by Shannon Hale
“Shadow High? I’ve never heard of it.” Dracula rubs his arms. “Ooh, did the temperature just drop? I’m suddenly chilly. And I thought I was already the coolest dad ever.”12
12 Dad jokes, amirite? They seem to be universal, no matter whether the dad is vampire or Normie or Narrator.
He laughs heartily. Clawdeen’s mom joins in.
“I mean… there is a bite in the air,” he says, smiling with his fangs showing. The two adults laugh again.
Draculaura rolls her eyes. “Yeah… funny, Dad. But anyhoo, about Shadow High?”
“Hmm… Shadow High… You say you found it in my library? You know, I think I used to know—”
Dracula is interrupted by a distant plopping noise.
“What was that sound?” he says.
“Oh dear,” says Clawdeen’s mom. “I hope the pipes aren’t leaking.”
They both get up and go to check.
The girls look at each other. Draculaura sighs.
“Dad jokes, amirite?” she says.13
13 Omigosh, that’s exactly what I said a minute ago! I bet me and Drac would be friends if she knew I existed!
The girls rush back down, nearly tackling Mr. Mum-Ho-Tep, who is sweeping the floor at the base of the stairs. Mr. Mum-Ho-Tep is so old he’s worn down to almost nothing. His hair under his janitor cap billows around him, thinner than cobwebs, and his skin is like paper. When he exhales, he nearly disappears when viewed from the side. Frankie reasons that anyone who’s lived that long must have heard of everything, even—
“Shadow High?” he whispers in response to her question. “That name sounds familiar. Let me think.…”
He taps his temple in concentration, but just then a plop noise sounds from… somewhere.
“What was that plop?” he asks in his raspy voice. “It broke my concentration.”
“I don’t know,” says Draculaura. She smiles sweetly. “Now, you were saying—”
“About Shadow High?” Frankie prompts.
“Ah, yes. Shadow High. That name is ominous, isn’t it? I’d bet my very last toenail I’ve heard it before.… It’s on the edge of my memory, or in a memory that has somehow been erased from my mind. But if I concentrate…” He closes his eyes.
Plop. Plop.
“Upside-down pyramids!” he exclaims. “What in the ancient world is that plopping sound? I have to find it!”
And off he goes, on the hunt for the plop.14
14 Wait a sentence! What are all these plops? I’m as confused as you are, Reader.
Frankie rubs her arms. They’re speckled with—you guessed it—goosebumps.
“Does it almost seem like—” Draculaura starts.
“There’s a random plopping noise whenever—” Frankie continues.
“We ask someone about…” Draculaura pauses, then whispers, “Shadow High?”
Frankie nods. “It’s so mysterious! We have to get to the bottom of this.”
“Are you sure we should?” says Draculaura. “Doesn’t something about it seem… creepy?”
Frankie hesitates. First the goosebumps, and now she feels as if there are skeleton moths in her stomach.
She pulls her shirt up an inch, and through a seam in her waist a moth crawls out and flits away.
“But don’t you think that this Shadow High”—she whispers the name—“might be the perfect subject for our report? Like it was just waiting for us to discover it!”
“You’re right!” says Draculaura, straightening. “We’re monsters. Things are supposed to be scared of us, not the other way around!”
Frankie nods. She can tell Draculaura is a little scared but pushing through it. Frankie is proud she’s the BGF15 of such a courageous monster. She stands up straighter while hopeful zaps of electricity travel up her spine.
15 BGF: Best Ghoulfriend Forever.
“Shadow High does sound creepy-cool, doesn’t it?” Frankie says. “Maybe it’s some other, secret Monster High!”
Plop. Plop.
“Did you hear that plop?” asks Draculaura.
“Never mind the plop. I’ve got an idea.”
MOM. DAD. I KNOW IT WAS YOU INTERRUPTING my narration with that plopping sound. Are you following me around? Where are you? Aha! Mom, I can see you hiding behind those vines and dangling participles.
Brooke, sweetie…
You too, Dad. Come out from behind the spoiler tree. Honestly, you’re a terrible hider. I can totally see your shoes.
