by Perdita Finn
“Oh, she’s a Normie.” Frankie was disappointed.
“What’s that?”
“Normie. Normal,” explained Frankie. “A human.”
Draculaura sighed, looking down at the photos of her idol. “Okay, big deal,” she said at last. “Don’t you think it’s a bit unfair that humans are the only ones who get to be normal? I mean, who decided that turning into a bat and sleeping in a coffin was weird?”
“Tell me about it,” Frankie agreed. “Just because I need a few stitches to stay together, that doesn’t mean I’m not still a person.”
Draculaura took a big breath. There was something she wanted to ask Frankie. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like, you know, to be normal?”
Frankie thought for a while. “I don’t know. Being normal never really vibed with me. But it would be nice to do some normal things. Like have friends.” She smiled at Draculaura.
“And throw parties.” Draculaura grinned.
“And hang at a coffee shop and order elaborate-sounding drinks!”
“It could be a coffin shop!” Draculaura giggled. The girls were both daydreaming now.
“I love it,” said Frankie. “And it could be right in the center of our little monster village, where monsters of all kinds could come to live together!”
“And go to school together!” Draculaura sighed wistfully.
“A real school!”
“We could call it…‘Draculaura’s Academy for Guys and Ghouls’! And Beasties. And…Others.”
Frankie looked a little concerned.
“Yeah, no, bad idea,” backtracked Draculaura.
“What about,” suggested Frankie, “‘School for the Scary, Strange, and Generally Unwelcome’!”
Draculaura smiled politely. Neither name was quite right. The name needed to be simple. It needed to be friendly. It needed to be inviting. Her face lit up. “Or we could just call it Monster High!”
“Monster High!” Frankie clapped her hands, delighted. The name was perfect. But then her face fell. It was just a name. It wasn’t a real place. “If only we could. But it’s impossible.”
“Not impossible,” said Draculaura, her voice determined. “Just challenging.”
Draculaura remembered how earlier in the evening flying had seemed impossible. But she had figured it out. It just took a few tries. Draculaura could figure out this, especially since now she had a friend to help her.
Chapter 4
A Full-Moon Surprise
Frankie and Draculaura wanted to get started right away. There was no time to sleep. They knew they couldn’t have a Monster High without students, and they were ready to hunt for their own monsters. They smiled at each other as they quietly sneaked out the front door. They could tell Draculaura’s dad about their plans later.
The night was still dark, and all the human teenagers were home asleep, so they headed toward Normie Town. As they walked through the quiet streets, they listened. Except for the chirp, chirp, chirp of a few lone crickets, they heard nothing.
Draculaura peeked down a back alley. “Hellooooo?” she called in a low whisper. “Anybody out there?”
“Here, little monster-monsters,” whispered Frankie.
“Ugh. This is hopeless,” Draculaura realized.
“Wait!” Frankie held up her hand to Draculaura to quiet her. “Over there!” She pointed.
A trash can lid was clanking. A huge shadow loomed against the alley wall. Clutching each other’s hands, the girls crept toward the dumpster. They peeked around it. Nibbling away on a leftover crust was a tiny mouse, its huge shadow behind it.
Draculaura was disappointed. “Forget it.” She and Frankie felt defeated. They headed out of town. Only when they were far away from the alley did another creature emerge from behind the dumpster. It was a Mousicorn beastie with a horn coming out of her forehead! She squeaked. Like every other monster, she had learned how to hide.
Away from town the road ran through a desolate moor. Fog hung low. It was hard to see.
“Wait,” suggested Frankie. “What about over there?”
“The moors? Nobody goes out there.” Draculaura shivered.
“Exactly!” exclaimed Frankie. “The perfect hiding place for a monster.”
The ghouls left the road, picking their way around hillocks of grass and muddy puddles. The fog grew thicker and thicker. Frankie let loose an arc of electricity, illuminating their way.
Draculaura tried not to feel frightened. “Maybe we should turn back.”
