But her two older brothers, Gus and Gagan, had thrown a wrench in all that.
They wanted Papa Pipp’s Pub for themselves, but Pa had no intention of leaving his legacy to two boys who would sell the place off the second he died. Instead, he decreed that Nicola would inherit the pub. With her in charge, Gus and Gagan could be kept at bay, continuing to pass plates and scrub pots to make a wage for the rest of their lives. (To make matters worse, Nicola beat them at every sport they played.)
Day after day, her brothers wished: If only she wasn’t around.
Then one day they made their wish come true.
When Nicola was younger, the whole town was petrified of the School for Good and Evil. Every four years, two children were kidnapped from Gavaldon—the best-behaved kid for Good, the worst-behaved kid for Evil—and neither would ever see their family or friends again. Instead, they’d disappear into the Woods and reappear years later in illustrated tales that magically arrived at Mr. Deauville’s Storybook Shop. Any child not taken would sigh with relief, knowing they were safe for four more years.
But that was before Sophie and Agatha.
Now a school of horrors had become every child’s dream.
Statues of scenes from Sophie and Agatha’s tale were built all over Gavaldon. Thousands of fan letters were left at these monuments, along with pleas to be kidnapped and taken to the school. For Halloween, children dressed as Sophie (pink dresses, blond wigs), Agatha (black sack dresses), and Tedros (no shirt, a sword). At Gavaldon Primary School, teachers used The Tale of Sophie and Agatha to explain everything from grammar (“Is ‘stymph’ a noun or proper noun?”) to math (“If there are 10 kids from each school in the Trial by Tale and 6 kids die during it, how many make it out alive?”) The annual Gavaldon Fair became a School for Good and Evil theme park, with a Wish Fish Fortune-Telling Pool, Flowerground Roller Coaster, Trial by Tale Corn Maze, Princess Uma’s Animal Merry-Go-Round, and Halfway Bay Wave Pool.
But it wasn’t just children who were captivated by Sophie and Agatha. Stefan, Sophie’s father, had become the most popular man in Gavaldon after the girls’ tale revealed the Elders to be corrupt villains. Soon, the Council was replaced by a Mayor’s Office, to which Stefan was elected by unanimous vote. Stefan’s first act as Mayor was to tack a note for his daughter on his door demanding that a) she and Agatha visit home immediately and b) to satisfy Gavaldon’s clamoring children, the School should start accepting applications from Readers, provided new students could return home on holidays to see their families.
Nothing came of the first request.
But a week later, the citizens of Gavaldon woke to a proclamation on their doors, announcing open applications to the School for Good and Evil, which would now host a new class of Evers and Nevers each year, beginning in August, instead of every four years. In addition, each household received a shiny new copy of The Ever Never Handbook, a guide to the School for Good and Evil with rules, classes, uniforms, and most importantly, formal applications to the school itself, with questions such as: If you were marooned on a deserted island, what three things would you like to have? and If I were an animal, I’d like to be a . . . Children eagerly filled out these forms and left them in sealed envelopes near the girls’ statues, the envelopes piling up week after week like parchment mountains . . . until one night all the applications magically disappeared.
Nicola had been tempted to apply, of course. She’d read thousands of storybooks and knew she was smarter and stronger than any of the Readers that had been taken before.
Who needs Agatha and Sophie when they can have me? she’d thought. Those girls had made for a lively story, but their tale was over. It was time for a new hero.
And yet, as much as she wanted it to be her . . . it couldn’t be.
She had an aging Pa to care for, customers to manage, and a business to run. If she left, everything her father had worked for—and his father and his father and his father—would be wasted by her brothers.
So it was a complete shock when two weeks ago, in the middle of a hot August night, she was magically sucked out of her bed, flung onto a bony bird, whisked on a harrowing ride through a dark forest, and dropped into the School for Evil’s sludgy moat with more than a hundred villainous Nevers-to-be.
Her stupid, no-good, nasty brothers! Gus and Gagan must have filled out an application under her name. But there was no time to stew about it. The wolves were already whipping children onto shore. . . .
She had to get home. Pa was surely worried sick. But as she was shoved into a saggy black uniform and thrust books and a schedule, Nicola felt a sense of déjà vu. She’d read The Tale of Sophie and Agatha so many times that she couldn’t help but enjoy being in this world she knew so much about.
Staying one day wouldn’t hurt, would it? she wondered. If she stayed, she could explore places she’d only known in a book . . . participate in challenges she already knew how to beat . . . Imagine: she might even get a glimpse of beautiful, perfect Hort. . . .
But she never got the chance.
Evil didn’t want her.
The dorm locked her out; hallways ejected her into the bay; doors slammed in her face and spellbooks on her hand. Everywhere she went the castle rebelled, until rooms started caving in the moment she entered. She had no idea why any of this was happening, yet Dean Sophie held her personally responsible for the mess and marched her across the bridge to Professor Dovey in the School for Good. But seeing the chaos Nicola had caused in Evil’s castle, Dovey didn’t want her either. She told Sophie that since Nicola had been delivered to Evil’s door, she was Sophie’s problem.
So there was nothing Dean Sophie could do except drag Nicola back across the bridge, grumbling about Readers and the burdens of being a Dean and why she’d been sentimental enough to listen to her father’s idea of accepting Readers in the first place. . . .
That’s when Nicola smashed into the invisible barrier.
The bridge had let her go from Evil to Good but wouldn’t let her go from Good to Evil. She was trapped, no matter how much she tried to ram through. And unlike Evil, the Good towers had no allergy to her, welcoming Nicola without a tremor.
So the decision was made for her.
She would spend the next few months as an Ever. At Christmas, she’d go back home with the other Readers and would stay with Pa forever, while the rest returned to school.
But until then . . . Nicola would wear pink.
“The Lion and the Snake is a fairy tale,” said Agatha, sipping ginger tea.
“Not one I’ve heard of,” said Nicola as she cleared the breakfast plates.
“Nor I,” said Hort, magically erasing stains off the Camelot crest on the table.
“Nor I,” chorused Bogden and Willam as they washed salt off portholes.