The locker door slammed shut with a metallic *clang* that made Jackson Jekyll flinch. He adjusted his glasses, fingers trembling slightly against the frames, and forced himself to take a slow breath. The hallway was empty now—most students had already scattered to their next classes—but the phantom laughter of Manny Taur still echoed in his skull. *Normie freak.*
"You okay, Jekyll?"
Jackson turned to find Deuce Gorgon leaning against the next locker, sunglasses perched on his nose despite the dim fluorescent lighting. His snakes hissed softly, tongues flicking in Jackson's direction.
"Yeah. Just... locker roulette," Jackson muttered, rubbing his shoulder where Manny had shoved him. He forced a weak smile. "You'd think after the third time, they'd get bored."
Deuce snorted. "Doubt it. But hey, Frankie's looking for you. Said something about—"
A sudden burst of distorted guitar riffed through the hallway speakers, the opening notes of some thrash-metal anthem the school was testing for the upcoming Ghouls Night Out dance for Holt Hyde, or DJ Hyde. Jackson's breath hitched. His skin prickled, heat crawling up his spine like lit fuse. *No. Not now.*
"Uh, dude?" Deuce's voice wavered. "Your hair's—"
Jackson didn't hear the rest.
Because he ran away.
The bathroom stall door rattled as Jackson's shoulder slammed into it, his vision swimming with streaks of neon green. His fingers clawed at the collar of his shirt—too tight, suddenly, like it was trying to strangle him. The music reached to a speaker right outside.
And Holt Hyde came out to play.
The music hit him like a live wire, buzzing under his skin until his bones felt electric. Jackson's glasses clattered to the tile—useless now—as his vision warped into something sharper, different.
The bathroom mirror showed the split-second shift: brown and blond hair turning fiery red and orange, blue eyes flashing yellow.
Holt Hyde just sighed.
You might ask why Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde were hiding.
Well that was because despite the month they had been at Monster High at the start of Fleshman Year, nobody knew thier deepest darkest secret.
Why would they?
The thing about Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde was that they shared one body, but Jackson was a human, or a normie as monsters called them, and Holt was a monster.
So as you can imagine, Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde weren't really accepted anywhere. Jackson was too much of a normie for monsters, and Holt was too much of a monster for humans.
That lead to them being regularly rejected by both.
And so when Fleshman Year started, they decided to try and hide the secret better.
Jackson had the boring classes: You know, the ones you zone out in—like Ghoulgebra, Scare-ture Studies or Mad ScienceThat's when he'd start sweating over quadratic equations or some dusty old tome about Vlad the Impaler's tax policies.
Holy had all the actually good (or at least not completely bone dry boring classes, like: Haunted Music Theory, Creepateria Baking (yes, this was apparently a class), and, most importantly, Scare-oke.
Of course, he wasn't exactly supposed to be there—but what was Jackson gonna do, skip? They shared a GPA.
In the month since the school year began, thongs have gone... alright.
Mostly.
Jackson was viewed as a normie who was "one of the good ones".
Holt was viewed as a manster who was "the manster you know is gonna bring a good time".
Of course Manny Taur was Manny Taur-ing, but besides him, it was progress.
So why did they still keep it a secret? You might ask, dear reader.
Well, it was simple.
It was the fact that telling everyone would make everything everything but simple.
It was the very fact that they shared a body.
Holt drummed his fingers against the cracked bathroom tiles, the echoes bouncing like a bad drum solo. The mirror showed his reflection—all wild hair and sharper teeth—but his thoughts were tangled worse than a werewolf's headphone cords. *What if they knew?* The idea slithered through his mind like a gorgon's snake.
Sure, both hom and Jackson wanted to things to be simple, but they were still lying to everyone.
Kinda.
Nobody asked if he and Jackson shared the same body, after all.
The bathroom door creaked open with all the subtlety of a zombie in tap shoes. Holt barely had time to jam Jackson's glasses into his vest pocket before Deuce's shadow stretched across the grimy tiles.
"Jekyll?" Deuce's voice was muffled through the stall door, his snakes hissing a chorus of confusion. "Dude, you okay? You vanished like a ghost in sunlight."
Holt exhaled through his nose—Jackson's nose? Whatever—and rolled his shoulders.
Time to improvise.
Or just follow the usual script, more like it.
"Sorry you just missed him manster," Holt lied smoothly, stepping out of the stall while adjusting Jackson's skewed bowtie into something sleeker. The bathroom fluorescents buzzed overhead like angry fireflies, casting jagged shadows that made Holt's smirk sharper. "Jackson had a...uh, mad science emergency. Something about volatile test tubes and impromptu combustion." He leaned against the sinks, one foot propped against the tiles in a way Jackson would never dare. "You know how normies get about lab safety."
Deuce's snakes coiled tighter, their little forked tongues flicking suspiciously. "Weird," he muttered. "Swear I saw Jackson run into here like a banshee fleeing holy water." Holt grinned—all teeth, no warmth—and flicked a speck of nonexistent lint off his sleeve. "Yeah? Well, you know normies. They've got the bladder capacity of a dehydrated gremlin."
"I guess... Just, tell me if you see him, I... I worry about him sometimes," Deuce said, rubbing the back of his neck. One of his snakes nuzzled his earlobe sympathetically.
