The Daring Game (14 page)

As Eliza bent over the flattened lump of clay she suddenly felt dizzy, and a terrible trickle welling up in her mouth warned her she was about to be sick. Pressing her lips tightly together, she rushed from the Art Room into the bathroom outside the door.

When it was over, she turned helplessly to Miss Macdonald, who had followed her out. “All right, Elizabeth?” The teacher handed Eliza a paper cup of water to rinse out her mouth and a piece of toilet paper to blow
her nose. “Can you make it over to the sickroom now? Are you finished?”

“I think so,” whispered Eliza, hoping it was true.

Thea was delegated to take her over. She put her arms around Eliza's shoulders as they walked across the driveway. “You poor thing—it's awful to barf,” she said cheerfully. “But I bet it will be fun, being in the sickroom.”

It didn't feel like fun at all. Eliza watched her body being bundled into one of the hard narrow beds by Miss Monaghan. The nurse put a basin and a towel by the bed and then left her alone. Eliza closed her eyes and sank at once into sleep. The last sound she heard was the juniors playing outside the window:

Red Rover, Red Rover

We call Janie over.

Their high voices turned into a dream. Her parents were on one side of a field, lined up with the Demons, her Toronto grandparents and her friends from Edmonton. She was on the other side, among a group of shadowy Ashdown students.

Red Rover, Red Rover

We call Eliza over

called her mother and father.

She couldn't move. “Let me go!” she sobbed, struggling with the strong hands that gripped each of her arms.
“Let me go!” They relaxed their hold and she was free. She looked across to her family and friends.

Red Rover, Red Rover

We call Eliza over

they chanted again. But now their faces looked greedy, as if, when she reached them, they would hold her just as tightly as the students had.

“No!” shouted Eliza, and she ran away between the two lines—away from them all.

S
HE WOKE UP SHIVERING.
There was no more chanting outside the window. The curtains had been drawn and the room was dim.

“Are you feeling better, Eliza?” asked a small, friendly voice. Eliza turned her head and realized there were three other people in the sickroom.

The voice belonged to Holly, the youngest boarder, who was only nine. Her bright eyes examined Eliza with interest from the next bed. In the other two beds were Maureen, in grade eight, and Beth, in grade eleven.

“Eliza might not feel like talking, Holly,” said Beth softly, “and Maureen's asleep. Why don't you read your comic?”

Holly opened it up obediently, but she kept staring at Eliza over the top of it.

You can't even be sick in peace here, thought Eliza. She had never wanted to go home so much. She longed
for her own blue-and-white room in Edmonton, with her mother there to take care of her. All at once she sat up and vomited again into the basin. Then she lay back weakly against the pillow, tears sliding over her hot cheeks.

Miss Monaghan was at her side in an instant. “Poor Eliza,” she clucked, as she cleaned her up. “Are you feeling terrible, then? It's a bad bug, this flu, but you'll be rid of it in a few days. Now don't
cry
, pet! Don't cry …” She held Eliza's shaking shoulders, smoothed back her hair and tucked the blankets firmly around her. Eliza drifted off again, pretending the cool hand on her forehead was her mother's. This time she dreamed she was being rocked; and then the gentle rocking transported her into a bottomless sleep with no dreams at all.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
she woke up automatically just before the rising bell clanged outside the door. She looked around with surprise at the pristine white room, the brown woolly curtains with bright sunlight glinting through their cracks and the three sleeping forms beside her. I'm in the sickroom, she thought, stretching luxuriously. I don't have to get up at all. She felt perfectly all right. Not nauseated anymore, and strangely airy inside; better, in fact, than she'd felt all term.

Lazily she watched Holly wake up. The little girl's eyes popped open, and she sat up at once and began talking. “I threw up in the night, Eliza—did you hear me?”

Eliza wrinkled her nose. “No, but I can smell it!”

The nurse came in as the other two were stirring. “Now, how are you all today?”

Holly told her in great detail how she'd been sick, proudly showing Miss Monaghan the evidence in her basin.

