𝕊𝕥𝕦𝕡𝕚𝕕 ℂ𝕦𝕡𝕚𝕕 ➶

𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕥𝕪-𝕋𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕖: 𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕙𝕠𝕠𝕕

Emerson High was fine. Not good, not even okay, but certainly fine. While Valentina was initially reluctant to leave her home with her mother in sunny California for a New England boarding school for weirdos, she found herself missing Nevermore Academy more than she thought she would.

Nevermore was weird, even creepy at times, but it was always interesting. The place, the things, the people...

All the classes at Emerson were so boring: Math, Sciences, English, Social Studies... Nothing as captivating as specialties like Outcast Anatomy, which covered not just gorgon anatomy but also vampire sex education and werewolf reproduction.

There weren't cabinets of curiosities in any room and hall, let alone every one. Emerson didn't even have a greenhouse, let alone one filled with poisonous and carnivorous plants.

Valentina used to wish she were normal and didn't have a witchy family legacy to propagate. But she loved the idea of being Cupid's envoy, if not the experience. When she got older, she was going to help others find love. What was a more worthy calling than that?

Outcasts didn't grow up to become accountants or dentists. They were capable of magic and thus made the world a little bit more magical. Val couldn't relate to their little lives, and that made her feel so desperately alone in the world. The longer she spent at Emerson, the more apparent it became that she didn't belong there.

Fran and her posse made it so she wasn't a complete outsider, despite arriving halfway through the semester, but she would always be fundamentally other in the eyes of normies.

"Why did you choose not to attend Nevermore like the rest of the outcasts?" Valentina asked her friend one afternoon as they were sitting in the school library, studying for finals.

Fran made a face like she'd just sucked on a lemon before looking up from her chemistry textbook. "Kind of a personal question, don't you think?"

She shrugged, feigning disinterest. "You don't have to answer it if you don't want to."

A little huff of annoyance, followed by, "This isn't my first high school. I've been through almost ten. Each one was worse than the last.

"Teenage girls can be so, so cruel. Granted, I didn't play the part of the perfect victim. I gave as good as I got. Sometimes I think a monster lurks inside of every teenage girl, waiting for the right --or, rather, wrong-- time to reveal itself.

"I've known so many monstrous girls in my life. Violent girls. Wicked girls. Scary girls. Girls with not just a couple skeletons in their closets, but entire cemeteries. There have been coming of age and loss of innocence stories about teenage girls before, but none of them truly get the experience right.

"Don't get me wrong... All teens are monsters. A certain strain of bloodlust always comes with puberty. But boys are different. They have it easier. They're allowed --even expected-- to act monstrous from time to time... But to be feminine means to be soft and sweet at all times.

"That's not most girls. That's not me. There's something savage and uncontrollable inside of me, and I feel like I either need to let it out --consequences be damned-- or let it consume me from the inside."

Valentina was careful not to interrupt Fran's stream of consciousness. This was obviously something she'd been thinking over for a while, and needed to get off her chest.

In an effort to make her feel better, she said, "Maybe you don't have to control or conceal it. Maybe there's a third option, one where you're able to summon the courage to grow and change with this alien, quote-unquote 'monstrous' part of yourself. But the only place you can learn to do that... Is Nevermore Academy."

Fran sighed, ran her hands down her face. "I don't know... I don't know! I doubt there's an outcast like me there anyway."

Another shrug. "Maybe not... But you'll be able to relate to the student body of Nevermore more than you ever will that of Emerson." Val wasn't a psychic. She couldn't see the future, but she trusted her gut, and she had a good feeling about this.

Fran was quiet for a long time after that, long enough that Valentina thought she ignored what she said and went back to studying, before eventually answering, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay, I'll give Nevermore a try."