“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Tedros mumbled to her during Yuba’s lesson on “Insect Cuisine.”
“Too busy trying not to be the ‘worst girl in school,’” Sophie said as she took notes.
“Insects are often available when meerworms are not,” Yuba said, holding up a live cockroach.
“Look, you can’t expect anyone to listen to you when you’re ranked lower than Hort,” Tedros whispered.
“When I’m #1, you’ll ask me to forgive you.”
“You get to #1 and I’ll ask you anything you want,” he snorted.
Sophie turned to him. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“If you’re still awake.”
“First remove the inedible bits,” Yuba said, and tore off the roach’s head.
Agatha shuddered and hid behind a pine shrub the rest of the lesson. But that night, she almost jumped from her thorax when Sophie told her what happened with Tedros.
“Everboys always keep their promises!” she said, bouncing on knobby roach legs. “It’s the Prince Code of Chivalry. Now you just have to get to #1 and he’ll ask you to the … Sophie?”
Sophie answered with a snore.
By the tenth day of Cockroach College, Sophie was only at #40 and the circles under her eyes were so black she looked like a raccoon. By the next, she’d slipped back to #65 when she napped during Lesso’s test on Nemesis Dreams, fell asleep during Henchmen, knocking Beezle off the Belfry, and lost her voice in Special Talents for another low rank.
“Your talent is progressing,” Sheeba said to Anadil, who managed to make her rats grow a full five inches bigger. Then she turned to Sophie. “Here I thought you were our Great Witch Hope.”
By the end of the week, Sophie was the worst villain in school again.
“I’m sick,” Agatha said, coughing into her hand.
Professor Dovey didn’t look up from her parchment-strewn desk. “Ginger tea and two slices of grapefruit. Repeat every two hours.”
“I tried that,” Agatha said, increasing the volume of her coughs.
“Now is not the time to miss class, Agatha,” Professor Dovey said, stacking papers under sparkling pumpkin weights. “Less than a month before the Ball and I want to make sure our fourth-ranked student is prepared for the most important night of her young life! Do you have an Everboy in mind?”
Agatha exploded in a paroxysm of hacks. Professor Dovey looked up, alarmed.
“Feels like … plague,” Agatha wheezed.
Professor Dovey went white.
Quarantined in her room, Agatha the Roach now accompanied Sophie to all her classes. Tucked behind Sophie’s ear, she whispered the first sign of a Nemesis Dream (answer: tasting blood), steered Frost Giant negotiations during Henchmen, and told Sophie which scarecrows were Good or Evil in Yuba’s Forest challenge. On the second day, she helped Sophie lose a tooth in Uglification, match monsters during Sader’s exam (Lalkies: sweet-talkers; Harpies: child eaters), and determine which of Yuba’s beanstalks was poisonous, which was edible, and which was Dot in disguise. There were hairy moments, of course. She almost ended up on the bottom of Hester’s clump, barely survived a hovering bat, and nearly turned back into herself in Special Talents before finding a broom closet just in time.
By the third day, Agatha hardly glanced at her Good homework and spent all her free time learning Evil spells. Where her classmates struggled to make fingers flicker, she could keep hers glowing by thinking about things that made her angry: school, mirrors, boys. … Then it was a matter of following a spell’s precise recipe, and just like that, she could do magic. Simple stuff, nothing more than playing with water and weather, but still—real magic!
She would have been paralyzed by the incredibility, the impossibility, except that it came so naturally. Where the others couldn’t summon a drizzle, Agatha conjured thunderclouds in her room and splashed the odious murals off her wall with a squall of lightning and rain. Between sessions, she stole into bathrooms to try out new Spells for Suffering—the Lights-Out Jinx to briefly darken the sky, the Sea Swell Curse to summon a giant wave. … Time evaporated when she studied Evil, so rife with power and possibility, she could never get bored.
While waiting for Pollux to deliver her Good homework one night, Agatha whistled while she doodled—
“What pray tell is that?”
She turned to Pollux in her doorway, head on a hare’s body, staring at the drawing.
“Oh, um, me at my wedding. See, there’s my prince.” She crumpled the page and coughed. “Any homework?”
After chastising her for slipping in the Ever ranks, explaining every assignment thrice, and berating her to cover her mouth when she coughed, Pollux finally left in a circus of hops and falls. Agatha exhaled. Then her eye caught the crumpled doodle of herself flying through flames and she saw what she’d been drawing.
Nevermore. Evil paradise.
“We have to get home,” she mumbled.
By the end of the week, Agatha had led Sophie on a magnificent winning streak in all her classes, including Yuba’s Trial Tune-Ups. In these one-on-one duels to prepare for the upcoming Trial by Tale, Sophie beat every person in her group using approved spells, whether stunning Ravan with a lightning bolt, icing Beatrix’s lips before she could call for animal help, or liquefying Tedros’ training sword.
“Someone’s been doing their homework,” Tedros said, agog. Hidden under Sophie’s collar, Agatha blushed with pride.
“Before it was dumb luck. This is different,” Hester griped to Anadil as they bit into a lunch of charred cow tongues. “How is she doing it?”
“Good old-fashioned hard work,” Sophie said, swishing by in shimmering makeup, ruby-red hair, and a black kimono, sparkling with gems that spelled “F is for Focused.”
Hester and Anadil choked on their tongues.
By the end of the third week, Sophie was up to #5 and her Lunchtime Lectures had resumed due to popular demand. So had her black-robed fashions, bolder and more extravagant than before, in a grand pageant of scalloped plumage, fishnet bodices, faux monkey fur, sequined burkas, leather pantsuits, powdered wigs, and even a chain-mail bustier.
“She’s cheating,” Beatrix hissed to anyone who would listen. “Some rogue fairy godmother or time-turning spell. No one has time to do all this!”
But Sophie had time to design a satin jumper with matching nun’s wimple, a sparkled clamshell dress, and matching shoes for every new look. She had time to beat Hester in the “Uglify a Ballroom” challenge, write a report on “Wolves vs. Man-Wolves,” and prepare Lunchtime Lectures on “Wicked Success,” “Ugly Is the New Beautiful,” “Building Your Body for Sin.” She had time to be one-girl fashion show, rabble-rouser, rebel priestess—and still wrestle her way past Anadil to #2 in the rankings.
This time Beatrix couldn’t stop Tedros from falling for Sophie. But Tedros tried valiantly to stop himself.
She’s a Never! So what if she’s beautiful? Or smart? Or creative and kind and generous and—
Tedros took a deep breath.
Evers can’t like Nevers. You’re just confused.
He felt relieved when Yuba hosted another “Good or Evil” challenge. This time the gnome turned all the girls into blue pumpkins