“You should have pressed the buzzer for me, Holly—that's what it's for.” It was odd how much more Matilda focused on you when she was a nurse than when she was a matron. In the dorms she was vague, but in the sickroom she was all solicitous attention.

Beth said she felt feverish, and Miss Monaghan stuck a thermometer into her mouth. Maureen thought she was better. “Well, stay in bed until noon, and we'll see. You can leave then if you're all right. How are
you,
Eliza?”

Eliza thought fast. “I was sick in the night, too,” she lied. “But I made it to the bathroom. I think I
could
be sick again.”

“You keep still and warm, and I'll bring you some ginger ale. Maureen, you may have a light breakfast—I'll just nip out and order it.”

Eliza was ravenous after no dinner the night before. Her mouth watered as she watched Maureen eat a boiled egg, and she sipped her tepid ginger ale slowly, trying to make it last.

Except that she felt hungry, the rest of the morning passed pleasantly. It was sinfully delicious to stay in bed and listen to the clatter of the boarders' feet as they hurried down to breakfast. After they left for classes the residence was silent except for the distant ticking of the
hall clock, the whine of a vacuum cleaner upstairs and the drone of a plane tracing a path against the blue sky. Eliza even began to think it was better than being sick at home; here there was lots of company.

Beth didn't talk much, for which Eliza was grateful. She was Madeline's best friend, and Eliza felt shy with her. Maureen, a notorious gossip from the Red Dorm, informed Eliza about all the grade eight day-girls. Most of their attention, however, was absorbed by Holly.

Everyone liked her. She came from a logging camp far up on Vancouver Island, where there were no schools. She was small, neat and self-contained, calmly accepting the fuss everyone always made over her. Helen had been the same age when she came to Ashdown, and Eliza wondered if she had adapted as easily as Holly had. It wasn't very likely.

Eliza couldn't imagine herself living away from home at age nine. Yet Holly didn't seem homesick at all, and Eliza felt ashamed of her own recent unhappiness.

She and Maureen took turns reading aloud
Struwwelpeter
, which they found on a shelf of old books. It was so ridiculously gruesome they had a hard time speaking through their laughter. Even Beth seemed to enjoy it. But Holly didn't laugh; she listened gravely, her eyes wide.

Maureen left at noon, and while Holly and Beth slept, Eliza read two more of the books. One was an English school story, like the ones she had at home. As she read it, she thought about how different Ashdown
really was from a story. The nice parts were just as good, but the bad parts were worse, and the books said nothing about all the dull parts in between. Being sick, however, was turning into a good part. She felt totally relaxed, with nothing to worry about. Except for being hungry.

“I think I could manage to eat something now,” she told Miss Monaghan later that afternoon. She could hear the boarders at tea and drooled at the thought of the huge oatmeal cookies they always had.

“You haven't been sick all day—how about some chicken broth?”

That was better than nothing. Eliza slurped it up eagerly; she had never tasted anything so good. “I don't know how you can eat,” shuddered Beth and Holly, who had both been sick again.

In the evening the nurse brought in the television and they lay back comfortably against their pillows and watched it. Their lights were turned out at eight o'clock, but Eliza wasn't tired. She stayed awake for a long time, trying to figure out how she could spend at least one more day in the sickroom.

I
T STRETCHED OUT TO TWO.
Eliza discovered that if she just said she
felt
sick she was allowed to have dry toast, soup, ginger ale and tea, “to see if you can keep it down.” The other two were beginning to feel better and had some food too, but they couldn't swallow more than a few mouthfuls. When they weren't looking, Eliza stole the
pieces of toast they left on their trays, hid them under her pillow and gulped them down at night.

The two-day space became a special little world, inhabited only by Beth, Holly and herself. Miss Monaghan left them alone for long periods, since she still had to look after the juniors upstairs.

They spent the whole of Thursday morning cutting out Holly's book of paper dolls. Holly was the neatest cutter, but she was used to it. Eliza was amazed how much she enjoyed folding back the white tabs and fitting the clothes carefully onto the cardboard figures. Her fingers remembered the pleasure of it from years ago.

