Chapter 4: As Told By Frankie

Hi. It's Frankie. I'm really sorry to bother you like this, but I don't know who else to talk to. I wouldn't be writing to you if it wasn't really important, because I know you must be super busy. So could you please find the time to listen to what I have to say?

I think that something might be going on here. Draculaura's been acting a little bit strange lately. I really want to think that it's just her feeling the pressure of everything that she's supposed to be doing. But it's starting to escalate, and I want to know if I should do something before it gets really out of hand. I already know how it works with you, so I'll start at the beginning.

I don't know if anyone told you, but me and the ghouls have been planning to spend our summer vacation working on a back-to-school fashion show that we're going to host at Monster High. It's sort of our way of expressing school spirit beyond just a normal fearleading routine. You know, to make sure that this new school year starts with a bang. Well anyway, we ran into a snag almost immediately. Right after we left the scareport and went to Cleo's house to discuss the details of how to get our project started, we were stumped almost right away. We really wanted to have some kind of theme that we could use to base the show on, but we had a lot of trouble coming up with anything. In the end, we decided to leave that up to Draculaura, since she's the one who took up the responsibilities as the director of the project. Except she couldn't think of a theme either.

We were all pretty stumped, so we decided to put our energy into trying to figure out some other details that we should work on. After we decided to put the idea for a theme on hold, me, Lagoona, Clawdeen, Cleo and Ghoulia were working on other plans for the project. But Draculaura had already made her own plans with Clawd to go on a date. I don't really blame her for that, since I know she and Clawd have been a bit distant from each other lately, since Clawd's started trying out for the summer casketball leagues and Draculaura's got her hands tied up with this.

While they were at the movies, they met Heath and Abbey. Now, I only heard this secondhand from Abbey, but she said that while she and Heath were getting their tickets, she noticed Draculaura was acting weird. She kept pointing over at nothing, and seemed really insistent on trying to get Clawd to notice whatever it was. Actually, I don't think it was the fact that she was pointing at nothing, since Abbey said she couldn't really hear anything that either of them were saying. I guess what Abbey thought was so weird was that Draculaura looked a little bit flustered as she was doing it. Like, 'baby yak that has seen first avalanche,' I think was how she put it.

Now that I'm thinking about it, something kind of like that happened when me and Draculaura were at the scareport. After you left, she told me that there was a dog running around. But I didn't see any dogs there. I thought that you might have left your shadow behind, and that was all she was seeing. But I think if you had, it would have come to one of us to have you magic it back to you, or something, by now.

Anyway, after that happened, she and Heath waited for Draculaura and Clawd inside the lobby. I guess this was where things sort of started to get weird, because Draculaura kept saying that he hadn't been taking her side on a lot of things. I don't know what she was talking about, because I know that Clawd always tries his best to make Draculaura happy. Not that I don't think Draculaura might have had a point. I don't just want to say that she's wrong or that she's a liar. I wasn't there, so I don't really know what to think.

So, yeah, there they all were on their double date. I don't know if they planned it like that, or if they were just dating separately and met at the same place by sheer coincidence.-I'm saying this because I don't know if that's important to the story. You know, just covering the bases. Making sure anything that might be helpful is said. But back to the story.

So they all went to go and watch their movie together– I know this is getting way off topic, but have you ever seen Blightanic? Oh my ghoul! It's the best movie I've seen since I was built. My favorite part is where the leading lady poses to be drawn like one of his Scarisian girls. It's such a beautiful scene. Anyway, they were all in the theater, and at some point I guess that Abbey did something– I won't say what– That made Heath end up popping all of the unpopped popcorn kernels at the bottom of the bucket on his lap. I guess he made kind of a mess, because apparently burnt popcorn went flying everywhere.

You know how Heath is, so he started crawling around on the floor and swept up a bunch of the popcorn that he had already lost and put it right back in the bucket. He even went squirming under other people's seats and into the aisle to get it. I'm surprised the usher wasn't called to have him thrown out.

They were all made really uncomfortable by the smell of the burning popcorn. I mean, who wouldn't be. But Draculaura seemed to think that there was something else under it all. She kept saying that she smelled something else. It reminded her of something that she had left in the fridge for too long, before it went bad was what she said. Right after she said that she smelled that, she sat completely still and didn't even look at the movie. She just kept looking around. Like she was expecting someone.

