Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)

Chapter 24

"I don't know why it has to be a musical," Agatha said, sneezing from the carnations on her pink dress.

"No sweating in your costumes!" Sophie barked at a boy struggling in a ferocious plaster dog head, while the girl roped to him stumbled around in her own cuddly dog head. Sophie caught two boys labeled CHADDICK and RAVAN trying to swap outfits. "No switching schools either!"

"But I want to be an Ever!" RAVAN groused, and pulled at his dumpy black tunic.

"My wig itches," mewled BEATRIX, clawing her blond hairpiece.

"Mummy won't know it's me," whined a boy in the SCHOOL MASTER's shiny silver mask.

"AND NO SULKING ABOUT PARTS!" Sophie boomed, branding DOT on the blacksmith's daughter before stuffing two chocolate ice pops in her hands. "You need to gain twenty pounds by next week."

"You said it'd be small," Agatha said, eyeing a boy teetering on a ladder as he painted two familiar green eyes on the massive theater marquee. "Something tasteful for the anniversary."

"Is every boy in this town a tenor?" Sophie squawked, inspecting the males with these very same eyes. "Surely someone's voice has changed? Surely someone can play Tedros, the most handsome, charming prince in the —"

She turned to find red-haired, bucktoothed Radley in tight breeches, puffing his chest. Sophie gagged and stamped him HORT.

"This doesn't seem small," Agatha said, louder, watching two girls pull the canvas off a ticket booth with twenty neon Sophie faces silk-screened across it. "And it doesn't seem tastef—"

"Lights!" Sophie called to two boys suspended from ropes—

Agatha spun from the blinding detonation. Through fingers, she peeked up at the velvet curtain behind them, embedded with a thousand white-hot bulbs spelling out: CURSES! The Musical Starring, Written, Directed, and Produced by Sophie.

"Is this too dull for the finale?" Sophie said, whirling to Agatha in a midnight-blue ballgown with delicate gold leaves, a ruby pendant around her neck, and a tiara of blue orchids. "That reminds me. Can you sing harmony?"

Agatha swelled like a tick. "Have you lost your mind! You said it'd be a tribute to the kidnapped children, not some fairground burlesque! I can't act, I can't sing, and here we are having a dress rehearsal for a vanity show that doesn't even have a scrip— What is THAT?"

She pointed at the sash of red crystals across Sophie's dress, reading:

"Ball Queen."

Sophie stared at her. "You don't expect me to tell our story as it happened, do you?"

Agatha sighed and turned away, surveying the rest of the town for her sister.

She couldn't see her.

Ever since she, Sophie, and Y/n had returned from school, Y/n had been quiet. Now, Agatha knew that Y/n liked to keep to herself. She often preferred being alone with her thoughts rather than among others, but she was being far more reserved than usual.

It worried Agatha.

But Sophie worried her, too.

Agatha had explained everything to Sophie—how Y/n and Tedros didn't really love each other, how Y/n really only wanted to help them get home. And while Sophie understood all of this, she was still tense around Y/n. It was as if the witch in her was just waiting to burst out of its shell whenever she laid eyes on her.

Agatha thought back to Y/n's kiss with the School Master. Something about it didn't sit right with her. The fact that Y/n, her friend, her sister, was willing to kiss someone so Evil. . .