by Perdita Finn
But there were bigger differences than that.
In the main hallway, students were staring at the ghouls, looking them up and down.
“Why’s everyone staring at us?” asked Draculaura.
“It’s 1814,” Clawdeen pointed out. “They’ve never seen styles like ours before.”
It was true. If some of the fashions were the same—the high boots, the corsets, the gloves, the pleats, and the lace—the lengths of the skirts were distinctly different. None of the ghouls in 1814 were showing their knees… or even their ankles.
One skeleton came over to Cleo and touched the fabric of her sleeve. Cleo slapped her bony hand. “It’s a Ghost-ier original and it’s magnificent. Move along.”
“The sooner we find Toralei and get back to our own time, the better,” said Lagoona.
“We should split up,” suggested Frankie. “We’ll find her faster that way. Let’s meet up back at the workshop door.”
“And remember,” said Jinafire as they divided into two groups going in opposite directions, “try not to talk to anybody.”
Frankie and Ghoulia walked along the hallway, peeking into classrooms. They were filled with busy students—but there was no sign of Toralei. The whistle of a steam train from a lab startled Frankie and Ghoulia, who rushed to see what was going on. The classroom was arranged like a theater and the seats were filled with chattering monsters. The room was dark, lit only by candles, and the ghouls were able to sneak in without anyone noticing.
A trapdoor hissed, emitted a plume of steam, and opened. Out of it stepped a tall, broad man with a steam-powered mechanical arm.
“That’s Hexiciah Steam, Robecca’s dad,” Frankie whispered to Ghoulia.
“All right, class. Settle, settle!” he announced.
A stumpy boy, out of breath and green-hued, hurried past Frankie and Ghoulia, bumping into them.
“Sorry I’m late, Professor S-Steam!” he stuttered. “Again.”
“Oh. My. Ghoul!” exclaimed Frankie, realizing who it was.
“Mr. Rotter!” reprimanded Professor Steam. Clearly the boy was not one of his favorite students. “Just take your seat. I trust you’re prepared to deliver your scaritage report?”
The teenage Mr. Rotter hemmed and hawed. “I… um… no, sir.”
The professor sighed. “A little preparation would go a long way toward succeeding in my class, Mr. Rotter. You see, if you’re always prepared…”
“You’ll never be scared!” completed Frankie.
Hexiciah grinned at her, amused. “Yes, very good. I like that.”
Frankie and Ghoulia slipped into seats in the back of the classroom. Ghoulia whispered a groan to Frankie.
“I know,” Frankie answered. “I can’t believe Robecca is missing this. I wish I could text her.” She sighed, thinking of her useless iCoffin. How did these students manage without them?
At the front of the room, Professor Steam was lecturing the class. “Now then, since Mr. Rotter is not prepared…”
As if on cue, Rotter flipped his pencil into the air and dropped it.
Hexiciah Steam glared at him, shaking his head. “Would somebody else care to share something about their scaritage?”
“I’ve got this,” announced a boy in the front row. He was a thin kid with straight black hair—a normie. He was wearing a lab coat and his feet were propped up on his desk as if this class was the easiest thing he did all day long. Frankie and Ghoulia stared at him. There was something familiar about him, but what was it?
“All right then, Sparky.” Hexiciah Steam sighed. “You’re next.”
The boy rose out of his seat and sauntered to the front of the classroom.
“Check out mad scientist boy,” Frankie whispered to Ghoulia.
Sparky had wheeled in a medical gurney. Covered in a white sheet were two body-size mounds.
“Class, Professor Steam. I do not have a scaritage. For, you see, I am an orphan. So… because I don’t have a family… I made one!” He gave the lever on the gurney a hard crank and it tilted forward. The sheet rolled down, revealing two robotic monsters. They were crude—made out of bits of discarded junk, burlap, and a few strange humanlike parts.
The Creatures extended their hands and began moaning and growling.
There were gasps from the students.
“Yes!” proclaimed Sparky. “I have created life! Feast your eyes upon Genealogi-bots 3.5 and 3.7. Don’t ask about 3.6. He turned out to be a few electrons short of a carbon molecule, if you know what I mean.”
