Disclaimer: I don't own any characters or any part of The School for Good and Evil! All Rights Belong to Soman Chainini and Harper Books.

She wiped the glop out of her eye and came face-to-face with a boy. The first thing she noticed was he had no shirt. His chest was puny and pale, without the hope of muscle. From his small head jutted a long nose, spiky teeth, and black hair that drooped over beady eyes. He looked like a sinister little weasel.

"The bird ate my shirt," he said. "Can I touch your hair?"

Sophie backed up.

"They don't usually make villains with princess hair," he said, dog-paddling towards her.

Sophie searched desperately for a weapon—a stick, a stone, a dead goat —

"Maybe we could be bunk mates or best mates or some kind of mates," he said, inches from her now. It was like Radley had turned into a rodent and developed courage. He reached out his scrawny hand to touch her and Sophie readied a punch to the eye, when a screaming child dropped between them. Sophie took off in the opposite direction and by the time she glanced back, Weasel Boy was gone.

A wolf yanked her and kicked her into line. She opened her mouth to protest, but saw Weasel Boy swimming towards her, yelping, "Wait for me!"

Her eyes stopped on Weasel Boy's. Hort of Bloodbrook. Hort. Sounds like a disease.

In the decayed pews, the villians booed the princes, brandishing banners with "NEVERS RULE!" And "EVERS STINK" (Except for weasel-faced Hort, who crossed his arms sulkily and mumbled, "Why do they get their own entrance?")

"Yeah, if we're so balanced," yelled Hort, "why do we always die?"

"We don't even have a chance!" howled Hort.

"No! She's one of us!"

All the Nevers turned to Hort, in the stairwell, including dumbstruck Sophie. Hort pointed at Agatha in black.

"That's the Ever!"

The Nevers unleashed a new war cry and mobbed Agatha as Sophie shoved Hort away and escaped down the stairs.

"Don't worry," Hort whispered, "you'll look better this way."

Before Sophie could scream, he plunged her head into the bowl.

As she climbed, Sophie tried not to think about pustules, puke, or putrid Hort, who was trying to cram beside her. "I know you hate me," he pressed. She lurched to the right to block him. Hort tried the left. "But it was the challenge and I didn't want you to fail and—"

Sophie thwarted him with her elbow and raced up the last few steps.

Miraculously, Hort was the first to succeed. He had tried barking "Lay egg," calling it a "prat," and tempting it with worms, before giving up and kicking its nest. Wrong thing to kick. In a flash, the Goose yanked his tunic over his head and Hort yelped about blindly, banging into walls. (Sophie vowed if she had to see this boy one more time without clothes, she'd gouge out her eyes.) But the Goose seemed delighted. It flapped its wings and sniggered and squawked so raucously that it lost control and excreted a golden egg the size of a coin.

Hort held it up in stunned triumph. "I won!"

Howls of pain echoed from the dungeon beneath their feet.

"I-I-I feel warm-m-er noww," Hort stuttered, face blue.

The woeful displays continued…

Hort sprung a hair from his chest.

Hort volunteered to go first. As soon as he tied the ragged blindfold over his eyes, Yuba stabbed his staff at Millicent and Ravan, who magically shriveled in their pink and black clothes, smaller, smaller, until they slithered out of them, identical cobras.
Hort whipped off the blindfold.

"Well?" Yuba said.

"Look the bloody same to me," Hort said.

"Test them!" Yuba scolded. "Use the rules!"
"I don't even remember the rules," Hort said.

"Next," the gnome grouched.

For Dot's turn, he changed Beatrix and Hort into unicorns.

"What are we doing?" Sophie whispered to Hort.

"She's testing us on famous. Nemeses," Hort whispered. "If you get a question right, you get one of these." He flaunted a massive stick-on wart glued to his cheek.

"Now, Hort, tell me a villain who employed a Raven Death Trap." (Lady Lesson in class)

Hort picked up her discard wart and ran away with it.