Brooke, honey…
Hey, what’s that thing you’re holding? A vacuum or something?
No. It’s… well, it’s a Plop Device.
You mean a plot device? I learned about that. It’s anything that helps move the story forward. Like, the temperature of the Three Bears’ porridge is a plot device because it causes the bears to leave to let it cool, and then their absence makes it possible for Goldilocks to break in—
Yes, yes, you’re very smart, Brooke, but this is… ahem, it’s not a plot device. It’s a Plop Device.
I’ve never heard of it.
Yeah… it’s top secret. The characters in a story can’t hear us speaking,16 but they can hear the sounds this machine makes. Narrators aren’t supposed to interfere in any way, of course—
16 Except for a couple of them, whom you’ll meet soon!
But a plopping noise is such a small interference.
Yes, exactly. Sometimes a well-timed plopping noise can distract a character who is about to do something that might ruin the story.
Are you trying to distract the characters? Or stop the story from happening altogether? But why? What is it that you don’t want Frankie and Draculaura to discover? What is Shadow High?
Shhh! Don’t even say those words. And please stop narrating! I don’t want you anywhere near this story. It’s too dangerous.
I don’t get why you and the other Narrators don’t want this story to be told. Draculaura and Frankie will do whatever they’re going to do whether we narrate it or not.
But, Brooke—
Maybe I’m just a kid, but I know that every story deserves to be told. And if no one narrates this one, then the Readers will never know what happens! So if you won’t do it, I will.
FRANKIE STEIN LIVED ALL HER EARLY LIFE IN a laboratory: covered windows; nice, clean concrete floors; flickering lights; and the comforting buzz of electricity. Endless books to read, gadgets to fiddle with, and contraptions to invent—like that electric flyswatter she wired up, or the automatic spoon… which more often than not missed her mouth and spooned cereal into her ear.
So it was mostly good! But also, it was so lonely.
Unlike all Normie kids and most monsters, Frankie wasn’t born a baby who grew up into a teenager. She was created as a teenager. She woke up one day on a slab and had to figure out what teenager even meant. Frankie used to scour the Monster Web for information about Normie teenagers, peer through the slats of a lab window, and wish for friends who could understand how just creepy-cool life was.
And now at last she has those longed-for friends, especially her BGF, Draculaura. Far worse than having to go back into hiding again would be disappointing her friends. She’s certain she let down Drac with the presentation. So what’s a ghoul to do? Fix it!
In their bedroom, Frankie grabs the Mapalogue17 from the closet and places the box on her desk.
17 The Monster Mapalogue is like a monster detector, complete with a world map and a Skullette magical teleporting thingamabob.
“The Mapalogue? To find Shadow High?” says Draculaura. “That only works to locate monsters.”
“Yeah, but what if Shadow High is monsters?” says Frankie. “It kinda sounds like it.”
She opens the box, and the wooden map unfolds. It’s smooth, polished by the fingers, claws, and tentacles of all the monsters who have used it over the centuries to find one another in a world full of Normies.
Burned into the wood’s surface are the borders and names of all the known places of the w
orld.
The Mapalogue was how Frankie and Drac had found monsters hiding in various locations and then transported themselves there to deliver an invitation to Monster High. When they touched the Skullette token Draculaura now wore around her neck and spoke the words Exsto monstrum plus the monster’s name, the Mapalogue could send them directly to that monster. It was how they found Cleo de Nile, daughter of the Mummy, hidden in her royal tomb home beneath the desert sands. And how they found Lagoona Blue, daughter of the sea monster, emerging from the surf to meet them beachside.
“The problem is we don’t know anyone’s name at Shadow High,” says Draculaura.
“It’s a school, right?” says Frankie. “There’s got to be a principal.”
Frankie shivers with excitement. Or maybe a jolt of all that loose electricity just surged through her body and bolted up her spine. Either way, it is clawesome having friends. Friends mean adventures in a world so much bigger than a boarded-up laboratory.
Frankie takes her friend’s hand. Draculaura touches the Skullette pendant around her neck. They take a breath. And then—
Plop. Plop.
“What the…?”
“Seriously, what is that plopping sound?” says Draculaura.
