Even though he was now king of the Brownies, Elliot still had to go to school the next day. He was just about to start a spelling test when he suddenly screamed out loud.

“Mr. Penster?” Ms. Blundell, his teacher, stood up from her desk. “Is there a problem?”

As a matter of fact, there was. Elliot had screamed out loud because Mr. Willimaker appeared on his desk. Elliot had nearly written his name and the date on Mr. Willimaker’s foot.

“They can’t see or hear me,” Mr. Willimaker quickly said. “Brownies can be invisible when we need to be. But only for a short time, because it uses a lot of magic. Besides, invisibility makes my head tingle, so it would be helpful if we could talk in private.”

“Elliot?” Ms. Blundell prompted.

“There’s no problem.” Elliot had to tilt his head around Mr. Willimaker to see his teacher’s face.

“Are you okay?” Ms. Blundell asked.

“But there is a problem, Your Highness,” Mr. Willimaker said.

“Hush,” Elliot whispered, but not quietly enough.

Ms. Blundell folded her arms and walked down the aisle, where she stopped at Elliot’s desk. “What did you say to me?”

“Er, I meant hush-choo!” Elliot faked a sneeze as he said it. A few kids in class laughed. Ms. Blundell wasn’t amused. Harold, the class hamster, wasn’t amused either. But, then, nobody expected Harold to be amused. After all, hamsters are known for running on wheels, not for their sense of humor.

Ms. Blundell gave Elliot a warning glance and then walked back to the head of the class. “The first word on your test is ‘secret,’” she said. “As in, ‘Someone in our class has a really big secret.’”

Elliot looked around. Did anyone suspect he had a secret? “Move,” he mumbled as quietly as he could to Mr. Willimaker. “I can’t see the teacher.”

“Too bad,” an annoying, toad-faced girl sitting in front of Elliot said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Elliot rolled his eyes and then stared at Mr. Willimaker. If he wanted something, he’d better say it, because Elliot wasn’t going to speak another word.

Mr. Willimaker did have something to say. “Your Highness, you have some official business to attend to.”

Elliot shook his head.

“I know that you’re in class, but this is very important. We’ve had a stray wander into Burrowsville. She won’t leave, and she’s upsetting the Brownies.”

“I’m taking a test,” he whispered.

“Yes, Mr. Penster, we know,” Ms. Blundell snapped. “Now be quiet. The second word on the test is ‘annoying,’ as in, ‘Someone in this class is being annoying.’”

“She said she’ll only talk to our king,” Mr. Willimaker said.

Elliot huffed. Whoever she was, her problem had better be important. He raised his hand and asked, “Can I please go to the bathroom, Ms. Blundell?”

“Can’t this wait until the end of the test?”

Elliot glared at Mr. Willimaker. “I guess not.”

“You can’t make this test up later. If you use the bathroom now, you’ll get a zero on the test.”

“I’ve really got to go,” Elliot said. The class laughed again, even though he wasn’t trying to be funny.

Ms. Blundell pursed her lips. “Then you’ll get a zero,” she said. “You need to be back in two minutes.”

Twelve seconds later, Elliot was in the hall with Mr. Willimaker, running along beside him to keep up. Mr. Willimaker ran so fast that he kept tripping over his own feet, but Elliot didn’t slow down. He wanted to get this over with. He had only two minutes, after all.

“I thought we could all talk in the boys’ bathroom,” Mr. Willimaker huffed, already out of breath from running.

“You brought a girl into the boys’ bathroom?”

“Better than making you go into the girls’ bathroom.”

That was true. Few things could ruin a boy’s entire life faster than being caught in a girls’ bathroom. He pushed open the door to the boys’ bathroom. Luckily, it was empty.

Or was it?

It sounded as if someone was crying in one of the stalls. Specifically, the disabled stall. He glanced at Mr. Willimaker, who nodded that, yes, this was the person whom Elliot had come to see. Great. Not only a girl in the boys’ bathroom, but a crying one.

“Hello?” Elliot walked toward the stall. “Are you okay—wah!”

The crying had been so gentle, he had expected to see someone more, well…gentle. He froze, knowing it was rude to look but too horrified to turn away.

The woman in the stall looked a little like Dorcas, the really mean school lunch lady—but only if Dorcas had been turned into a zombie, and only if Dorcas wanted to serve children for lunch instead of the mystery meat they usually served. Except this woman was way less cool than zombies and, if possible, even uglier.

She was a woman whose face looked like one of those shriveled apple heads. If you could count the age of a tree by its rings, then maybe you could count her age by her wrinkles. If so, then she was at least seven hundred years old. She had wrinkles on top of her wrinkles. Her tattered clothes were wrinkled. Even her white hair was wrinkled.

“Her name is Agatha, Your Highness,” Mr. Willimaker said. “Agatha, this is King Elliot.”

“Stare if you must,” Agatha said, wiping her tears with a fistful of toilet paper. “Few people can turn away from my beauty.”

Elliot giggled and then stopped himself by clasping a hand over his mouth. He didn’t mean to be rude, but that wasn’t what he expected her to say. Beauty was definitely not the word running through his mind.

Her withered skin looked as if it were made of dry oatmeal. Her face had no less than a dozen warts. Her right eye bulged out from her head so far, he wondered why it didn’t fall out. Her hands reminded him of the display skeleton in Ms. Blundell’s classroom. Her fingers looked twelve inches long.

“What?” she asked. “You don’t think I’m beautiful?”