Then she caught Hort out of the corner of her eye.

"You! Give me back my wart!"

Hort scooted around the brawling mass, Sophie in pursuit, until she got close enough to pick up a fallen branch and hurl it at his head — Hort ducked and it hit Lady Lesso in the face.

"Cause no one can interfere with the Crypt Keeper's system," Hort said softly. "Two years my dad's waited." His voice cracked. "Killed by Peter Pan himself, my dad. Deserves a proper grave."

Yuba turned to Hort and the Neverboys, chomping at the bit.

Hort snuck to a blue mint bush, stepped over a snacking skunk, and tore off a few leaves. He was Ravan staring.

"What? I like being fresh," said Hort, munching mint.

Agatha heard a bloodcurdling shriek and spun to Sophie, back in her body, lips scrunched against Hort's.

Hort released her. "Oh the hand. Oops." He popped another mint leaf. "Should we start again?"

"You APE!" Sophie kicked him and he crashed into the mint bush, onto the snacking skunk, which raised its tail and sprayed him in the eyes. Hort staggered around, ramming into coffins— "I'm blind! I'm blind!" — until he smashed into Sophie's coffin again, which slammed shut, sealing his skunked body in with hers. Aghast, Sophie rammed the glass, but it wouldn't budge.

Agatha glanced back to see Sophie sealed in with Hort, holding her nose. She screamed and kicked the glass.

But Hort wasn't the problem.

"Apparently sharing a coffin with Hort robs you of your will to live." (Hester)

"You don't know what it was like. I still smell him everywhere. He's in my nose, Agatha, They've given him his own room until the stench goes away. But who's to say where skunk ends and Hort begins?"

Sophie strutted past Hester, who dropped her book, past Everboys, who dropped their ball, and glided right up to Hort.

"Let's do lunch," she said, sweeping him away like a hostage.

During Surviving Fairy Tales, Sophie ignored Yuba's lecture on "Leaving Useful Trails" and spent the entire class cozying up to Hort and filling her Never pail with roots and herbs from the Blue Forest.

"And lest we forget, parade competing suitors. Do you know what it takes to survive lunch with Hort? To nuzzle that rodent every time I see Tedros looking? Eucalyptus, Agatha. I numb my nose with eucalyptus."

He grimaced at Hort, uselessly thrusting his finger at rocks, trying to make something happen. (Yuba)

There was nowhere safe now.

Nowhere except . . .

At the end of a dark, stale hall, the door to Room 34 cracked open after the third knock, Two beady black pupils peered out.

"Hello, handsome," Sophie cooed.

"Don't even try it — you're a prince lover, you're a two-timer, you're a -"

Sophie held her nose, breezed by Hort, and locked him out of her new room.

Hort pounded and wailed outside for twenty minutes before Sophie finally let him back in.

"You can help me study until curfew," she said, spritzing the room with lavandula. "But no sleeping here."
"This is my room!"Hort sulked, plopping to the floor in black pajamas dotted with frowning green frogs.

"Well, I'm here, aren't I? And boys and girls can't be roommates, so it certainly can't be your room," said Sophie, tucking into his bed.

"But where am I supposed to stay!"
"I hear the Malice Common Room is quite comfortable."

Ignoring Hort's whimpers, Sophie sank into pillows and held a candle to his class notes.

"Sophie how do you know you aren't a villain?" Hort yawned, hunched on the burned floor.

"I look in the mirror. Hort, your penmanship is foul."

"When I look in the mirror, I look like a villain."

"Probably means you're a villain."

"Dad told me villains told me villains can't love, no matter what. That it's unnatural and disgusting."

"So I definitely can't love," Hort said.

"But if I could love, I'd love you,"

Sophie turned. Hort was snoring softly on the floor, button-flap lit up with angry green frogs.

"Hort, you can't sleep her," she said.

Hort curled up tighter.

Sophie threw off her covers, stamped up to him—

"Take that, Pan," he babbled softly.