“Hello? You’re a vampire! You can’t be afraid of the dark.”
Draculaura cleared her throat. “I’m not afraid of the dark,” she protested. But her voice quavered. “Aaaaaaa!” she screamed a moment later.
A huge, hulking dark shadow had jumped in front of them blocking their path.
“AAAAAAHHHHHHH!” screamed both ghouls.
A shaft of moonlight broke through the dense fog revealing the terrifying creature. It was an enormous, squirming…pack of puppies!
They were jumping up and down. Their little tongues where flopping out the sides of their mouths. Their little black noses were wet. When Frankie and Draculaura bent over to pet them, they were covered in puppy kisses.
“Hey!” Draculaura giggled. “Stop it! No! That tickles.”
“Awwww,” cooed Frankie. “There’s a whole pack of little pups.” She picked one up for a cuddle. “Aren’t you just a wittle cutie pootie—”
“ROAR!”
A giant wolf was bearing down on the ghouls. Too late they realized that the puppies weren’t just puppies. They were wolf pups, and this was their big sister. Her sharp teeth were bared. She growled menacingly.
Frankie and Draculaura each took a careful step backward. Their hearts were pounding in their chests.
“On the count of three…run!” Draculaura whispered to Frankie. “One, two—”
“Wait!” Frankie had noticed something. “Look at that amulet around the wolf’s neck.”
Sure enough, dangling through the sister wolf’s fur was a moon pendant.
“Kind of strange for a wild wolf to be wearing an amulet,” said Frankie. “Unless…”
“She’s a monster!” realized Draculaura.
The wolf was still snarling at them. She looked very dangerous.
Frankie gulped. “I hope we are right.” She took a step toward the wolf, who seemed surprised. “Excuse me,” she began politely, “but you wouldn’t happen to be a werewolf would you?”
The wolf growled menacingly.
Draculaura joined Frankie. “That’s a shame. ’Cause we’re looking for other monsters…like us.”
The wolf stopped growling. She cocked her head. She understood what they were saying. Or it seemed like it anyway.
“We’re forming a high school up on the hill. Monster High. It’s where monsters go to be normal.”
“Normal-ish,” corrected Draculaura.
Frankie nodded her head. “Right. And we’re even gonna have a coffin shop! With Mummy Mochas and everything.”
The wolf’s brown eyes widened, and a second later, she was transformed. Standing in front of Frankie and Draculaura was a slightly bedraggled but very pretty ghoul!
She had a thick mane of brown curly hair through which two tiny, furry ears poked delicately. She was dressed in a fierce green and purple outfit and didn’t look anything like the wolf that she had been—except for two white gleaming fangs. She raised a single perfectly plucked eyebrow. Could she trust these ghouls?
“I would howl at the moon for a Mummy Mocha,” she admitted. “Are you ghouls for real?”
Draculaura smiled. “We’re getting the monsters back together. You in?”
The wolf puppies tumbled between the ghouls turning from humans back into pups and back again.
The weregirl, Clawdeen, looked down at her brothers protectively. “I’ve got a lot of brothers.
And my mom.”
“We have some extra room at my house,” Dracu
laura offered.
Clawdeen thought for a moment. “This house? Does it have more than one overly crowded bathroom?”
“Well, yeah,” answered Draculaura.
Clawdeen broke into huge grin. She was ready to move in with her whole family. And Monster High had another student.
Chapter 5
Every Vampire Needs a Pack of Puppies
Just after sunset, Dracula tiptoed into his daughter’s room. He was carrying a tray with two steaming mugs of tea—one for Draculaura and one for Frankie. Right away, he noticed there was no one in the coffin. On the floor were a jumble of sleeping bags.
“Rise and dark!” Dracula announced.
Frankie stretched and yawned. Draculaura emerged from her sleeping bag with tousled hair. Clawdeen sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Hi!” she said.
“AHHHH!” screamed Dracula, totally startled. The tray in his hands tipped, spilling hot tea all over him. Draculaura grabbed a towel to dry him off.
