.
Hope died ten minutes later.
Professor Emma Anemone, whistling in a blinding yellow dress and long fox-fur gloves, walked into her pink taffy classroom, took one look at Agatha, and stopped whistling. But then she murmured “Rapunzel took some work too,” and launched into her first lesson on “Making Smiles Kinder.”
“Now the key is to communicate with your eyes,” she chirped, and demonstrated the perfect princess smile. With her bulging eyes and wild yellow hair matching her dress, Agatha thought she looked like a manic canary. But Agatha knew her chances of getting home rested in her hands, so she mimicked her toothy beam with the others.
Professor Anemone walked around surveying the girls. “Not so much squinting … A little less nose, dear … Oh my, absolutely beautiful!” She was talking about Beatrix, who lit up the room with her dazzling smile. “That, my Evers, is a smile that can win the heart of the steeliest prince. A smile that can broker peace in the greatest of wars. A smile that can lead a kingdom to hope and prosperity!”
Then she saw Agatha. “You there! No smirking!”
With her teacher looming, Agatha tried to concentrate and duplicate Beatrix’s perfect smile. For a second she thought she had it.
“Goodness! Now it’s a creepy grin! A smile, child! Just your normal, everyday smile!”
Happy. Think of something happy.
But all she could think of was Sophie on the Bridge, leaving her for a boy she didn’t even know.
“Now it’s positively malevolent!” Professor Anemone shrieked.
Agatha turned and saw the whole class cowering, as if expecting her to turn them all into bats. (“Do you think she eats children?” said Beatrix. “I’m so glad I moved out,” Reena sighed.)
Agatha frowned. It couldn’t have been that bad.
Then she saw Professor Anemone’s face.
“If you ever need a man to trust you, if you ever need a man to save you, if you ever need a man to love you, whatever you do, child … don’t smile at him.”
Princess Etiquette, taught by Pollux, was worse. He arrived in a bad mood, hobbling with his massive canine head attached to a skinny goat’s carcass and muttering that Castor “has the body this week.” He looked up and saw girls staring at him.
“And here I thought I was teaching princesses. All I see are twenty ill-mannered girls gaping like toads. Are you toads? Do you like to catch flies with your little pink tongues?”
The girls stopped staring after that.
The first lesson was “Princess Posture,” which involved the girls descending the four tower staircases with nests of nightingale eggs on their heads. Though most of the girls succeeded without breaking any eggs, Agatha had a harder time. There were a number of reasons for this: a lifetime of slouching, Beatrix and Reena intently watching her with their new Kinder Smiles, her mind chattering that Sophie would win this with her eyes closed, and the absurdity of a dog barking about posture while teetering on goat legs. In the end, she left twenty eggs bleeding yolk on marble.
“Twenty beautiful nightingales who will not have life … because of you,” said Pollux.
As class ranks appeared over each
