FRANKIE STEIN LIVED ALL HER EARLY LIFE IN a laboratory: covered windows; nice, clean concrete floors; flickering lights; and the comforting buzz of electricity. Endless books to read, gadgets to fiddle with, and contraptions to invent—like that electric flyswatter she wired up, or the automatic spoon… which more often than not missed her mouth and spooned cereal into her ear.

So it was mostly good! But also, it was so lonely.

Unlike all Normie kids and most monsters, Frankie wasn’t born a baby who grew up into a teenager. She was created as a teenager. She woke up one day on a slab and had to figure out what teenager even meant. Frankie used to scour the Monster Web for information about Normie teenagers, peer through the slats of a lab window, and wish for friends who could understand how just creepy-cool life was.

And now at last she has those longed-for friends, especially her BGF, Draculaura. Far worse than having to go back into hiding again would be disappointing her friends. She’s certain she let down Drac with the presentation. So what’s a ghoul to do? Fix it!

In their bedroom, Frankie grabs the Mapalogue¹⁷ from the closet and places the box on her desk.

17 The Monster Mapalogue is like a monster detector, complete with a world map and a Skullette magical teleporting thingamabob.

“The Mapalogue? To find Shadow High?” says Draculaura. “That only works to locate monsters.”

“Yeah, but what if Shadow High is monsters?” says Frankie. “It kinda sounds like it.”

She opens the box, and the wooden map unfolds. It’s smooth, polished by the fingers, claws, and tentacles of all the monsters who have used it over the centuries to find one another in a world full of Normies.

Burned into the wood’s surface are the borders and names of all the known places of the world.

The Mapalogue was how Frankie and Drac had found monsters hiding in various locations and then transported themselves there to deliver an invitation to Monster High. When they touched the Skullette token Draculaura now wore around her neck and spoke the words Exsto monstrum plus the monster’s name, the Mapalogue could send them directly to that monster. It was how they found Cleo de Nile, daughter of the Mummy, hidden in her royal tomb home beneath the desert sands. And how they found Lagoona Blue, daughter of the sea monster, emerging from the surf to meet them beachside.

“The problem is we don’t know anyone’s name at Shadow High,” says Draculaura.

“It’s a school, right?” says Frankie. “There’s got to be a principal.”

Frankie shivers with excitement. Or maybe a jolt of all that loose electricity just surged through her body and bolted up her spine. Either way, it is clawesome having friends. Friends mean adventures in a world so much bigger than a boarded-up laboratory.