“Let’s just ignore it.”
They hold hands again, touch the Skullette, look at the map, and together say, “Exsto monstrum principal of Shadow High—”
And they fall. But not out of Monster High and into Shadow High. Just onto their butts. On their bedroom floor. Not transported. They were knocked down by nothing.
“What just—”
“Did that—”
Their door swings open. Clawdeen pushes her voluminous brown hair out of her eyes.
“Ghouls, did you feel that?” says Clawdeen. “I think we just had an earthquake! I’m gonna go check on my little brothers.”
And she bounds off just as quickly as she entered.
“That was—” Frankie starts.
“Creepy,” Draculaura finishes.
They stand up, brush themselves off, and shrug. They aren’t hurt. So they try it again. Hands held. Skullette touched. Deep breaths. As they speak, the plopping sounds return.18
18 Honestly. My parents can be so weird sometimes.
“Exsto monstrum”—plop, plop—“principal”—PLOP—“of Shadow”—plopplopplopplopplop—“High!”
Almost before the words come out of their mouths, another tremor rolls beneath their feet. The stones of Monster High groan, the wood floor begins to buckle, the books on the shelves burst off like popping corn. And most ominously, the mirror on the wall cracks in two. Now Frankie is shivering for real. Two earthquakes in a row? That can’t be a coincidence—
“Whoa!” exclaims Draculaura.
“What?” says Frankie.
“Look!”
“Look at what?”
“Whoa! Look! Whoa!”
Draculaura finally points at the map. Frankie gasps.
“How… how did… but how did…” Frankie mumbles.
“I have no idea,” Draculaura whispers.
The map, which was burned into the wood who knew how many centuries or even millennia ago, has changed. It’s as if it has zoomed out and revealed that the places they know are only one small part of all the world. The map of their world is squished down in the corner. And new lands with new borders are burning into the wood right before their eyes. One particularly large continent-like part bears a name: EVER AFTER HIGH.
EVER AFTER. THE LAND OF FAIRYTALES AND nursery rhymes, magical creatures and storybook characters. And enchanted mirrors.
It’s probably time to peek in on Ever After, so let’s start with… um… ooh! I know!19 Inside a particular enchanted mirror, where the Evil Queen is imprisoned. There she is now, dressed in a black, purple, and silver gown topped with a grand headdress, as if she’s never heard of casual wear. This is the same Evil Queen who poisoned Snow White, but she didn’t stop there. After she played her part in that tale, she got up to a lot more nastiness, trying to take over other people’s fairytales and even the entire world of Wonderland. To stop her rampage, Headmaster Grimm and other magically gifted faculty from Ever After High caught her and trapped her in the high-security mirror prison.
19 Oops, sorry, I’m not saying I anymore. I promise.
Even so, she has managed to escape before. Who knows? Maybe she will again, because right now the mirror prison walls are shaking. Just for a second. As if the prison were a cell phone buzzing with a call coming in. Wait. Do they have cell phones in Ever After? Let me check my Narrator Handbook.… Oh yeah, they have MirrorPhones. Not sure if those buzz. Maybe a different simile? The walls shook like… like a box of mildly irritated bees? Whatever. The point is, the Evil Queen can feel the shaking.
“Ooh,” she says with a smile. “That’s promising.”
And what is she thinking?20
20 Oh great. I guess I have to peek into that mind of hers and get my evil on.
Aha. It seems that she’s been enormously, apocalyptically bored. Her only entertainment is spying on the people of Ever After through their mirrors. And non-evil people are so boring. Besides, what is the point of secretly watching people when you can’t, at some point, pop up and shout, Ha! I have secretly been watching you!
For the Evil Queen, there is no point. In her opinion, regular people never do anything entertaining on their own. Usually, she has to motivate them with things like pointy sticks, poisoned apples, or abruptly carnivorous plants. But mirror prison dampens the Evil Queen’s magic. She can’t reach beyond the walls to poke Cinderella with a stick or make Snow White’s garden roses hunger for the taste of flesh.
So after all that boring watching, a tiny earthquake is hopeful news.