One of the monster’s hands dangled from his wrist and fell off, with a flat thud, to the floor. Flustered, Sparky picked it up and tried to wedge it back onto the monster’s arm. “Not to worry.” He smiled through gritted teeth. “Just a little setback.”
As he fidgeted with the monster, it tipped to its side, knocking into the other creature—whose head wobbled and fell off.
“Maybe the normie student exchange program wasn’t such a good idea,” muttered a student in the back of the classroom.
“Think we should send him back?” asked a ghoul.
First one student laughed and then another, until the whole class was roaring.
Sparky shook the monster’s unattached hand at them, like he was scolding them. “Stop laughing at me! I can get it right; I know it. I’m just… I’m just missing something. Some part. Some ingredient!”
Hexiciah had been watching all of this, deep in thought. He silenced the class with a wave of his hand. He turned to Sparky. “You’re right. You are missing something. You tried to create life using this.” He pointed at Sparky’s head. “But you left out this.” He poked the center of Sparky’s chest—right where his heart would be.
Sparky’s brow furrowed, trying to figure out what his teacher was saying. “You mean guts and organs and stuff? No, I used plenty of those. Look…” He began to rummage through the monsters, but Hexiciah stopped him.
“No!” bellowed the teacher passionately. “What I’m talking about isn’t a physical part, lad. Not some tangible ingredient. Creating life requires something more… Something… of one’s self… a spark.”
Sparky was baffled. “You lost me.”
Hexiciah addressed the whole class. “There are two sides to every single one of us. There’s this physical nonsense of skin and bones—and in some cases copper and steel…” He grinned as he released a slow whistle of steam from his mechanical arm. “But there’s also something deep down that we can’t see or touch. Maybe it’s emotion, maybe it’s love, I don’t really know.”
Sparky wasn’t buying any of this. He could barely disguise his impatience.
Hexiciah shook his head. “But what I do know is that you cannot simply use the brute force of science to cater to your every whim. If you’re not careful, the consequences could be catastrophic.”
In the back row, Frankie looked down at her own hand, carefully sewn to her wrist. This had all felt very personal to her. “But it is possible,” she whispered to Ghoulia. “Somebody made me…”
Sparky thought his teacher was ridiculous. “Sparks! Love!” he said mockingly. “That doesn’t make any sense. I will figure out how to create life. I will make it work. And then, I will be the one laughing at all of you!”
The monster hand that Sparky had been holding suddenly came to life and wrapped itself around his face. “Get it off! Get it off!” the boy screamed. He flailed, trying to whip it off. Unable to see, he ran into the wall and knocked himself backward to the ground. The hand jumped off his face and scrambled out the door. The class exploded with more laughter.
All except for Frankie. She felt sorry for Sparky for some reason she couldn’t explain.
Hexiciah offered the boy his mechanical hand to help him get up, but Sparky wouldn’t take it. He got up on his own.
“Why don’t we continue this discussion after class?” Hexiciah suggested kindly. “Come find me in my workshop. I’ll be in my Recharge Chamber.”
“I will cre
ate life!” Sparky yelled defiantly. “I’ll show all of you!” He stormed out of the classroom, ignoring his teacher’s offer.
Tears welled up in Frankie’s eyes. “Poor Sparky.” She slipped out of her seat and followed him out of the classroom.
Throughout all of this, Rotter had been scribbling in his notebook. He raised his hand. “Professor Steam? Will any of that be on the final exam? Trying to, you know, be prepared.” He flipped his pencil into the air and it bonked him on the top of his head.
Hexiciah sighed. “Mr. Rotter, you are far and away my least favorite student.”
At the very top of the partially constructed tower of the high school, Sparky had built himself a laboratory. Broken test tubes and rusted coils littered the floor of the scaffolding. Sparky himself was standing on an old operating table trying to fix a bent lightning rod mounted on the makeshift roof. He swung a wrench at it, missed, and swung again. He was clearly upset and talking to himself.
