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Chapter Text

“Alright kids,” Mr. Schneider said. Blanche looked up from her notebook where she was sketching out ideas for new designs. Once they were all paying attention, the teacher continued. “I’ve got a new project for all of you.” He ignored the good-natured groans. “I want you all to compare an aspect of your lives with someone else’s, who lives somewhere different. You could do it on sports, traditions, fashion-” Blanche gasped and sat up straight, throwing her hand in the air. Mr. Schneider raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Blanche?”

“Can I do my project on fashion here, and fashion at Monster High?” she asked. When the Monster High kids had come to “rescue” the twins, she’d been intrigued by their outfits- obviously she hadn’t said anything at the time, but now was her chance to look into their fashion.

“You can, if you’d like,” Mr. Schneider said. He looked hesitant. “But, if you have a hard time finding information, let me know. You’re welcome to change your topic.” Holt raised his hand.

“If you want, I’ve got a blog run by one of Monster High’s students, Spectra. There might be something there you can use,” he said. Blanche smiled at him.

“Thanks, Holt.” He smiled back.

“No problem. I’ll text it to you later.”

-

“So, what was the name of this blog again?” Duzer asked. She and Cleo were at Blanche’s house, working on their projects. Or at least, half working.

“The Gory Gazette,” Blanche said, setting her phone down before typing the name into the search bar. “Holt said this Spectra girl updates every few days, at least, so there should be something I can use.” Right away, something caught her eye.

Casketball Game Tomorrow Night! Get Ready to Cheer!

“Casketball?" Cleo asked. She’d sat near Blanche as she’d opened the blog, her own computer on her lap. “Like basketball?”

“I don’t know.” Blanche clicked on the post, and a photo popped up- a few guys were standing on a basketball court, one holding the ball. He was mid-throw, and the net was in front of him. A couple of guys were headed to block him. “It looks like basketball. Maybe they changed the name.”

“Weird. I don't see any caskets- you’d think they’d at least have one in a game called casketball,” Cleo commented, looking back at her screen. Blanche nodded as she scrolled. She saw another photo, this one of a group of girls holding pom poms- familiar girls.

“‘Fearleader support the team while they practice,’” she read aloud. “‘The ghouls routine is looking clawsome!’” She turned the laptop around so Duzer could see. “Look who it is.” Duzer looked up and rolled her eyes.

“Oh, it’s them. I thought it was someone interesting.”

“Duzer,” Cleo chided. “They’re not all bad- they left eventually, remember? And the twins still consider them friends of theirs.” Duzer shrugged.

“Doesn’t mean I have to like them.”

“Fair enough.” Blanche backed out of the page and scrolled as her friends chatted. Soon, she came across something promising.

First Day Back At School! Check Out These Killer Outfits! She clicked the post and got a close-up of Frankie. A quick scroll through revealed the other photos were of her friends, with only a few that didn’t look familiar.

“Wow,” Cleo said when Blanche showed her. “Those girls must be popular- otherwise why would Spectra focus on them?”

“You should try typing in their names,” Duzer suggested. “You can probably get plenty of examples from them alone.”

“Good idea, Duzer!” Blanche added the link to the first-day fashions to her document, then typed Clawdeen into the search bar. She was the most fashionable of the group, and Blanche was curious to see her other outfits.

Duzer was right- the werewolf was in several different posts, and she looked fabulous in all of them. Still, she didn’t want to focus just on one person. Returning back to the post on school fashions, she found another girl- the caption under the image called her Lagoona. Her fashion was different, but nice. Blanche typed her name into the search bar, and scrolled through the posts, saving ones that she thought she could use. Near the end, something caught her eye.

“‘Can Gill and Lagoona Survive the Summer?’” she murmured. “What is this?” She clicked the post and skimmed it.

“What’s it say?” Cleo asked, glancing over.

“It looks like a gossip piece- like when Duzer ran the Gravedale Gazette.” She made it to the bottom. “It says something about The Ghostly Gossip- maybe Spectra rebranded her blog, and didn’t delete the old posts?”

“Gossip, huh?” Duzer smirked. “Maybe this could be interesting after all.” She pulled out her phone and typed something.

“What are you doing?” Blanche asked.

“I’m going to see what old gossip I can find,” Duzer replied. Blanche sighed.

“You’re supposed to be working on your project, you know,” she pointed out. Duzer flapped her hand dismissively.

“It’s due next week, I’ve got time. Besides, don’t you want to know what drama they dealt with?”

“Not really- but you go ahead.” Blanche continued her search as Duzer scrolled, ignoring the other girl’s snickers to move on to Frankie. The girl had seemed to have a preppy style, and she was curious to see if she dressed like that all the time, or if she changed things up. A glance through a few posts proved the latter to be true. It looked like the preppy style was saved for her everyday school attire.