“You okay, Dad?” she asked.
“Who is this?” he demanded. “Who is this stranger?”
Clawdeen put her hands on her hips, offended. “Who are you calling strange?”
“Dad!” Draculaura was mad at him for being so rude. “This is our friend, Clawdeen. She’s a werewolf. We found her in the moors.”
“And she really wants to live up here on the Hill,” Frankie added.
Clawdeen nodded, running her hands through her tousled, wavy mane. “You have no idea what fifteen years of living in a den does to a ghoul’s hair.”
“Can she? Can she stay, Dad?” begged Draculaura.
Draculaura’s eyes went wide and sad and hypnotic. She stared at her father. Frankie joined in, mesmerizing him with her expression.
“That might have worked once,” Dracula protested. “But I am not falling for it again.”
Clawdeen stared at him with her saddest puppy-dog eyes. The three ghouls were giving it their all. Dracula bit his lip. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t resist.
“It’s not even that cute,” he cried.
But it was. It was very cute. Especially when Clawdeen transformed into an actual wolf with round brown eyes and began to whimper. It was more than Dracula could bear.
“But this is the last one.” He sighed.
The words were barely out of his mouth when the doorbell rang. He rushed down to answer it, and there was Clawdeen’s mom with a stack of tiny suitcases beside her. Wolf pups tumbled into the front hall, jumping up on Dracula. They licked his face. They nibbled his ears. Puppies were everywhere.
What was he going to do? It was too late. He couldn’t say no. Besides he really loved puppies.
Over the next few days as the Wolfs settled in, the puppies followed Dracula wherever he went. When he sat down, they got in his lap. When he got up, they chased after him. They licked his hands, his shoes, and his face. But Dracula always had a squeak toy ready to throw. One puppy would fetch and another would be waiting to play. They never got tired of playing!
Every day, Dracula was a little less grumpy than he’d been the day before.
He found some old picture books and began reading aloud to the puppies in front of the fire in the living room. Their favorite was The Three Little Pigs.
“And then he huffed and puffed and blew the house down. Not even the brick house could stop the Big Bad Wolf.”
The Wolf puppies howled with delight.
Peeking in the living room, Draculaura smiled. “Pretty nice having other monsters around here, huh?”
Dracula glanced at Clawdeen’s mom and blushed. He coughed. “You know, it really is.”
The pups all cheered. One of them slathered a big sloppy kiss on Dracula’s face.
Best of all, Dracula enjoyed having another grown-up monster around. In the early evenings, he and Clawdeen’s mom would share a cup of bat tea and look at old family photo albums together. Draculaura had never seen her father so happy. And she had never been so happy. But there was something she wanted even more than a big family. She was still dreaming about Monster High.
Chapter 6
Calling All Monsters
Draculaura and Frankie were determined to turn the old, run-down mansion into a first-rate school—and that was going to take a lot of work. All the ghouls and the puppies hammered and sawed and sandpapered and painted over the next few weeks. Walking down the halls, peeking into rooms that would become dormitories and classrooms, Draculaura was pleased. “The place isn’t looking half bad, if I do say so myself.”
The enormous banquet hall had been turned into a Creepateria with long tables at which the future students would eat. Frankie decorated each table with floating green candles. They looked creeptastic.
There was only one thing missing: monsters.
Draculaura was still working on her Vampology vlog, and she still had no subscribers. She was recording herself in her bedroom while Clawdeen flipped through a fashion magazine. She was on the hunt for the perfect hairstyle, and she hadn’t found it yet.
Draculaura stared into the camera on her computer. “And we’re determined to rescue the monsters of the world. The freaky, the beastly, and the downright weird! Only how do we find you?”
She sighed as she shut off the webcam. She refreshed her vlog page. No one had watched her message. “Isn’t anybody listening?”
Frankie looked up from a chemistry book she’d been studying. “Well, you’re not gonna reach monsters like that. No wonder your vlog doesn’t have any listeners. You’re using normal Internet.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Draculaura. “That’s how it’s done.”