“Sign up for the Normie Exchange Program, Sparky! It’ll be a great way to expand your horizons, Sparky! I’m sick of expanding my horizons. I like them just fine the way they are. I like medium-size horizons.”
Someone was climbing up the stairs toward him. He could hear footsteps.
“Sparky? Are you okay?” It was Frankie.
Sparky gave her a look of utter contempt and swung his wrench again. “What do you want? Here to make fun of me too?”
“No,” Frankie said softly. “I just… I don’t know, wanted to tell you that I understand how you feel.”
“What?” sneered Sparky. “You’re an orphan too?”
“No. But I understand what it’s like to not know about your scaritage. It makes you feel lost. And sad. But you’re lucky you get to go to a school like Monster High—where everybody can be like your family.”
Sparky turned on her, his eyes blazing with fury. “Family? Pah! Those nitwits aren’t fit to be in my family. Which is why I’m going to create one. If I can just figure out how…” He strained and grunted trying to reach the lightning rod.
“Here,” offered Frankie. She popped off her hand and sent it crawling up the operating table. It grabbed a cable and pulled itself toward the lightning rod. It tightened the bolts and straightened it.
Sparky was stunned. “How… how can you do that?”
“Well, because I was created,” explained Frankie. “And my father was too. In a lab.”
Her hand waved down at them in agreement.
“So it is possible!” exclaimed Sparky. “I knew it! But how?”
Frankie shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess my grandfather somehow figured out that missing spark Professor Steam was talking about.”
Sparky hopped off the table and grabbed Frankie by the shoulders, behaving exactly like a mad scientist. “You have to tell me how it’s done! Who is your grandfather? What is the secret? What am I missing?”
Frankie was frightened. She’d made a big mistake. She saw that now. They weren’t even supposed to talk to anybody in the past. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry. I have to go!” She broke away and hurried down the tower stairs, her detached hand scrambling after her.
Sparky, his thoughts racing, watched her go.
Frankie ran across the lawn, dodging tombstones. She fixed her hand back to her wrist. The other ghouls were already waiting at the entrance to the crypt. Lagoona and Jinafire were on either side of Toralei, each holding one of her arms.
“Hey, Frankie, look who we found,” said Jinafire.
Toralei struggled to break free. “You know, one day we are gonna look back on this and laugh.”
The ghouls got in the elevator and the gate closed behind them.
“You really did it this time, mate,” said Lagoona. “Your little stunt nearly caused us a lot of trouble.”
“Since when has a little curiosity caused any trouble?” she asked innocently.
Everyone glared at her.
“Oh right.” Toralei shrugged. “The whole accidentally sending us back in time thing. My bad.”
From the tower, Sparky had been watching Frankie meet up with her friends and get in the elevator. He couldn’t stop thinking about what she had said. Who had made her? How? He had to find out!
When they reached Hexiciah’s workshop, the ghouls stepped aside to let Ghoulia make some final adjustments to the time portal’s controls. Robecca had discovered that Hexiciah was asleep, standing upright, in his Recharge Chamber.
Her face was full of love for her talented father. “He built this Recharge Chamber. Said it would give him a boost of energy when he was inventing things.” Robecca reached out and lightly touched his chest. “I wish we could have had more time.”
The lens was beginning to spin. The time portal was opening.
“That’s our ride!” said Cleo. “You ghouls coming?”
“Just try and stop me!” Draculaura was desperate to get back. “If I don’t get my eyes on a gossip blog soon, I’m gonna go batty.”
Robecca wrote a note on a scrap piece of paper. Hi, Dad. I miss you. Love, your daughter. She attached it to his Recharge Chamber with a magnet.
Draculaura was about to enter the portal when she stepped aside for Robecca. “After you.”
“No, please, you first,” said Robecca. They were having their usual war of politeness.
“I insist.” Draculaura didn’t budge.
Clawdeen sighed. “Are we really going to do this again?”
“Wait!” Sparky barged into the workshop, breathing hard and covered in cobwebs. “You can’t leave yet! You have to show me how to create life!”
Cleo turned to Frankie. “Friend of yours?”
“You shouldn’t be here!” exclaimed Frankie.