Holt's grin didn't waver, but something prickled in his chest—something that wasn't entirely his own. Jackson's guilt, probably. Always so *soft*. "Yeah, yeah, sure thing," Holt waved a hand. "Normie emergency hotline, at your service."
The second Deuce disappeared through the bathroom door, Holt exhaled hard through his nose and dug Jackson's glasses out of his pocket. They looked ridiculous on him—too square, too *tame*—but he jammed them onto his face anyway, just long enough to glare at his reflection. "Really, Jekyll? Running away like a startled ghoul? You couldn't have waited *two* more minutes before—"
The bell screeched overhead, drowning out the rest of his rant.
Holt groaned.
*Ghoulgebra*. Jackson's most favorite class, which meant *his* least favorite class.
He got his descreet earplugs into his ears.
And Jackson Jekyll returned into control.
------
Frankie Stein was halfway through scribbling notes when someone slumped into the empty seat beside her.
She looked over.
It was Jackson.
Like always.
Frankie's pencil hovered mid-scribble as Jackson's elbow slid across the desk like a zombie with bad coordination. His glasses were crooked—again—and his bowtie was knotted tighter than a mummy's bandages.
"Rough day Jackie?" she whispered, nudging his shoulder with hers. Jackson startled like she'd zapped him—which, given Frankie's voltage issues, wasn't entirely impossible. His hands scrambled to adjust his glasses, but only succeeded in smudging the lenses worse. "Just...uh. Manny." He gestured vaguely toward the hall, where the faint scent of bullshit still lingered. "Standard locker-stuffing protocol."
Frankie's stitches twitched in sympathy. "Ugh. That minotaur needs to be stuffed into *his* locker for once." She snapped her fingers—literally, sparks flying—and grinned when Jackson didn't even flinch.
She always liked how used to weirdness he seemed to be, even when they first met being the new kids in New Salem for Fleshman Year at Monster High.
Frankie tapped her pencil against her notebook, stealing glances at Jackson as he painstakingly erased a mistake—third time in two minutes. There was something *different* about Jackie, something none of the other normies had. Maybe it was how he didn't scream when Lagoona dripped saltwater on his shoes, or how he laughed at Clawdeen's terrible puns instead of cowering like prey. Even Deuce's snakes liked him, and those little menaces hissed at *everyone*.
Every student theorized that Headmistress Bloodgood had accepted Jackson Jekyll into Monster High because of how accepting he was as a good show that monsters and normies could get along just fine.
Even if some people like Manny Taur or the Van Helsings thought normies didn't belong at Monster High, Frankie Stein couldn't understand how anyone *wouldn't* like Jackie. He was like that one perfectly sewn stitch in a franken-outfit—somehow holding everything together without looking like he was trying too hard.
And sure, maybe he smelled faintly of antiseptic and panic sweat, but who didn't? (Well, except maybe Cleo. That girl practically excreted lotus petals.)
The rumor mill—or more accurately, the *ghoul* mill—had spit out approximately 4,267 theories about why Jackson Jekyll was the first (and only) normie at Monster High. Frankie had overheard Cleo insisting it was a political stunt ("*Obviously,* Headmistress Bloodgood needed a human mascot to prove we don't *eat* them"), while Lagoona swore it was because Jackson had saved a merpup from drowning once ("Totally heroic, mate!").
Yeah, that one still didn't make sense to anyone else.
But Frankie knew the real story. Or at least, she *thought* she did.
It all started during the last week of summer break, when Frankie had just been made by her parents (she was still a little foggy on the details—she'd been *unconscious* at the time, after all). Jackson had been the first person to *not* at least partially recoil when she accidentally sparked mid-handshake.
Instead, he'd just blinked—once, slow, like a slightly confused cat—and said, "Oh. Neat."
Neat. As if she were a chemistry experiment and not a bolt-necked freakshow.
Then, there was Holt Hyde, the other major new to New Salem and thus Monster High. Unlike Jackson, who was anxious and trying to blend in (badly), Holt didn't try to blend in at all—which was why everyone liked him.
Holt Hyde was the exact opposite of Jackson Jekyll, but in a good way. While Jackie slouched through the halls like a nervous ghost, DJ sauntered like he owned the place—even when he didn't. Which, technically, he never did. But confidence was contagious at Monster High, and Holt had enough to infect the whole student body.
The thing was, Holt didn't just *fit in*—he *stood out*. Where Jackson mumbled apologies for existing, Holt cracked jokes loud enough to make Clawdeen wolf-whistle. Where Jackie agonized over every awkward interaction, DJ flirted with danger like it was his part-time job. And the ghouls ate it up.
"Excuse me Ms. Stein! I don't suppose you could repeat what I just said out loud to the class?!" The teacher of the class; Irene Maiden (who was apparently stuck in a Greek statue without anyone knowing. She remained locked up for 2,000 years before being set free just in time for the near school year) asked loudly to her.
Yeah, it was safe to say that Frankie Stein had indeed NOT been paying attention.
Oh well, she could at least try and hope whatever came out of her mouth happened to be what Mrs. Maiden said.
What did ahe have to lose?
Frankie's bolts crackled with nervous energy as she blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "Uh… the square root of a zombie's soul is eternal rest?" The class erupted into snickers, and even Irene Maiden's marble lips twitched. Frankie slumped in her seat, cheeks glowing greener.
She risked a glance at Jackson—who looked like he wanted to assure her, but just didn't really know how.