“And aren’t you supposed to die if you come here from the island?” said the first girl.

“We’d die instantly if we went to your world, because it’s really horrible and really dangerous and your air is completely toxic to us.”

Slowly, the group gathered around Effie.

“I don’t like the cloak,” said the girl with the pink hair.

“Me neither,” said a girl with yellow eyes.

“It’s from thousands of moons ago,” said the first girl.

“I see she’s done a lot of shopping,” said the girl with the blue hair. “It’s just like what they say about the island. They’re all so greedy.”

“They never do anything for anyone else. They just take,” said the girl with pink hair. The dragon on the girl’s shoulder sort of nodded, as if it agreed with everything she was saying.

Effie felt like crying. Wasn’t everyone in the Otherworld supposed to be nice? But of course she’d hardly been anywhere in the Otherworld and knew barely anything about it. Her headache intensified. And her arms started to ache from carrying all her wonderful free things. She felt like a complete idiot standing there in her gold cloak, unable to put anything down. She wanted to run away. But Effie never ran away.

“We might be greedy on the island,” she found herself saying, “but at least we don’t all look the same.”

“You think we look the same?” said the girl with yellow eyes. “How? We’re all completely different.”

“Yes, do go on,” said the girl with the blue hair. “How? We’re just dying to hear how someone from the island would choose to judge us.”

“Your cloaks,” Effie said. “They’re all the same color.”

“That’s because it’s our school uniform, you jar of cloudcurd,” said the girl with the dragon.

Somewhere nearby a bell tinkled and the girls turned and left, their long, pastel-colored hair swishing behind them. Effie realized that she would have loved to have been friends with them, but that was never going to happen now. They all hated her. Effie wondered how to explain to Clothilde what had happened, and how sad she felt, but she didn’t have to.

“Were they very blunt?” said Clothilde when she came back. “Teenage girls here are encouraged to say exactly what they think without holding anything in. They can be a bit too honest sometimes.”

Effie didn’t say anything.

“Right,” said Clothilde. “Time for your kharakter analysis. Are you excited?”

Effie nodded. “Yes,” she said. She still had an awkward feeling inside from her encounter with the girls, but that faded as she followed Clothilde down a thin cobbled lane and up some stone steps until they reached a large brown wooden door in the wall with pink flowers growing out of a large pot next to it. A tiny brass sign said CONSULTATIONS.