“You need to help me!” Sparky’s eyes were wild. “I need to create my family.”
Ghoulia groaned. This was exactly what shouldn’t have happened.
“Ghoulia’s right,” Lagoona urged. “We have to go!”
Frankie was about to cry. “I have to go back where I belong.”
Sparky leaped forward. “Take me with you!” Sparky crashed into a bookshelf, setting off a chain reaction. The bookshelves crashed into one another like dominoes. The last bookshelf hit a table, catapulting it forward and hurling a loose screwdriver across the room. It landed on the control panel to the time portal. The machine sparked. The blue vortex flickered. The lens wobbled between the magnets.
In the corner, Hexiciah snored away, oblivious to the chaos.
“Whoops!” said Sparky.
Ghoulia dove into the portal, ordering the others to follow. Lagoona grabbed Jinafire and pulled her into the vortex. Cleo took hold of Toralei’s shoulders and they tumbled in together. “In you go, calico!”
Draculaura and Robecca held hands and jumped, as did Clawdeen and Venus.
Frankie wavered.
“So that’s it?” said Sparky. “You’re just going to leave without helping me?”
Frankie shook her head. “I’m going to look you up when I get home, Sparky. I’ve got a feeling you’re going to create something wonderful here at Monster High.” She leaped into the portal and disappeared.
But that wasn’t good enough for Sparky. He charged at the portal and dove in at the last possible moment. The lens stopped spinning. The portal closed. Everything was quiet in the workshop.
A timer dinged and the door to the Recharge Chamber opened. Hexiciah Steam stretched and yawned. “Most refreshing. Now then, what say we take another crack at that Steamatronic Temporal Teleport…”
Hexiciah looked at his invention, stunned. It was destroyed. The control panel emitted a last dying hiss.
“Or I could work on something else.” Hexiciah sighed.
That’s when he saw Robecca’s note. He read it, confused. “Love, your daughter? Hmmm, now there’s a challenge… a daughter.”
He picked up a pencil and began sketching some blueprints for a robot girl. What should she look like? Should he give her r
ocket boots? But of course!
The ghouls tumbled through the swirling vortex, clinging to one another. Wild flashes of energy shot through them like x-rays. At last they saw a pinprick of light from the workshop rising toward them.
“Hang on!” called Clawdeen as they crashed to a landing.
Sparky saw the ghouls in a pile in front of him. But just as he was about to burst out of the vortex, the portal closed. He was stuck between the worlds. Lost in time!
“Noooooooo!” he shouted, whirling around and around in nothingness.
In the workshop, Frankie and Ghoulia sat up, dazed from the journey.
“You okay?” asked Frankie.
Ghoulia groaned.
“Good,” said Frankie, relieved. “Everybody else?”
Frankie looked around the workshop, but instead of eight friends, she only saw four—and at first she didn’t recognize them.
A ghoul with Draculaura’s jet-black hair and Robecca’s steam-powered parts rubbed her head. “I’m all right.”
Another ghoul gasped in alarm. “Draculaura! Robecca! You’ve been fused together!”
“They’re not the only ones, ghoulfriend.” It was Toralei, but her voice was coming out of a Fusion with Cleo.
Cleolei clapped her hand over her mouth. Their mouth.
It was all so confusing! Clawdeen was fused with Venus, Cleo was fused with Toralei, Lagoona Blue was fused with Jinafire, and Robecca was fused with Draculaura. They were all Fusions.
“This is soooooo freaky!” squealed Clawveenus.
“Oh. My. Ghoul!” Dracubecca shrieked.
Ghoulia and Frankie were the only two who were unchanged.
“How did this happen?” asked Dracubecca.
“I don’t understand. Am I still Lagoona?”
“Or am I Jinafire?” asked the same ghoul.
Clawveenus sniffed. “I can smell everything!” Venus McFlytrap had to get used to having a werewolf nose.
Cleolei stamped her foot. “Ghoulia, how do we fix this? And don’t say you don’t know.”
Ghoulia shrugged.
“Don’t say that!” screeched Cleolei. “Of all the ghouls I could have been fused with, I end up with Toralei???”