Near the end of the page, she found another old post- and gasped at the photo. Duzer and Cleo, the latter of which had joined Duzer in looking at her phone, looked up.

“What is it?” Cleo asked. “Did you find a fashion disaster?”

“No- look at this.” The other two girls moved to sit on either side of her and gaped at the screen. There was a photo, clearly edited together, of Jackson and Holt. The title read Frankie Stein Dates Two Boys at Same Time! Is There a Third We Don’t Know About? They all stared in shocked silence for a few moments. Duzer recovered first.

“I’m starting to think this Spectra girl isn’t a reliable source of information,” she said, glaring at the screen.

“No kidding.” Cleo frowned. “Do you think they were even dating?”

“I don’t know.” Blanche went to the search bar. “Let’s see. Maybe there’s more.” Duzer grinned.

“Yes! Break time! Homework was getting boring.” Blanche paused, midway through typing Holt’s name.

“Oh, that’s right- we’re supposed to be working on our projects.” She looked at Duzer. “And you should really start yours.” Duzer rolled her eyes.

“Alright, fine- I’ll get to work after we see what else Spectra has written about Holt and Jackson.”

“Deal.” Blanche finished typing Holt’s name and hit enter. Most of the posts were about whatever party Holt had DJ’d at, but there was one that stood out. Holt was walking away from a minotaur, who wore a shocked expression. The title read Holt Rejected Request to DJ Manny’s Party! Blanche clicked on the post and read aloud. “‘When Manny asked Holt to DJ at what’s sure to be an epic party, Holt refused, claiming he had better things to do. Is Monster High’s hottest DJ turning cold?’”

“That doesn’t sound like Holt,” Clo said, frowning.

“No, it doesn’t.” Blanche hit the back arrow. “Hold on, I think I saw the name Manny mentioned earlier.” She scrolled up till she found what she was looking for. “Here- ‘Manny’s birthday is a smash hit thanks to Holt's DJ skills!’. Why would Holt refuse to DJ at the party and then end up doing it anyway?”

“I don’t know, but it’s weird. Try Jackson’s name- maybe something else will pop up,” Cleo suggested. Blanche typed in Jackson’s name, and only a few posts appeared. One showed the minotaur, Manny, with an arm over Jackson’s shoulders. Manny and Jackson Put Aside Their Differences and are now Best Friends!

“Best friends?” Duzer asked, raising an eyebrow.

“That doesn’t look like a hug to me,” Cleo said doubtfully. “It looks more liike he’s in a headlock.” Blanche clicked the post, and the image grew so they could see the details. Jackson was holding Manny’s wrist and looking up at him, saying something. The minotaur seemed to be ignoring him staring straight ahead with a smirk.

“I’m pretty sure those two are not friends,” Blanch said. “Unless-” Doubt crept into her voice. “Do guys do that? Put their friends in headlocks?”

“I don’t know,” Cleo admitted. Duzer grabbed her phone,

“Me neither, but I bet one of the guys will. I’ll try Vinnie.” She scrolled for a minute, then dialed, putting the phone on speaker.

“Hello?” Vinnie said after a few moments of the phone ringing.

“Hey Vinnie,” Cleo said. “We’ve got a question for you- Duzer, Blanche and I.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Do you ever put your friends in a headlock?” Duze asked. “Like, when you’re walking down the hall together?”

“Or have you seen other guys do that?” Blanche added.

“No?” Vinnie said, the word coming out as a question.

“Not even Reggie?” Duzer pressed. He was Vinnie’s best friend.

“No,” Vinnie replied, this time more decisively. “That’s not cool. It’s bullying behavior, not friend behavior.” The girls exchanged grim looks. It was as they feared.

“Okay, thanks Vin,” Duzer said.

“Wait why do you-?” Duzer hung up on him and turned to the other girls.

“This Manny guy is definitely bullying Jackson here- it’s so obvious. I mean, look at him!”

“I know,” Cleo said. “He looks scared- do you think this happened often?”

“Well, he did mention some bullying-”

“Uh, guys?” Blanche had kept scrolling, and was staring at the screen in shock. She clicked on a post, and the title filled the screen. Group Fight Happening in the Biology Hallway Right Now! It read. The image was Manny, a few other guys, and in the center, backed against the lockers, was Jackson.

“Group fight?” Cleo said, her voice incredulous. “It looks time they’re all ganging up on Jackson, not like they’re going to fight each other!”

“I suppose these two-” Blanche pointed to two guys on either side of Jackson, half facing Manny and the others. “-could be mistaken as being on Jackson’s side, but it really looks like they’re planning to beat him up.” She scrolled and saw a video. Above it were the words: Update! Frankie and her ghoulfriends step in, stopping the fight!

