LITMIR.BIZ

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is if you could actually find one—”

      Reader.

      Why didn’t anyone here seem homesick? Why did they all swim towards the wolves in the moat instead of fleeing for their lives? Why didn’t they cry for their mothers or try to escape the snakes at the gate? Why did they all know so much about this school?

      “What fairy-tale family is he from?”

      Sophie’s eyes found Hester’s nightstand. Next to a vase of dead flowers, a claw-shaped candle, and a stack of books—Outsmarting Orphans, Why Villains Fail, Frequent Witch Mistakes—was a knurled wooden picture frame. Inside was a child’s clumsy painting of a grotesque witch in front of a house.

      A house made of gingerbread and candy.

      “Mother was naive,” said Hester, picking up the frame. Her face struggled with the memory. “An oven? Please. Stick them on a grill. Avoids complications.” Her jaw hardened. “I’ll do better.”

      Sophie’s eyes shifted to Anadil and her stomach plummeted. Her favorite storybook ended with a witch rolled in a barrel of nails until all that remained was her bracelet made of little boys’ bones. Now that bracelet was clasped on her roommate’s wrist.

      “Does know her witches, doesn’t she,” Anadil leered. “Granny would be flattered.”

      Sophie whirled to a poster above Dot’s bed. A handsome man in green screaming as an executioner’s axe sliced into his head.

      WANTED:

      ROBIN HOOD

      Dead or Alive (Preferably Dead)

      By Order of Sheriff of Nottingham

      “Daddy promised to let me have first swing,” Dot said.

      Sophie looked at her three bunk mates in horror.

      They didn’t need to read the fairy tales. They came from them.

      They were born to kill.

      “A princess and a Reader,” Hester said. “The two worst things a human can be.”

      “Even the Evers don’t want her,” said Anadil. “Or the fairies would have come by now.”

      “But they have to come!” Sophie cried. “I’m Good!”

      “Well, you’re stuck here, dearie,” Hester said, plumping Sophie’s pillow with a kick. “So if you want to stay alive, best try to fit in.”

      Fit in with witches! Fit in with cannibals!

      “No! Listen to me!” Sophie begged. “I’m Good!”

      “You keep saying that.” In a flash, Hester seized her by the throat and pinned her over the open window. “And yet there’s no proof.”

      “I donate corsets to homeless hags! I go to church every Sunday!” Sophie howled above the fatal drop.

      “Mmm, no sign of fairy godmother,” Hester said. “Try again.”

      “I smile at children! I sing to birds!” Sophie choked. “I can’t breathe!”

      “No sign of Prince Charming either,” said Anadil, grabbing her legs. “Last chance.”

      “I made friends with a witch! That’s how Good I am!”

      “And still no fairies,” Anadil said to Hester as they lifted her up.

      “She belongs here, not me!” Sophie wailed—

      “No one knows why the School Master brings you worthless freaks into our world,” hissed Hester. “But there can only be one reason. He’s a fool.”

      “Ask Agatha! She’ll tell you! She’s the villain!”

      “You know, Anadil, no one’s told us the rules yet,” Hester said.

      “So they can’t punish us for breaking them,” Anadil grinned.

      They lifted Sophie over the edge. “One,” said Hester.

      “No!” Sophie shrieked.

      “Two …”

      “You want proof! I’ll give you proof!” Sophie screamed—

      “Three.”

      “LOOK AT ME AND LOOK AT YOU!”

      Hester and Anadil dropped her. Stunned, they stared at each other, then at Sophie, hunched on the bed, gulping tearful breaths.

      “Told you she was a villain,” Dot chirped and bit into fudge.

      A commotion clamored outside the room, and the girls’ heads swiveled to the door. It flew open with a crack and three wolves thundered in, grabbed them by the collars, and hurled them into a stampede of black-robed students. Students rammed and elbowed each other; some fell beneath the herd and couldn’t get back up. Sophie clung to the wall for her life.

      “Where are we going!” she yelled to Dot.

      “The School for Good!” Dot said. “For the Welcomin—” An ogreish boy kicked her forward.

      The School for Good! Flooding with hope, Sophie followed the hideous herd down the stairs, primping her pink dress for her first meeting with her true classmates. Someone seized her arm and threw her against the banister. Dazed, she looked up at a vicious white wolf, who held up a black uniform, reeking of death. He bared his teeth in a shiny grin.

      “No—” Sophie gasped—

      So the wolf took care of matters himself.

      Though the princesses of Purity were all bunked in threes, Agatha ended up with her own room.

      A pink glass staircase connected all five floors of Purity Tower, spiraling in a carved replica of Rapunzel’s endless hair. The door to Agatha’s fifth-floor room had a glittery sign covered in hearts: “WELCOME REENA, MILLICENT, AGATHA!” But Reena and Millicent didn’t stay long. Reena, blessed with luscious Arabian skin and brilliant gray eyes, labored to move her enormous trunk into the room, only to find Agatha and move it right back out. “She just looks so evil,” Agatha heard her sob. “I don’t want to die!” (“Move in with me,” she heard Beatrix say. “The fairies will understand.”) And indeed, the fairies did understand. And they understood when red-haired Millicent, with an upturned nose and thin eyebrows, feigned a fear of heights and demanded a room on a lower floor. And so Agatha was alone, which made her feel right at home.

      The room, however, made her feel anxious. Massive, jeweled mirrors glared back from pink walls. Elaborate murals flaunted beautiful princesses kissing dashing princes. Arching over each bed was a white silk canopy, shaped like a royal carriage, and a glorious fresco of clouds blanketed the ceiling tiles, with smiling cupids shooting love arrows from puffy perches. Agatha moved as far as she could from all of it and crouched in the window nook, black dress bunched against pink wall.

      Through the window, she could see the sparkling lake around the Good Towers turn into sludgy moat midway across to protect the Evil ones. “Halfway Bay,” the girls had called it. Deep in the fog, the thin stone bridge reached across the waters to connect the two schools. But this was all in front of the two castles. What was behind them?

      Curious, Agatha climbed onto the window ledge, clinging to a glass beam. She glanced down at the Charity Tower below, reaching up with its sharp pink spire—one wrong move and she’d be skewered like lamb meat. Agatha tiptoed to the side of the ledge, craned her head around the corner, and almost fell from surprise. Behind the School for Good and Evil was a massive blue forest. Trees, bushes, flowers bloomed in every shade of blue, from iceberg to indigo. The lush blue grove unfolded for quite a distance, connecting the yards of both schools, before it was fenced on all sides by tall gold gates. Beyond the gates, the forest returned to green and stretched into dark oblivion.

      As Agatha slid back, she saw something in front of the school, rising from Halfway Bay.

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