“Uh, yeah,” repeated Clawdeen. “If you’re normal.”
Frankie sighed. “You gotta use the Monster Web.” She reached past Draculaura and began typing furiously on the keyboard.
“There’s a Monster Web?” Draculaura had no idea!
The computer’s screen went blank for a second. Frankie pushed on two keys simultaneously, and a new hot-pink-and-black screen appeared. Frankie dragged Draculaura’s vlog over to the new Monster window. Frankie shook her head. “You haven’t even been broadcasting all this time.” She continued typing.
The graphics on the screen changed again. “Behold the Monster Web. Available anytime, anywhere.” Frankie stepped back so Draculaura could get a good look at it.
“Mind blown,” said Draculaura. Excited, she refreshed her web page.
Nothing happened. Oh well. At least they’d tried.
Frankie was tired and already getting into her sleeping bag. Webby swung across the room and switched off the light. It was time for the ghouls to go to bed. Draculaura crawled into her coffin.
As the ghouls slept, monsters all over the world were making a surprising discovery. A very surprising discovery. And far, far away, a glamorous zombie smiled to herself. A monster high school? Oh, this was very interesting, very interesting indeed. Her smile turned into a wicked grin.
Chapter 7
Freaky Field Trip
Draculaura screamed.
Her ear-piercing cry caused her father to jump up and flip his breakfast plate into the air and over onto the floor.
Frankie and Clawdeen woke up and saw Draculaura staring at her computer screen. She was shaking her head; she was laughing; she was screaming. The ghouls clustered close. They screamed!
Dracula raced up upstairs to Draculaura’s room. What was the matter? What was going on? What had happened?
“What is it? What is it?” he demanded to know as he stormed into the room.
“What is what?” asked Clawdeen.
“Whatever it is that you are screaming about?”
Draculaura turned to her father. She was beaming. “Monster High has students!” She was so excited that she was talking a mile a minute. “I put out a call on my Vampology vlog. Frankie taught me how to post it on the Monster Web. She’s a tech genius.”
Frankie shrugged. “It’s kinda my thing.”
“Anyway,” continued
Draculaura, “we got, like, a zillion e-mails this morning! And, Dad…Dad?”
She noticed that he had a bit of toast stuck to his head. “You’ve got a little something.…” She picked it off gently.
Clawdeen was jumping up and down she was so happy. “The monsters are coming! The monsters are coming!” She stopped, realizing something for the first time. “Wait! How are they getting here?”
Frankie turned to Draculaura. “You can fly, right?”
Draculaura nodded. What did Frankie mean?
“Maybe if I just use my electricity to supercharge you…before you take off,” Frankie suggested. She rubbed her hands together, and an arc of pure electricity sizzled between them when she pulled them apart.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Draculaura jumped backward. “Put it in reverse. Nobody’s electrocuting anybody.”
Throughout all of this, Dracula was watching the ghouls, thinking. At last, he spoke. “If you’re going to collect these monsters, you’re going to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“I love the old-fashioned way,” exclaimed Frankie.
“And you are going to wear helmets,” Dracula warned.
Clawdeen touched her hair. “Helmets? You got any idea what that does to all this hair?”
Dracula gave her a stern look. “Do you want to reach the other monsters or not?”
It was a matter of minutes before Clawdeen had a helmet on and so did Frankie and Draculaura.
Dracula led the ghouls down to the library. He turned himself into a bat and flew up to the highest bookshelf where he grabbed hold of an old wooden box with his feet. What was he up to? Where were they going? And how?
When he was back at floor level, he transformed into himself. He slid open the box. “Haven’t used this thing in centuries. Hope it still works.”
Frankie peered at it. “What exactly is it?”
Whatever was inside of the box was glowing a warm, hazy pink.
“This,” explained Dracula, “is a Monster Mapalogue.” He unfolded the sides of the box to reveal an engraved wooded board. Attached to it with a silver chain was a small skull.