“Play it,” Duzer said. “I wan to see what happens.” Blanche clicked play, and immediately, loud chatter came from her laptop. The students around the group were talking, but standing well enough back to give them space. There was no teacher in sight.

Manny had just taken a step closer to Jackson when a voice split the air.

“Enough!” it shouted. The camera moved to reveal Frankie and her friends. She moved toward Manny, Jackson, and the others, frowning. “Come on guys, you can handle whatever’s going on better than this!”

“Yeah!” Draculaura piped up. “There’s no need to fight!” They continued to lecture the boys, scolding them for trying to solve their problems through violence. Near the end, Frankie crossed her arms.

“All of you, shake hands and make up.”

“She can’t be serious,” Duzer said, staring.

“She is,” Cleo replied. With barely contained eye rolls, the guys shook hands with each other. When Manny shook hands with Jackson, the latter winced. It was barely visible, but it was there. No one noticed- the girls looked satisfied, and the other students had settled down and started walking away since the excitement was over. The camera swiveled to face the holder, a girl with long purple hair, purple eyes, and white skin. She was floating near the ceiling- a ghost.

“Thanks to the ghouls, the fight’s been resolved!”

“Spectra!” Frankie called. Spectra turned the camera, diving low to stand in front of the girls. Frankie smiled. “You see everyone? Violence is never the answer- you can always put aside your differences and talk it out with words.” She looked off to her left. “Right guys?” Spectra turned to the camera to follow her gaze, revealing Manny and Jackson.

“Right,” Manny said, smirking. He put an arm around Jackson, dragging the teen close to him and squeezing. “We’ll talk out our problems from now on.” Spectra turned the camera back to herself, talking about her blog and imploring listeners to follow her. Blanche paused the video and looked at her friends.

“That was obviously fake, right?” She asked. Cleo and Duzer nodded.

“He probably did something to Jackson right after that,” Duzer said, rolling her eyes. “How did they think he was genuine?”

“I don’t know- but I think we should talk to the twins,” Cleo said. “I’m still curious about what happened between Holt and Manny- maybe his refusing to DJ the party has something to do with Manny bullying Jackson.”

“Maybe,” Blanche said. “We’ll ask them tomorrow in class. But for now-” somewhat reluctantly, she went back to the homepage. “We should get back to preparing for our projects.” Duzer groaned.

“Fine,” she said. She picked up her own laptop. “But I’m going to keep searching Spectra’s blog later.” Cleo and Blanche laughed.

“Let us know if you find anything else on the twins,” Cleo said. Duzer gave her a thumbs up.

“I’ll text you later.” Blanche typed Draculaura’s name into the search bar, somewhat distracted.

Yes, Jackson had told them he’d been bullied at Monster High, and the teachers didn’t do much about it, but she hadn’t expected it to be as bad as what she’d just seen. It was concerning.

Well, she thought. At least they’re away from there now. And we’ll learn more about what happened tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Holt shut his locker door and pulled his backpack on, humming slightly.

“J?” he said, beginning the walk down the hall to the classroom. “Have you noticed anything weird with Blanche, Duzer, and Cleo?”

You mean the staring and whispering? Jackson asked. The entire bus ride, after the girls had gotten on the bus, they'd kept sneaking looks at the twins and whispering together. Yeah, I noticed. Do you think something’s wrong?

“Maybe- but I have no idea what it would be."

“Hey Holt, wait up!” Cleo‘s voice called.

Look’s like we’re about to find out, Jackson said. Holt smiled as he stopped and turned around.

“Hey Cleo- Duzer, Blanche,” he added, noticing the other two girls approaching. “What’s up?”

“We were going through the gory gazette last night,” Blanche began. They kept walking, and Holt walked with them, continuing on to class. “Thanks again, by the way.” Holt’s smile widened.

“No problem, happy to help.”

“Anyway, while I was scrolling through it, I found some old posts labeled as the Ghostly Gossip?”

“Oh.” Holt rolled his eyes. “That was the name of Spectra’s old blog- she never listened to the whole story when she listened to conversations, so a lot of the posts on there are way off base. Eventually she learned what misinformation can do to people, so she stopped posting gossip and started the Gory Gazette instead.”

“Did you or Jackson ever read her blog?” Cleo asked. Holt shook his head.

“No- we preferred to stay out of gossip and rumours. Besides, anything important would spread through the school without her blog.” The girls nodded in agreement.

“Well, there’s a few posts from Spectra we found that we wanted to ask you about,” Blanche said. As she scrolled through her phone, presumably for the posts, Duzer spoke up.

“Were you guys actually dating Frankie Stein?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. Cleo elbowed her.

“Duzer! That’s not what we were going to ask! It’s not any of our business!” Duzer scowled at her.

“What? I’m just curious!”