“But what caused it?” the Evil Queen asks herself.21 “There’s no earth here to shake, so it must be magical. And since I’m the most magical thing around, perhaps it was… me!”
21 In my experience, villains either talk to themselves a lot or get a minion they can tell their evil plans to.
Her smile brightens. The Evil Queen likes to think that she herself is the cause of most interesting things.
“Now…” She taps her chin delicately, aware of how beautiful she is—in a pale, gaudy way. “What was I doing when the tremor happened?”
She was thinking about those little meat-filled dumplings she used to buy from a village shop.22 She loves those. Maybe dumpling thoughts caused the tremor?
22 Well, mostly she stole them, TBH.
So she begins again to consider dumplings. She thinks so hard about dumplings that she grits her teeth and screams, “Dumplings! Dumplings! I am thinking about dumplings!”
But no earthquake.
Her forehead furrows. The lack of dumpling results means something besides her probably caused the tremor. What a disappointment.
She puts her black-gloved hand on one of the glass walls of her cell and casts a seeking spell.
Repeal the concealed real.
Reveal the wheel that reeled our keel.
The mirror hums but stays dark.
The Evil Queen removes her glove, slaps her hand to the glass, and shouts, “Show me what caused the tremor, you insufferable slab of melted sand!”
The glass wall changes, blurring and fading, light and shadow moving across the pane. She nods in approval. The mirror isn’t alive exactly, but everything can benefit from a loud reminder that she is fearsome.
The shadows and light coalesce into the silhouettes of two girls. Strange. She should be able to clearly see anyone in Ever After.23
23 Maybe that’s because the silhouettes aren’t of girls in Ever After, but of somewhere far, far away.…
Voices thrum from behind the glass, sound slipping through in pieces.
“…Shadowplopplopplop…”
“Something hap… the map…”
“…Ever After High?”
“Never heard of it…”
“…not Shadow H
igh—”
At the mention of Shadow High, the mirror goes dark, like an eye blinking shut. But those words—Shadow High—continue to echo. The Evil Queen’s eyes narrow. She prides herself on her ability to notice Powerful Things, and she recognizes power in that name.
“Shadow High,” the Evil Queen says, tracing her finger across the dark face of the mirror. Beneath her finger, a tiny spiderweb line of a crack appears. It’s no more than an inch long, but it is a crack. She can work with cracks. Cracks are how spiders get in. They are how foundations start to crumble.
The Evil Queen starts warming up her most evil, malevolent laugh. Remembering that there is no one there to hear and admire her objectively magnificent laugh, she stops. She keeps smiling, though. Because now she is prepared, and the next time her prison shakes, she will ride that tremor right through the crack in the mirror. Back to Ever After High and her beloved-but-too-good daughter, Raven. And straight to the school’s ancient library. The Evil Queen long ago learned that books hold knowledge, and knowledge is power.
Whatever this Shadow High is, she smells in its name a power greater than anything she’s ever after known.
IT’S MORNING AT EVER AFTER HIGH.24 THE sunlight cuts through the cotton candy–like clouds, drawing sparkles out of the dew on the humming flowers. Two stray pixies flit past, buzzing about the all-night party at the frog pond. A nearby frog, who apparently wasn’t invited to the party, ribbits in a way that seems to mean “Worst. Day. Ever.”
24 Yes, the same morning I was just telling you about at Monster High. So this stuff was going on around the same time as some of the Frankie and Draculaura stuff. Seriously, it’s tricky being a Narrator and jumping around like this!
Apple White and Raven Queen, carrying notebooks and hextbooks,25 are walking past.
25 They’re like textbooks. It’s an Ever After thing.
“Look at that frog!” says Apple. “Doesn’t he look so sad?”
“Um, I think ‘grumpy’ is just resting frog face,” says Raven.
“No, no, this frog is especially sad.” Apple picks him up, sets him on her palm, and looks deep into his wet eyes. “I don’t know what happened to make you so sad, Mr. Frog, but let me assure you that you are a worthy and noble creature and…” She hesitates, flipping her perfectly curled blond hair over her shoulder. “It’s not my fairytale to kiss frogs, but just in case…”
