“Where you going?”
Sophie turned. Radley smiled at her with buckteeth and anemically red hair. He lived nowhere near Graves Hill but made it a habit to stalk her all hours of the day.
“To see a friend,” said Sophie.
“Why are you friends with the witch?” said Radley.
“She’s not a witch.”
“She has no friends and she’s queer. That makes her a witch.”
Sophie refrained from pointing out this made Radley a witch too. Instead she smiled to remind him she’d already done her good deed by enduring his presence.
“The School Master will take her for Evil School,” he said. “Then you’ll need a new friend.”
“He takes two children,” Sophie said, jaw tightening.
“He’ll take Belle for the other one. No one’s as good as Belle.”
Sophie’s smile evaporated.
“But I’ll be your new friend,” said Radley.
“I’m full on friends at the moment,” Sophie snapped.
Radley turned the color of a raspberry. “Oh, right—I just thought—” He fled like a kicked dog.
Sophie watched his straggly hair recede down the hill. Oh, you’ve really done it now, she thought. Months of good deeds and forced smiles and now she’d ruined it for runty Radley. Why not make his day? Why not simply answer, “I’d be honored to have you as my friend!” and give the idiot a moment he’d relive for years? She knew it was the prudent thing to do, since the School Master must be judging her as closely as St. Nicholas the night before Christmas. But she couldn’t do it. She was beautiful, Radley was ugly. Only a villain would delude him. Surely the School Master would understand that.
Sophie pulled open the rusted cemetery gates and felt weeds scratch at her legs. Across the hilltop, moldy headstones forked haphazardly from dunes of dead leaves. Squeezing between dark tombs and decaying branches, Sophie kept careful count of the rows. She had never looked at her mother’s grave, even at the funeral, and she wouldn’t start today. As she passed the sixth row, she glued her eyes to a weeping birch and reminded herself where she’d be a day from now.
In the middle of the thickest batch of tombs stood 1 Graves Hill. The house wasn’t boarded up or bolted shut like the cottages by the lake, but that didn’t make it any more inviting. The steps leading up to the porch glowed mildew green. Dead birches and vines wormed their way around dark wood, and the sharply angled roof, black and thin, loomed like a witch’s hat.
As she climbed the moaning porch steps, Sophie tried to ignore the smell, a mix of garlic and wet cat, and averted her eyes from the headless birds sprinkled around, no doubt the victims of the latter.
She knocked on the door and prepared for a fight.
“Go away,” came the gruff voice.
“That’s no way to speak to your best friend,” Sophie cooed.
“You’re not my best friend.”
“Who is, then?” Sophie asked, wondering if Belle had somehow made her way to Graves Hill.
“None of your business.”
Sophie took a deep breath. She didn’t want another Radley incident. “We had such a good time yesterday, Agatha. I thought we’d do it again.”
“You dyed my hair orange.”
“But we fixed it, didn’t we?”
“You always test your creams and potions on me just to see how they work.”
“Isn’t that what friends are for?” Sophie said. “To help each other?”
“I’ll never be as pretty as you.”
Sophie tried to find something nice to say. She took too long and heard shoes stomp away.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends!” Sophie called.
A familiar cat, bald and wrinkled, growled at her across the porch. She whipped back to the door. “I brought biscuits!”
Shoesteps stopped. “Real ones or ones you made?”
Sophie shrank from the slinking cat. “Fluffy and buttery, just like you love!”
The cat hissed.
“Agatha, let me in—”
“You’ll say I smell.”
“You don’t smell.”
“Then why’d you say it last time?”
“Because you smelled last time! Agatha, the cat’s spitting—”
“Maybe it smells ulterior motives.”
The cat bared claws.
“Agatha, open the door!”
It pounced at her face. Sophie screamed. A hand stabbed between them and swatted the cat down.
Sophie looked up.
“Reaper ran out of birds,” said Agatha.
Her hideous dome of black hair looked like it was coated in oil. Her hulking black dress, shapeless as a potato sack, couldn’t hide freakishly pale skin and jutting bones. Ladybug eyes bulged from her sunken face.
“I thought we’d go for a walk,” Sophie said.
Agatha leaned against the door. “I’m still trying to figure out why you’re friends with me.”
“Because you’re sweet and funny,” said Sophie.
“My mother says I’m bitter and grumpy,” said Agatha. “So one of you is lying.”
She reached into Sophie’s basket and pulled back the napkin to reveal dry, butterless bran biscuits. Agatha gave Sophie a withering stare and retreated into the house.
“So we can’t take a walk?” Sophie asked.
Agatha started to close the door but then saw her crestfallen face. As if Sophie had looked forward to their walk as much as she had.
“A short one.” Agatha trudged past her. “But if you say anything smug or stuck-up or shallow, I’ll have Reaper follow you home.”
Sophie ran after her. “But then I can’t talk!”
After four years, the dreaded eleventh night of the eleventh month had arrived. In the late-day sun, the square had become a hive of preparation for the School Master’s arrival. The men sharpened swords, set traps, and plotted the night’s guard, while the women lined up the children and went to work. Handsome ones had their hair lopped off, teeth blackened, and clothes shredded to rags; homely ones were scrubbed, swathed in bright colors, and fitted with veils. Mothers begged the best-behaved children to curse or kick their sisters, the worst were bribed to pray in the church, while the rest in line were led in choruses of the village anthem: “Blessed Are the Ordinary.”