Clawdeen told me this part after Clawd told it to her. He said that he could smell it too, but just blamed the burning popcorn mixing with some other thing that was in the theater. For some reason, Draculaura wasn't very convinced. She kept saying that it really concerned her. It's a little bit harder to think Draculaura might have had a point here, because how can a bad smell in the theater make you worry that much? I mean, I always end up smelling the sticky, soda-splashed floor and whatever snacks anyone else smuggled into the theater. It's always there, but it's not like it's going to ruin the movie for me. What I really can't stand is those guys who can't stop talking or making out with their ghoulfriends. Kind of sounds like a certain fire elemental we know.

So Draculaura's making this big deal out of some smell she can't explain, and then she sits bolt upright in her seat. When Clawd asked her what was wrong, Draculaura said that there was something in the aisle on the other side of them. At first, Clawd said that he didn't see anything, but then he heard something. He said that it was this kind of shuffling sound in the aisle. When he looked, he saw something in the aisle moving between the rows. Knowing him, Clawd was downplaying how freaked out he actually was, but it turned out that it was just Heath picking up more of his lost popcorn. Apparently, he'd circled around to the other side of the aisle and was really bothering a lot of people. Abbey grabbed him and plopped him back into his seat. His face must have been redder than normal after that.

But Draculaura? She began asking Clawd if they could go somewhere else for their date. Nothing bad happened, but she must have been really freaked out if it made her scared enough to want to leave the movie. And I guess she was scared, because Clawd had said he could see it in her eyes. I don't know what happened for the rest of that day, so I guess there wasn't anything particularly weird that happened.

Then there was the stuff that happened just earlier today. It kind of started when I got woken up by a text message from Draculaura. First thing in the morning, she's asking me and the rest of the ghouls when we can all meet up at the maul. She seemed really serious about getting past finding a theme for the show, so I wasn't too upset when she asked if we could be there as soon as possible. I don't know why she was having so much trouble with picking a theme, since the rest of us usually agree on something really quick whenever someone else is in charge. Maybe it was because Draculaura wanted to do something that we haven't done before. Like, I know we do a lot of fashion shows for the school, so she just wants hers to stand out among all of the others I guess.

Once we got to the maul, we tried to run a few of our ideas by her. I thought that some of them were really voltageous. But I guess she didn't like any of them. Sure, Draculaura's usually pretty particular about her style, but she didn't seem to want anything to do with whatever we suggested. Is it normal for a person to do that? Like I said before, I've done projects like these with the ghouls more than a few times, but I don't think they've been this difficult. But that wasn't what made me think Draculaura's acting weird.

We split up to try and find something, anything, that would inspire a theme for our show. I thought I had a few good ideas. And Cleo and Clawdeen did too. Except they were all a bit too similar to the things that Draculaura had already rejected before we split up. I swear, if Draculaura gets any more strict about this, she's going to turn into Ms. Kindergrubber. By the way, is it true that your oma was the one who gave the Nazis their ideas for disciplinary codes in schools? I mean, how does she justify flunking me for sprinkling a gingerbread house with allspice instead of cinnamon?

At some point, me and the ghouls just threw up our hands and decided to go take a break. We never did end up finding that theme we wanted, but we still got some good ideas for what to do for our show. Not any of us, but Toralei helped us out a bit. I know. Toralei, of all monsters, helped us. Sure, it's going to be a little extra work to pull off any of the ideas that she had, but it's nothing we can't handle. We just need a little bit more help is all.

Then there was Draculaura. Ghoulia sent her to go and get some paper towels for something. I guess Slo Mo was in some kind of accident–Don't worry. He's okay–and she needed paper towels for him. Except that she had been gone for a lot longer than she should have been, and Abbey had to go get her. By the time Abbey found her, Draculaura was really freaking out. She kept telling Abbey that they had to run because, 'it was in there.' I don't know what she was talking about, because she wouldn't say. By the time that me, Clawdeen and Cleo met up with the others, Draculaura seemed like she had calmed down. I tried to ask her about what had happened, but she kept changing the subject and acting like nothing was wrong. But I wasn't buying it. None of us were.