“It’s okay,” Holt said, laughing slightly. “No, we weren’t. Jackson tried hanging out with her a couple of times after they met, but there was music both times. The second time the music was unexpected, so he left before we switched. We didn’t want to leave her hanging, so I went back to join her- but I didn’t tell her what happened.” He winced. “Sometimes, telling others we share a body makes things worse, not better. We didn’t want to risk it so early on- we were still new then. Anyway, Spectra saw her with both of us several times, and she came to her own conclusion from there.” Duzer nodded, her curiosity satisfied, and Blanche looked up.

“I found it- can you tell us about this guy?” she held out her phone, revealing a photo of Manny holding Jackson in a headlock. Jackson groaned, and Holt frowned.

“That’s Manny- he was one of Jackson’s main bullies. He doesn’t like humans, and J was an easy target for him.”

“Sounds like Coach Cadaver,” Cleo said. “He didn’t like Mr. Schneider much at first, but he’s used to him now.” Holt raised an eyebrow.

“Speaking of Coach Cadaver, I thought I- or Jackson, at least- would have to deal with something from him or his students, but nothing’s happened.”

“Cadaver’s the one who doesn’t like humans,” Duzer said. “His students are just jerks in general. But they’ve laid off of all of us ever since Vinnie beat Gnardo in fly or splat, and Mr. Schneider told them both off for settling their issues with a stupid challenge.” Holt smiled.

“That’s cool. I wish it’d been that easy at Monster High.”

“So, back to Manny,” Blanche said. “You didn’t like him either?” Holt shook his head.

“No- apparently I annoyed him, so whenever I saw him he’d ignore me, on a good day, and make some insult on bad days.” Blanche started scrolling again, and held her phone out for him to see.

“I also found this other old post about you both. It says you refused to DJ a party of his, but then you wound up doing it later.” Holt rolled his eyes.

“Oh, that. I refused because of how he treats Jackson. I swear he forgot we were twins whenever it was convenient for him.”

He treated you badly too, Holt, Jackson said. Verbal bullying is still bullying. Holt smiled.

“I know, I know- you’re right.” he repeated Jackson’s statement, and the girls nodded.

“It sounds like he was just awful to both of you,” Blanche said, frowning.

“Yeah- between physically assaulting Jackson and insulting me, I wanted nothing to do with him. So, I refused to DJ at his birthday party.” Duzer smirked.

“Good, he didn’t deserve it.”

“Wait, so then what happened?” Cleo asked. “You did end up DJing for his birthday, didn’t you? That wasn’t a different party?”

“No, it was the same one.” Holt sighed. “Frankie and her friends saw the post and confronted me- with how Spectra described it, I looked unreasonable. They said I’d been rude, and I should apologize and agree to DJ for him. I said no, but then they- Draculaura, Clawdeen, and Lagoona, mostly- got Clawd and Lagoona’s boyfriend Gil to talk to me and try to convince me.”

‘“Seriously?” Duzar scowled. “Aren't these people your friends? They should know why you refused, even with Spectra’s post.” Holt nodded at her.

“Right? They should have- but they all seemed to think Manny had stopped his bullying after Frankie told him off when she met Jackson. He didn’t, just got more subtle,” he added. “But it wasn’t worth fighting all of them, so I agreed. I snuck out of the party as soon as I could.”

Wow,” Cleo said. “I can’t believe they called themselves your friends. You'd think they would be more understanding.”

“You’d think.” Holt shrugged. “They weren’t so bad, though- when they weren’t doing stuff like that, at least.” He smirked. “Besides, we’re not at Monster High anymore- Manny can’t hurt us. Thanks for checking in though, I appreciate it.”

“Of course,” Blanche said. “You guys are our friends- we were worried about you.” They walked in the classrooom, and Vinnie looked over.

“Yo, Duzer!” he called. “Why did you call to ask me if guys put their friends in headlocks yesterday?” Holt laughed.

“You called to ask Vinnie whether that was normal for guys?” he guessed. Duzer shrugged.

“Guys are weird, it was a possibility.” Vinnie raised an eyebrow.

“So, what was that for?” Reggie raised his hand.

“Vinnie told me about it- I’m curious as well.” The girls glanced at Holt.

“Do you mind if we explain?” Cleo asked. “It’s your story.”

I don’t mind if you don’t, Jackson said. Holt smiled.

“Go ahead.” He sat down as they began, sharing a shortened version of the events that led them to the question.

We probably should have seen this coming when we gave Blanche the Gory Gazette link, Jackson said.

“Yeah, probably,” Holt replied quietly. “But I don’t mind- the concern is nice.”

I know what you mean. Even if it’s all over and done, it feels good to have someone notice. I still have no idea how the teachers didn’t pick up on it.

“They weren’t the most observant bunch. But at least we’re not there anymore- we’ll never have to deal with them or Manny again.”

“And thank goodness for that.”