The School Years Complete Collection - Soman Chainani

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Aghast, Sophie rammed the glass, but it wouldn’t budge.

      “Rule #5. Nevers don’t trifle with love,” Yuba crabbed. “Fitting punishment. Now come, boys, let’s see who you’ve picked.”

      Agatha heard her own coffin open. She turned and saw Tedros lift her thick hand towards his tender lips. Stunned, Agatha kneed him in the chest. Tedros fell back, bashed his head on the coffin top, and slumped to the ground. Everboys crowded around him, and princess clones jumped from their coffins to help, while Yuba conjured a block of ice for the prince’s skull. In the chaos, Agatha slipped out of her coffin and into the one next to it.

      Tedros staggered up, with no intention of letting his princess go.

      Yuba grimaced. “Perhaps you should sit do—”

      “I want to finish.”

      With a sigh, Yuba nodded at the clones, who climbed back into the coffins and closed their eyes.

      Tedros remembered it was the third coffin. He lifted the jeweled glass over its maiden and kissed her hand with confidence. The princess melted into Beatrix, smiling imperiously—Tedros dropped her hand like a hot stone. In the next coffin, Agatha sighed with relief.

      The wolves howled in the distance. As the class followed Yuba back to school, Agatha stayed behind with Sophie.

      “Come, Agatha,” Yuba called. “This is Sophie’s lesson to learn.”

      Agatha glanced back to see Sophie sealed in with Hort, holding her nose as she screamed and kicked the glass. Maybe the gnome was right. Tomorrow her friend would be ready to listen.

      “She’ll survive,” she muttered, following the others. “It’s only Hort.”

      But Hort wasn’t the problem.

      The problem was that Sophie had seen Agatha switch coffins.

      hielding herself from a morning storm, Agatha accosted Hester in the Nevers’ lunch line.

      “Where’s Sophie?”

      “Won’t come out of the room. Missed all our classes,” Hester said as a wolf dumped mystery meat into her pail. “Apparently sharing a coffin with Hort robs you of your will to live.”

      When Agatha made it to puddled Halfway

      Bridge, her reflection was waiting for her, more glum and gaunt than the last time.

      “I need to see Sophie,” Agatha said, avoiding eye contact with herself.

      “That’s the second time he’s looked at you that way.”

      “Huh? Second time who looked at me?”

      “Tedros.”

      “Well, Sophie won’t listen to me.”

      “Well, maybe Sophie isn’t Tedros’ true love, then.”

      “She has to be,” Agatha said, suddenly worried. “It can’t be someone else. That’s how we’re getting back home! Who else could it be? Beatrix? Reena? Milli—”

      “You.”

      Agatha looked up. Her reflection smiled hideously.

      Agatha’s eyes veered back to her wet clumps. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. First off, love is something storybooks invented to keep girls busy. Second, I hate Tedros. Third, he thinks I’m an evil witch, which given my recent behavior, might be true. Now let me through.”

      Her reflection stopped smiling. “You think we’re a witch?”

      Agatha glowered at herself. “We’re making our friend win her true love just so we can take her away from him.”

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

      The door to Room 66 was unlocked. Agatha found Sophie curled under her scorched, tattered covers.

      “I saw it!” Sophie hissed. “I saw him pick you! Here I’m worried about Beatrix, when you’re the double-crossing, backstabbing fink!”

      “Look, I don’t know why Tedros keeps choosing me,” Agatha said, squeezing rain from her hair.

      Sophie’s eyes drilled into her.

      “I want him to choose you, you fool!” Agatha yelled. “I want us to go home!”

      Sophie searched her face for a long moment. With a sigh, she turned to the window.

      “You don’t know what it was like. I still smell him everywhere. He’s in my nose, Agatha. They’ve given him his own room until the stench goes away. But who’s to say where skunk ends and Hort begins?”

      Shuddering, Sophie turned back. “I did everything you said, Aggie. I focused on all the things I love about Tedros—his skin, his eyes, his cheekbones—”

      “Sophie, that’s his looks! Tedros won’t feel a connection if you just like him because he’s handsome. How is that different from every other girl?”

      Sophie frowned. “I didn’t want to think about his crown or his fortune. That’s shallow.”

      “Think about who he is! His personality! His values! What he’s like deep down!”

      “Excuse me, I know how to make a boy love me,” Sophie huffed, shooing her out. “Just stop ruining things and let me do things my way.”

      Apparently Sophie’s way was to humiliate herself as much as possible.

      During lunch the next day, she sidled up to Tedros in the Evers’ line, only to have his boys crowd her, chomping blue mint leaves. Then she tried to get the prince alone in Surviving Fairy Tales, but Beatrix stuck to him like glue, taking every opportunity to remind him he picked her coffin.

      “Tedros, can I talk to you?” Sophie blurted finally.

      “Why would he talk to you?” Beatrix said.

      “Because we’re friends, you buzzing gnat!”

      “Friends!” Tedros flared. “I’ve seen how you treat your friends. Use them. Betray them. Call them fat. Call them liars. Appreciate the offer. I’ll pass.”

      “Attacking. Betraying. Lying. Sounds like one of our Nevers is using her rules!” Yuba beamed.

      Sophie was so despondent she even ate a piece of Dot’s chocolate.

      “We’ll find you a love spell somehow,” said Dot.

      “Thanks, Dot,” Sophie sobbed, mouth full. “This is amazing.”

      “Rat droppings. Makes the best fudge.”

      Sophie gagged.

      “Who’d you call fat, by the way?” Dot asked.

      Things got worse. For a weeklong challenge in Henchmen Training and Animal Communication, students of both schools had to tote assigned creature sidekicks everywhere they went. At first, both schools exploded into chaos, with trolls tossing Nevers out windows, stampeding satyrs stealing lunch baskets, baby dragons setting desks on fire, and animals christening the Good halls with mountains of dung.

      “It’s a tradition. An attempt at school unity,” Professor Dovey said to her Evers, clothespin on her nose. “However misguided and poorly organized.”

      Castor scowled at Nevers flitting about the Belfry, under siege by their henchmen. “ONCE YOU GET

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