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.