The School Years Complete Collection. Soman Chainani

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      Dried melon flakes fell to the page. She turned to the mirror and saw her brow creased in worry. First ruined sleep and now wrinkles. At this rate she’d be a hag by afternoon. She relaxed her face and banished thoughts of vegetables.

      As for the rest of Sophie’s beauty routine, it could fill a dozen storybooks (suffice it to say it included goose feathers, pickled potatoes, horse hooves, cream of cashews, and a vial of cow’s blood). Two hours of rigorous grooming later, she stepped from the house in a breezy pink dress, sparkling glass heels, and hair in an impeccable braid. She had one last day before the School Master’s arrival and planned to use each and every minute to remind him why she, and not Belle or Tabitha or Sabrina or any other impostor, should be kidnapped.

      Sophie’s best friend lived in a cemetery. Given her loathing of things grim, gray, and poorly lit, one would expect Sophie to host visits at her cottage or find a new best friend. But instead, she had climbed to the house atop Graves Hill every day this week, careful to maintain a smile on her face, since that was the point of a good deed after all.

      To get there, she had to walk nearly a mile from the bright lakeside cottages, with green eaves and sun-drenched turrets, towards the gloomy edges of the forest. Sounds of hammering echoed through cottage lanes as she passed fathers boarding up doors, mothers stuffing scarecrows, boys and girls hunched on porches, noses buried in storybooks. The last sight wasn’t unusual, for children in Gavaldon did little besides read their fairy tales. But today Sophie noticed their eyes, wild, frenzied, scouring each page as if their lives depended on it. Four years ago, she had seen the same desperation to avoid the curse, but it wasn’t her turn then. The School Master took only those past their twelfth year, those who could no longer disguise as children.

      Now her turn had come.

      As she slogged up Graves Hill, picnic basket in hand, Sophie felt her thighs burn. Had these climbs thickened her legs? All the princesses in storybooks had the same perfect proportions; thick thighs were as unlikely as a hooked nose or big feet. Feeling anxious, Sophie distracted herself by counting her good deeds from the day before. First, she had fed the lake’s geese a blend of lentils and leeks (a natural laxative to offset cheese thrown by oafish children). Then she had donated homemade lemonwood face wash to the town orphanage (for, as she insisted to the befuddled benefactor, “Proper skin care is the greatest deed of all.”). Finally she had put up a mirror in the church toilet, so people could return to the pews looking their best. Was this enough? Did these compete with baking homemade pies and feeding homeless hags? Her thoughts shifted nervously to cucumbers. Perhaps she could sneak a private supply into the woods. She still had plenty of time to pack before nightfall. But weren’t cucumbers heavy? Would the school send footmen? Perhaps she should juice them before she—

      “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!”

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