It seemed like Lagoona, Abbey and Ghoulia didn't have much luck with helping Draculaura pick something for a theme. I asked them what they tried to run by her, and they all sounded like they had good ideas. All they ended up with were some really voltageous shoes. I wish I knew where they got those so I could have gotten a pair for me. Then again, I don't know how it would look if we all ended up wearing the same shoes on the same day. Talk about tacky. Cleo taught me that.

A little bit after we all met up, Cleo suggested that we all go our separate ways to try and cover more ground than we would in two groups. If I'm being honest, I think Cleo just wanted to do that so that we could all do some shopping for ourselves. I really wanted to do some shopping to wind down after the frustrating day where we got nothing done, but I was also really concerned about Draculaura. First the scareport. Then the movies. Then the maul. Something didn't seem right to me, so I offered to go with Draculaura. I tried to make it seem like I wasn't doing it just to make sure she didn't do anything drastic, and the others all looked at me like I was about to jump into a pool. I didn't think much about it, because none of them actually knew how bad it was with Draculaura. Neither did I, until I went with her.

Draculaura seemed okay at first. We walked through the maul and talked about how things were going. Not anything about the project, just so you know. I wanted to try and help Draculaura to get her mind off whatever had happened to her before. I guess that plan fizzled out pretty hard.

No matter what I did, Draculaura wouldn't let her guard down. She was really jumpy. And she kept doing this side eye that really got on my nerves. I decided to try something different to help Draculaura. There was this electronics store that I really like, and I've been begging my dad to build a cellphone into my head, or a camera in my eye. Something to make me just a little bit more modern than the technology that was used to build him, like, fifty years ago. He said that when I made my own money I could do that myself. So I walked in to see if they were accepting job applications. They weren't. But that's not the point I'm trying to make.

I decided just to browse the merchandise that they had on the shelves with Draculaura. There was so much great stuff there. Did you know that they made things like a pogo stick that measures your weight every time you bounce? I didn't. I don't know why they would ever make something like that, but it's like my dad says about inventing: see a need, fill a need. So somebody must have needed something like that.

One of my favorite parts of the store is where you can sit down in front of a camera and see yourself on a bunch of different screens. Each screen has a different setting on it so that you can see which picture you like the best and decide which monitor you want to buy. Sometimes I go in there after shopping for clothes just so I can pretend I'm a big shot model at a big shot photoshoot. Sometimes I'm a model whose career sagged, so I pretend I'm doing a talk show.

So there we were, playing 'talk show.' Draculaura didn't seem as amused since she couldn't appear onscreen. She came around eventually and started getting into it when I pointed out that everyone was really into her ensemble. That reminds me, can you mix up some more of that magic makeup for Draculaura when you get back? She ran out of that first batch that Clawd gave her for Christmas.

Partway through our conversation about how Draculaura had just gotten back from a vacation in Hauntalulu with her adoring husband, Clawd, she mentioned a fashion show that she was about to host. When I asked her what it was going to be like, Draculaura's face lightened up a lot. She said that she was glad that I asked, because while the show was still in its early stages she had just made some serious headway. I could feel it in my stitches. She had finally chosen a theme for our show. I did my best to stay in character when I asked her what she had done. Just before she was about to answer, she started getting all weird again.

All of a sudden, Draculaura looks at the screen next to her and shrieks when she thinks she sees whatever it is that she thought she saw. It was just some other girl. A normie girl, for moaning out loud. I mean, how un-scary can something get. No offense, but you scared plenty of us when you first came to Monster High. But you were really big and you had that wicked chain. This girl was just one of those normie girls who wears all black and looks like she hung out in cemeteries because she thought it made her more like a monster.

Well, we got a lot of weird stares for that, so I decided to spare Draculaura the nerves and get us both out of there really quick. It was after we were out of the shop that I asked her what she was about to say when she said that she made headway with a big fashion show she was working on. Guess what? We have our theme! It's all about uniqueness and inclusion. I know that it's something that we've done a lot, but it's also something that we know really well. I mean, we're practically experts when it comes to this kind of thing. There's no way that we can mess this up.