Sohpie watched him, shivering and sweating in his little ball.

She slid back under the musty covers. Candle to notes, she tried to study, but his snuffles lulled her into a trance, and before she knew it was morning.

The first thing she saw inside was shirtless Hort, face clenched red like a toddler on the toilet. With a last grunt of effort, he peered down at his chest and two brand-new hairs sticking out of it.

"Yeah! Whose talent can beat that!"

She heard two insect clinks and looked up urgently. Hort puffed his chest and winked.

The door opened and Agatha tramped out in Hort's frog pajamas, arms crossed.

Sophie gave her a last hug and, aglow with relief, snuck from the bathroom and back to Hort's protection.

"Have you seen my pajamas?" Hort whimpered outside Sophie's door. "The ones with frogs?"

Swaddled in his tattered bedsheets, Sophie stared at a window she'd sealed dark with a black blanket.
"My father made them for me," Hort sniffled. "I can't sleep without them."

Hort brought up barley gruel, boiled eggs, browning vegetables from the Supper Hall, but she didn't answer his knocks.

Agatha sat on the edge of her bed, wrapped in Hort's stained sheets.

Outside Room 34, Hort huddled in his underpants, reading The Gift of Loneliness by candlelight.

The door cracked open behind him. "What is everyone saying about me?"

Hort stiffened as if he'd heard a ghost. He turned, eyes wide.

"I want to know," said Sophie.

She followed him into the dark hall, joints cracking. She couldn't remember the last time she stood up.

"I don't see anything," she said, searching for the glint of his chest's swan crest. "Where are you?"

"Over here."

A torch ignited, swathing Hort in firelight. She staggered back.

Sophie looked dazed. "I don't understand —"

"Tedros said you used him to win the Trial!" Hort said. "Lady Lesso named it the 'Sophie Trap' — said you even fooled her! Teachers are saying you're the best Captain Evil has ever had. Look!"

"What a genius trick," Hort fawned, trying on the cape. "Hide as a pant, wait until Tedros and Hester are left, then charge in and take out Hester while Tedros is wounded. But why didn't you finish Tedros off? Everyone's asking, but he won't say anything. I said it's 'cause the sun came up."

Hort saw Sophie's expression and his smile vanished.

"It was a trick, wasn't it?"

Sophie's eyes filled with tears. She started to shake her head —

"Sophie? Who's it from?"

Through the east doors, roaring Nevers shoved in, waving hideous signs scrawled TEAM EVIL! while Hort flapped a black swan flag so eagerly it broke stalactites off the ceiling, sending Nevers stampeding for cover. As he lunged for a seat, Hort took in the scorch marks on walls, contorting to shadows of monsters eating peasants and witches cooking children, all the way down to the 1st ranked pair.

Then Hort took the stage for his face-off with Beatrix. Since the Trial, Hort had been rising in the ranks, chasing a Circus spot he promised would finally earn him "respect." But now he spent most of his four minutes onstage grunting and wheezing, trying to pop hairs from his chest.

But just as time ran out, Hort spewed a violent grunt and cracked his neck. He moaned and his chest swelled up. He groaned and his cheeks puffed up. He wrenched, he lurched, he jerked, and with a primal scream, he exploded out of his clothes.

Everyone slammed against their seats in shock.

Hort sneered down, blanketed in dark brown fur over hulking muscles, sharp-toothed snout wet and long.

"See?" Hort the Wolf snarled at all of them. "See?"

His expression suddenly changed and with a flatulent poof! He deflated into his scrawny, hairless body and dove behind the stage to cover himself.

Hester and Dot ran down the stairs and saw Hort, Ravan, and Vex coming up.

"Go to your room!" Dot yelled. "Don't come out!"
The boys looked at Dot, then at Hester,

"Now!" Hester barked, and the boys scurried away.

In reflective balloons, Hort watched his jaw square, his chin dimple, his dumpy robes melt to a blue Everybody coat.