She felt something scrape her leg and turned to find a mouse gnawing her petticoat. Agatha kicked the mouse away, which tumbled into the paws of a stuffed cat. The mouse screeched, then saw the cat was dead. It gave Agatha its dirtiest look and marched back into its hole in the wall.
Even the vermin here hate me, she sighed as she tried to salvage her petticoat. Her fingers stopped as they ran over the torn white lace. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so hard on that mouse. . . .
A few moments later, an undersized nymph in a ragged lace veil scurried through the room for the Honor stairs. Unfortunately the veil left Agatha blind and she tripped into a nymph, who crashed into a teacher—“Heavens Saint Mary!” Clarissa moaned, dripping with prune tea. As alarmed professors dabbed at her dress, Agatha slid behind the Charity steps.
“Those nymphs really are too tall,” Clarissa scolded. “Next thing you know they’ll knock down a tower!”
By then, Agatha had already disappeared into Honor Tower and found her way up to Hansel’s Haven, the wing of first-floor classrooms made completely out of candy. There was a room of sparkled blue swizzles and rock sugar, glittering like a salt mine. There was a marshmallow room with white fudge chairs and gingerbread desks. There was even a room made of lollipops, blanketing the walls in rainbow colors. Agatha wondered how in the world these rooms stayed intact and then saw an inscription sweeping the corridor wall in cherry gumdrops:
TEMPTATION IS THE PATH TO EVIL
Agatha ate half of it before she hustled by two passing teachers, who gave her veil a curious look but didn’t stop her.
“Must be spots,” she heard one whisper as she raced up the back stairs (but not before stealing a caramel doorknob and butterscotch welcome mat to complete her heavenly breakfast).
When she ran from the fairies the day before, Agatha had stumbled into the rooftop topiary by accident. Today, she could appreciate Merlin’s Menagerie, as the school map named it, filled with magnificently sculpted hedges that told the legend of King Arthur in sequence. Each hedge celebrated a scene from the king’s life: Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, Arthur with his knights at the Round Table, Arthur at the wedding altar with Guinevere. . . .
Agatha thought of that pompous boy from the Theater, the one everyone said was King Arthur’s son. How could he see this and not feel suffocated? How could he survive the comparisons, the expectations? At least he had beauty on his side. Imagine if he looked like me, she snorted. They’d have dumped the baby in the woods.
The final sculpture in the sequence was the one with the pond, a towering statue of Arthur receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake. This time Agatha jumped into its water on purpose and fell through the secret portal, completely dry, onto Halfway Bridge.
She hurried towards the midpoint, where the fog began, palms extended in case the barrier came earlier than she remembered. But as she entered the mist, her hands couldn’t find it. She moved deeper into fog. It’s gone! Agatha broke into a run, wind whipping the veil off her face—
BAM! She stumbled back, exploding with pain. Apparently the barrier moved where it wanted.
Avoiding her reflection in its sheen, she touched the invisible wall and felt its cold, hard surface. Suddenly she noticed movement through the fog and saw two people step through Evil’s archway onto Halfway Bridge. Agatha froze. She had no time to get back to Good, nowhere on the Bridge to hide. . . .
Two teachers, the handsome Good professor who had smiled at her and an Evil one with boils on both cheeks, walked across the Bridge and through the barrier without the slightest hesitation. Dangling from the stone rail high over the moat, Agatha listened to them pass, then peeked over the rail edge. The two teachers were about to disappear into Good when the handsome man looked back and smiled. Agatha ducked.
“What is it, August?” she heard the Evil teacher ask.
“My eyes playing tricks on me,” he chuckled as they entered the towers.
Definitely a crackpot, Agatha thought.
Moments later, she was in front of the invisible wall once more. How had they passed? She searched for an edge but couldn’t find one. She tried kicking it, but it was hard as steel. Peering up into the School for Evil, Agatha could see wolves herding students down stairs. She would be in plain sight if the fog thinned even slightly. Giving the wall a last kick, she retreated to Good.
“And don’t come back!”
Agatha spun around to see who had spoken, but all she found was her reflection in the barrier, arms folded. She averted her eyes. Now I’m hearing things. Lovely.
She turned towards the tower and noticed her own arms hanging by her sides. She whirled to face her reflection. “Did you just speak?”
Her reflection cleared its throat.
“Good with Good,
Evil with Evil,
Back to your tower before there’s upheaval.”
“Um, I need to get through,” Agatha said, eyes glued to the ground.
“Good with Good,
Evil with Evil,
Back to your tower before there’s serious upheaval,
meaning cleaning plates after supper or losing your Groom Room privileges or both if I have anything to say about it.”
“I need to see a friend,” Agatha pressed.
“Good has no friends on the other side,” her reflection said.
Agatha heard sugary ringing and turned to see the glow of fairies at the end of the Bridge. How could she outwit herself? How could she find the chink in her own armor?
Good with Good . . . Evil with Evil . . .
In a flash, she knew the answer.
“How about you?” Agatha said, still looking away. “Do you have any friends?”
Her reflection tensed. “I don’t know. Do I?”
Agatha gritted her teeth and met her own eyes. “You’re too ugly to have friends.”
Her reflection turned sad. “Definitely Evil,” it said, and vanished.
Agatha reached out her hand to touch the barrier. This time it went straight through.
By the time the fairy patrol made it onto the Bridge, the fog had erased her tracks.
The moment Agatha stepped foot into Evil, she had the feeling this was where she belonged. Crouched behind the statue of a bald, bony witch in the leaky foyer, she scanned across cracked ceilings, singed walls, serpentine staircases, shadow-masked halls. . . . She couldn’t have designed it better herself.
With the coast clear of wolves, Agatha snuck through the main corridor, soaking in the portraits of villainous alumni. She had always found villains more exciting than heroes. They had ambition, passion. They made the stories happen. Villains didn’t fear death. No, they wrapped themselves in death like suits of armor! As she inhaled the school’s graveyard smell, Agatha felt her blood rush. For like all villains, death didn’t scare her. It made her feel alive.