It felt really good to finally get past that part of the project. I'm not going to lie, I was really close to choosing something for her behind her back. As we were walking through the maul, we stopped by a display window at a pet shop. You know, where they put all of their puppies for sale out on display. I saw the most adorable little rottweiler mix, and I wanted to go in and see if me and Draculaura could volunteer to walk the puppies around the maul for a little bit. For some reason, Draculaura said she didn't want to walk any dogs. I know it sounds like nothing, but you know that she never misses a chance to play with puppies. She was just looking at them like they were, pardon the expression, monsters.

I said that it was okay if she didn't want to do that, but I was going to go in and ask if they needed any volunteers. When I tried walking to the door, Draculaura blocked my way. She actually stood in front of me and tried to keep me from going in. I asked her what she was doing, but all she said was that we needed to go somewhere else. I told her we'd go there after I was done at the pet shop. I didn't mean to sound selfish or mean or anything. I just wanted to play with some puppies. But before I went in there, Draculaura grabbed me by my arm. I was about to pull out my stitches and go in without her, but she practically yelled at me to not go in there. When I saw the way she was looking at me, she looked like she was about to cry. I don't know what possibly could have been going on, so I asked.

Draculaura didn't answer me. It was like she had just shut down. Like, you know when Robecca needs a jumpstart after a bad crash? It was kind of like that. Only, she was shutting down emotionally. I don't think she wanted to talk about it for some reason. So, we just sat down on a bench until she was ready to go meet with the others.

She did her best to not leave any of our sides after that. For the rest of the day, Draculaura seemed like she was making sure that she wasn't alone. And when we all had to go home for the night, she was acting like she didn't want to go. I mean, she lives in that gloomy, old castle on top of that creepy hill with all the storms. It sounds like a dream house. Oh my ghoul! Do you think maybe there's something going on with her dad? Do you think maybe they're not getting along? I hope that's not the problem. Draculaura's already lost her human parents. What would happen if she had to be taken away from Mr. Drac?

I hope this story helped you out a little bit. Please try to get back to me as quick as you can. I don't want this to turn into something bad.

You tell a pretty okay story, Frankie.

I understand your concerns about Draculaura and her dad. I know better than most people about what a pain the foster care system is. But I don't think that you need to worry about much. I think you were right when you thought that Draculaura's just feeling the pressure of all of her responsibilities she has all of a sudden. Just do your best to help her out with whatever it is you're working on and you'll probably see her change for the better. If anything does get worse, tell me. And don't spare any details.

Just because you asked: no, Oma didn't give the Nazis any of their ideas about discipline. She actually fled Germany because of them. But I can see how you might think so, since she threw Heath into an oven that one time for burning a tart.

And yes. I've seen Blightanic three times already. Don't tell the guys, but I saw it without Clawdeen one of those times.

A/N: We took a little bit of a detour from our usual style of storytelling. A first person, secondhand account by one of the main characters. I mentioned before that the chapters having some kind of written passage from the characters was inspired by Dracula. I took things a step further this time around by having the entire chapter be a correspondence like in that book.

This is what it looks like when people have to tell Wolf a story when they want his help. We saw Gill do that in the prequel, but like Wolf said, he really sucked at it. I thought it would be interesting if we got to see what it was like when a character like Frankie would tell him a story.

Writing this chapter was a little bit more difficult than normal, because I had to think of everything from Frankie's point of view and write the narration in her character. I know that I'm good at writing her, but doing it for a whole chapter? I kept slipping into my usual narration style, then I had to go back and rewrite it as Frankie speaking from the first person.

We learned a little bit more about some things that have been going on in this chapter. Seems like Draculaura and Clawd have been a bit distant lately. That can't be good for their relationship. Still, the best they can do is try. Romance isn't always easy, you know. Both parties have to make an effort, after all.

Sadly, I didn't make up that thing about the pogo stick/bathroom scale gadget. It's something I saw in a Sharper Image catalogue a few years ago, and it still baffles me to this day that anybody would need something like that. If anything that scale would register you as heavier if your love handles are slamming down after every bounce. If any of you have some theory or explanation for this bizarre failure of ingenuity, I'd love to hear it.

If enough people liked this style of chapter, there might be a few more of them. For the time being, we'll have to wait for the next chapter. I hope you're excited for it, because we'll be seeing what Wolf and his foster siblings are up to.