shoved it at her, mumbling something about butter and the devil’s work. “It’s easy to get home,” she said, watching Agatha scarf it. “All we have to do is ride this line in the opposite direct—”
Agatha had stopped chewing. Slowly Sophie followed her friend’s eyes to her own punctured palms … to the raw marks around her wrists left by the Elders’ reins … to the scarlet letters faint on her chest …
“We can’t go home, can we?” Sophie breathed.
“Even if we prove the Elders lied, the School Master will still hunt you,” said Agatha miserably.
“He can’t be alive. We saw him die, Aggie.” Sophie looked up at her friend. “Didn’t we?”
Agatha didn’t have an answer.
“How did we lose it, Aggie?” Sophie said, looking so confused. “How did we lose our happy ending?”
Agatha knew this was the time to finish what she’d started at the hollow. But gazing into Sophie’s big doe eyes, she couldn’t bear to break her heart. Somehow there had to be a way to fix this without her friend ever knowing what she’d wished for. Her wish was just a mistake. A mistake she’d never ever have to face.
“There has to be a way to get our ending back,” Agatha said, determined. “We just need to seal the gates—”
But Sophie was staring past her, head cocked. Agatha turned around.
The Flowerground was empty behind them. All its passengers had disappeared.
“Aggie …,” Sophie wheezed, squinting into the distant mist—
Agatha saw them now too. Red hoods swinging across the tracks, straight for their train.
Both girls tore at their harnesses, but the vines yoked them tighter. Agatha tried to make her finger glow, but it wouldn’t light—
“Aggie, they’re coming!” Sophie yelled, seeing the hoods leap onto the red line two tracks above.
“Pull on your vine!” Agatha shouted, for that’s how she’d seen the others get off the ride. But no matter how hard she or Sophie tugged, the track just whisked them along.
Agatha fumbled for Radley’s dagger and cut herself free, eyeing the red hoods getting closer. “Stay there!” she screamed at Sophie, measuring the distance to her friend’s vine. Dangling from her strap, Agatha winced at the giant flytraps snapping out of the bottomless pastel pit below. With a cry, she kicked and swung herself into the tunnel wind for her friend—
Agatha’s hands missed the strap and she crashed into Sophie, grappling her like a tree.
The green tree trunk turned bright orange and started flashing. “VIOLATION,” a crabby voice boomed over a speaker. “NO SWINGING. VIOLATION. NO SWINGING. VIOLATION—”
A flock of green parakeets flew in and started pecking at Agatha’s dress, trying to pull it off. She dropped her knife. “What the—”
“Get off her!” Sophie shrieked, slapping the birds away.
“VIOLATION,” the crabby voice blared. “NO SLAPPING. VIOLATION. NO SLAPPING.”
The lizards and frogs atop their track skittered down the green-flowered vines and started tugging at Sophie’s clothes. Aghast, Sophie smacked at them, sending lizards and flowers flying. Agatha inhaled the pollen and sneezed.
“VIOLATION. NO SNEEZING. VIOLATION.” Birds, lizards, and frogs from other lines descended to denude both girls as punishment—
“We need to get off!” Agatha cried.
“I know! I only have two buttons left!” Sophie squealed, slapping the frog away.
“No! We need to get off now!”
Agatha pointed at the red hoods swinging onto their track—
“Follow me!” she cried to Sophie, shaking off a rainbow of lizards, and swung to the next strap. She glanced back to see Sophie still grappling a canary on her collar. “Shoo! This is handmade!”
“NOW!” Agatha roared—
Sophie gasped and swung for the next vine. She missed and plunged screaming towards a gnashing flytrap. Agatha blanched in horror—
Sophie belly flopped onto the blue HIBISCUS LINE below, running parallel at high speed. Hands and legs wrapped around the glowing trunk, she looked up at Agatha, who heaved with relief.
“Aggie, watch out!” Sophie yelled—
Agatha wheeled to a hood on her vine. He grabbed her throat.
Hearing Agatha’s choked gurgles above her, Sophie tried to stand on her trunk, then saw a thorn tunnel ahead about to decapitate her and plastered down just as her train whooshed through. Suddenly she heard a twinkly sound and swerved her head down the tunnel to see the glowing blue butterfly, hovering in place above the track.
“Help us!” Sophie begged—
The butterfly beat its wings and whizzed forward. As her train came out of the tunnel, Sophie scooted down the tree trunk to follow it, shadows of the hood strangling Agatha darkening the track ahead. Frantic, Sophie tried to keep up with the butterfly, but two red hoods landed in front of her, bows and arrows in hand. Just as they aimed, she looked back with terror and saw the hood about to snap Agatha’s neck—
The butterfly dove and yanked the vine under Sophie’s hand. In an instant, the vine snared Sophie’s wrist, ripped her off the track, and lassoed Agatha’s hand on the way up. The hoods whirled in shock, spewing their knives and arrows at them, but the vine coiled like a whip and launched both girls upwards into a blue windwheel of light. The rush of air sucked them towards the light portal in a storm of loose petals, pulling up, up, up—
And into a lush field.
Kneeling in a bed of tall red and yellow lilies, Agatha and Sophie heaved for breath, faces scratched, petals in hair, and dresses barely still on. Both looked down at the dirt-plugged hole they’d just spouted from, broiled with arrows from below.
“Where are we?” Sophie said, searching for the blue butterfly.
Agatha shook her head. “I don’t—”
Then she saw a red lily and a yellow lily whispering to each other, giving her strange looks.
She’d seen flowers talking about her once before, she thought. In a field just like this, until they’d tugged her by the wrist and yanked her up to …
Agatha lurched to her feet.
The School for Good soared above them, shimmering in red-orange sunrise over the crystal-clear side of Halfway Bay. Its four glass towers, once divided between pink and blue, were now only blue, with flags bearing butterflies of the same color billowing from sharp minarets.
“We’re back,” Sophie gasped.
Agatha went white as snow.
Back to the one place she’d tried to forget. Back to the one place that could ruin everything.
Ahead, the closed doors to the Good castle lay atop a hill. Golden spiked gates barred the path up the Great Lawn, mirrored words arching over them:
THE SCHOOL FOR GIRL EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT
Agatha closed and reopened her bleary eyes, for she had seen wrong.
It still said “GIRL.”
“Huh?”
Sophie stood up beside her. “That’s strange.”
“Well, ‘Good’ and ‘Girl’ aren’t so
But then she saw what Sophie was looking at. At the halfway point across