The School for Good and Evil. Soman Chainani

      “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. It was right at the midpoint, where waters balanced between sludge and sparkle. She could barely see it through the fog . . . a tall, thin tower of glinting silver brick. Fairies buzzed around the spire in droves, while wolves with crossbows stood watch on wooden planks that jutted from the base of the tower into the water.

      What were they guarding?

      Agatha squinted at the top of the sky-high tower, but all she could see was a single window shrouded by clouds.

      Then light caught the window and she saw it. Silhouetted in sun.

      The crooked shadow that kidnapped them.

      Her shoe slipped and her body pitched forward over deadly Charity. Flailing, she grabbed the window beam just in time and crashed back into the room. Agatha clutched her bruised tailbone, whipped around—but the shadow was gone.

      Agatha’s heart thumped faster. Whoever brought them here was in that tower. Whoever was in that tower could fix the mistake and send them home.

      But first she needed to rescue her best friend.

      A few minutes later, Agatha shrank from a mirror. The sleeveless pink uniform showed off parts of her white, scrawny body that had never seen light. The lace collar gave away the rash that spread across her neck whenever she felt anxious, the carnations lining the sleeves made her sneeze, and the matching pink high heels teetered like stilts. But the foul outfit was her only chance to escape. Her room was on the opposite end from the stairwell. To get back to the bridge, she needed to glide through the hall without being noticed and slip down the stairs.

      Agatha set her jaw.

      You have to blend.

      She took a deep breath and cracked open the door.

      Fifty beautiful girls in pink pinafores packed the hallway, giggling, gossiping, trading dresses, shoes, bags, bangles, creams, and anything else they had brought in their gigantic trunks, while fairies buzzed between, trying in vain to round them up for the Welcoming. Through the hubbub, Agatha glimpsed stairs at the other end. A confident stroll and she’d be gone before they saw her. But she couldn’t move.

      It had taken her whole life to make a single friend. And here these girls had become best friends in minutes as if making friends was the simplest thing in the world. Agatha prickled with shame. In this School for Good, where everyone was supposed to be kind and loving, she had still ended up alone and despised. She was a villain, no matter where she went.

      She slammed the door, ripped petals from her sleeve, tore off her pink heels and hurled them through the window. She slumped against the wall and closed her eyes.

      Get me out of here.

      She opened her eyes and glimpsed her ugly face in the jeweled mirror. Before she could turn away, her eyes caught something else in her reflection. A ceiling tile with a smiling cupid, slightly dislodged.

      Agatha slipped her feet back into her hard black clumps. She climbed up the bed canopy and pulled the tile away, revealing a dark vent above the room. She gripped the edges of the hole and swung one leg up into the vent, then the other, until she found herself perched on a narrow platform inside the chute.

      She crawled through darkness, hands and knees blindly shuffling along cold metal—until metal suddenly turned to air. This time, she couldn’t save herself.

      Falling too fast to scream, Agatha whizzed through chutes, ping-ponged through pipes, and slid down vents until she somersaulted through a grate and landed on a beanstalk.

      She