Elliot remembered the rhyme his first-grade class had said every day at the end of school: “I am beautiful because I’m me. I’ll be the best that I can be.”

He said, “I believe you are the best you can be.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Dear Boy Readers: When any girl asks you if she’s beautiful, it’s always a good idea to insist quickly that yes, she is, no matter what she looks like. Even if she has worms in her hair and only one tooth (that for some reason is polka-dotted), you should still find something nice to say about her. If you tell her that she is not pretty, then I hope your family has a bomb shelter in your backyard where you can live for several years, because that will be the only safe place you can hide from her and all of her friends.

Agatha pointed a finger at Elliot. “I happen to be the most beautiful woman in all of everywhere. Since you can’t see that, I’ve decided to curse you.”

Elliot took a step back. “That’s not very nice. Did you know I got a zero on my spelling test just to come help you?”

“Quiet,” she hissed. “It’s hard to curse you when you’re talking. Here is the curse: I am a hag. My beauty is plain. Because you can’t see it. You’ll soon feel a brain.”

Elliot blinked. “Eww. What brain?”

“I think she meant you’ll soon feel pain, Your Highness,” Mr. Willimaker said. “One moment, Agatha.” Mr. Willimaker shut the door to the toilet stall and then pulled Elliot several steps away.

“What’s a hag?” Elliot asked. “Why is she here?”

Mr. Willimaker shook his head. “Actually, she’s a has-been hag. As you can tell from her curse, she’s sort of lost her touch.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“She came to Burrowsville last night looking for a place to stay until she figures out how to get her cursing powers back. She keeps cursing all the Brownies, and it’s starting to upset them.”

Elliot couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d agreed to get a zero on a spelling test because of a has-been hag who’d lost her powers of cursing? “Can’t you just send her away?” he asked.

Mr. Willimaker bit his lip. “I had this idea, Your Highness. It’s probably a terrible one, because my ideas usually aren’t very good, but I thought maybe she could help us win the Goblin war.”

“How?” Elliot demanded.

“What if she does get her cursing powers back?” Mr. Willimaker asked.

Elliot grinned. “And then she curses the Goblins?”

Mr. Willimaker nodded. “Exactly. But we have to find a place for her to stay in the meantime.”

Elliot opened the bathroom stall again and held out a hand for her to shake. “We started out badly, Agatha. My name is Elliot.”

She took his hand and shook it and then quickly pulled his hand to her mouth and bit his finger.

“Ow!” Elliot pulled his hand away. “What was that for?”

“I cursed you to feel pain,” Agatha said. “Look, it already happened.”

Elliot almost smiled. “Only because you bit me. If you make it happen, then it’s not a real curse.”

“It was a real pain, though.” Then tears formed in Agatha’s eyes. “Oh, you’re right. What kind of a hag am I if I can’t even curse a human child?”

“I’m sure you’re a very good hag. Maybe you’re just tired.” Elliot rubbed his bit finger but stopped as he heard a voice in the hallway. Someone was coming into the bathroom. He shoved Mr. Willimaker into Agatha’s stall and hissed, “Keep her quiet!”

He slammed the stall door closed.

Tubs! Of course, it had to be Tubs who came in.

Tubs’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing in here, Penster? I told you this was my bathroom.”

Elliot shrugged. “I checked for your name on the bathroom door. It said ‘boys’ bathroom.’ Since your name isn’t ‘boys,’ I thought it’d be okay.”

Tubs ran that idea through his mind. About halfway through it got lost in empty space, so Tubs let it drop.

“Move,” Tubs said. “I want to use that stall.”

Elliot kept his back firmly against the stall door. “It’s for people who need it. Use a different one.”

“I don’t want a different one. I like a stall with a lot of space.”

Elliot’s legs shook, but he held his ground. Behind him, he thought he heard Agatha sniffle.

“What was that?” Tubs asked. “Are you hiding someone in there?”

Elliot smiled. “Like who? A beautiful young woman disguised as a hag who’s just waiting to curse you?”

Tubs paused. “Uh, maybe. Now move!”

“You can’t have this stall, Tubs.”

Tubs darted to Elliot and grabbed his arms, lifting Elliot off the ground. “Ever been flushed down a toilet, Penster?”

Elliot never had. And it didn’t sound fun. He kicked and squirmed, but Tubs kept a tight hold on him as he carried Elliot to the other stall.

“What the—” Tubs said.

Elliot looked down. Tubs’s pants had fallen down around his ankles. Tubs set Elliot down and pulled his pants up again. They fell again, almost as if someone yanked them down. His underwear had little red hearts on it. Elliot had to bite his tongue hard to keep from giggling. Tubs pulled his pants up, this time keeping his hands on them to hold them in place.

“Tell you what,” Tubs said. “If you don’t tell anyone about my pants, I won’t tell them you’re hiding someone in here.”

“Deal.” Elliot nearly laughed as Tubs ran out of the bathroom. He opened the stall and smiled down at Mr. Willimaker. “Thanks for that.”

Mr. Willimaker bowed his head. “My pleasure. Now, what shall we do with Agatha?”

Elliot scratched his chin. “Why don’t you come home with me for a few days, Agatha? I’m sure my parents will let you stay, and you can keep my Uncle Rufus company.”

Agatha stood. “Okay, but I still may have to curse you again.”

That didn’t matter to Elliot. The way he figured, ever since he met the Brownies, he’d already been cursed.