“This is really fun!” said Beth, slitting open a hat. She was a quiet girl, with a serious face. Eliza knew she wrote poetry; it was often published in the school magazine. It surprised her that Beth was helping them with the dolls. Somehow the three of them all seemed the same age.

They named the dolls—Prudence, Marigold, Amaryllis and Rose—and had a fashion parade across Holly's bed. Then they played Battleships and Hangman, made up elephant jokes and told ghost stories.

That evening a large parcel arrived for Eliza. It contained schoolbooks, some of her own books, Helen's radio and John. There was a note inside:

Dear Eliza,

Miss Clark made Pam send your homework. We were going to put in food, but then we remembered why you went in there! We thought you would be missing your bear. Get well soon!

Love,

Carrie, Helen, Pam and Jean

It was too bad about the food, but Eliza was touched. She missed the others; it felt like more than two days since she had seen them. She knew John was supposed to be a joke, but she was delighted to have him. They made him a paper hat, and Eliza let Holly keep him on her bed. She shoved her homework under her own bed; she would just tell her teachers she hadn't felt well enough to concentrate.

“Madeline's told me a lot about you,” said Beth on Friday morning, when Holly was taking a bath. “She thinks you'll be a prefect one day, you're so enthusiastic.”

Eliza was flabbergasted. A prefect! And she certainly hadn't been enthusiastic this term. Her cheeks turned pink with surprised pleasure. Since the week of her dare she had avoided Madeline, but it appeared that Madeline had not forgotten her, after all.

“I could never be a prefect,” she said shyly. “I won't be here then.”

“Aren't you at Ashdown until grade twelve?”

“Oh no—just this year.” Imagine boarding for five more years! Although most girls stayed once they'd started. Everyone else in the Yellow Dorm would be here that long. Eliza remembered that her parents had once considered sending her in grade ten—what if they still
did? The possibility put a new light everything, but she didn't want to think of it right now.

She would much rather talk more about her house captain. “Do you think Madeline will be head girl next year?” she asked Beth.

“Lots of people do. I'm not sure she wants to—she's worried enough about having time for her music when she's a prefect, which she's sure to be, of course. And … well, she may have other plans for next year.”

“
What
other plans?”

But Beth acted as if she'd already said too much about her friend. Eliza was too exhilarated by Madeline's high expectations of her to worry about it. She felt ashamed for neglecting Madeline; perhaps if they became close again the other girl would tell whatever she was being so mysterious about.

Eliza wondered if Beth wanted to be a prefect. It was supposed to be such an honour. Pam had already informed Eliza that
she
intended to be elected one, which was why she was always trying to make such an impression. Eliza couldn't, and didn't want to, imagine being old enough to wear a light blue blazer and boss everyone else around.

Holly returned and they had strenuous races with some crutches they found in a cupboard. Miss Monaghan appeared and stopped them. “I think all of you are better! But you may as well stay in here today, since it's Friday. Then you'll be rested for school next week.”

She finally gave them some real food: egg sandwiches and carrot sticks and applesauce. As Eliza gobbled it up she
knew she would be ready to leave tomorrow, thinking with relish of the good dinners she always got at Aunt Susan's.

T
HAT EVENING
Eliza crept to the door and listened to evening prayers being conducted on the other side of the wall. She was beginning to wonder what had been happening in the residence while she'd been away.

Miss Tavistock cleared her throat and began her nightly talk. Usually it only consisted of trivial announcements, but this evening she had a longer speech. “I am happy to be able to tell you that whoever has been taking money from the Pound Box has returned it. I'm still sorry that this person has not had the courage to confess, but I would like to thank whoever it is for paying the money back. I hope she has learned her lesson and will never do such a thing again. That's all I wish to say about the matter—we'll consider it closed.”

“What did she say?” asked Holly, when Eliza had got back into bed.

“Oh, nothing much. I couldn't really hear.”

She escaped into a book for the rest of the evening. But after Lights Out she had to face the revelation she'd had while listening to the headmistress's words.