by Amber Benson
After her strange run-in at the cemetery, Noh spent the rest of her walk to the New Newbridge Academy deep in thought, trying to figure out how an old woman could simply disappear like that.
That was why she smelled the New Newbridge Academy before she saw it. The cook, Mrs. Marble, was known throughout five counties for her apple pie, and she was in baking heaven today. Noh’s mouth began to water the minute the school’s front drive came into view.
All in all, the school was really a hodgepodge of different architectural styles. The old building itself was Gothic with large pointed windows and ornamental gargoyles sitting benignly at the front entrance and hanging from the roof.
The architect who had designed the building had thought the gargoyles would be sufficiently scary enough to keep even the most daring students from spending too much time climbing around up on the roof.
The inside of the building was voluminous, with two floors of classrooms and another floor for administration purposes. The basement had a therapeutic indoor swimming pool that lay dormant most of the time underneath a mechanized roll-out gym floor. When there was a really mean game of basketball going on down in the gym, you could actually hear the scuff of tennis shoes on wood up in the biology labs.
Except for the basement, all the floors were made from slabs of thick gray stone that in the winter made the place as cold as a mausoleum, even when the furnace was turned way up. Between the drab gray walls, the roughhewn stone floors, and the school crest and Arthurian-themed tapestries hanging here and there, the place had quite an imposing air. Most sixth graders spent their first semester darting through the halls in mortal fear of ghosts and goblins grabbing them on their way to English class.
To her surprise, Noh saw her aunt sitting on the front steps of the main building, holding a crochet hook.
“Aunt Sarah?” she started inquiringly, but her aunt didn’t let her finish. Putting down her hook and yarn, she said, “I went to the station, but I missed you by ten minutes.”
“But—,” she started, yet once again was stymied by her aunt’s honeyed voice.
“Clara’s neighbors called when they saw someone lurking about the house. I assured them that it was only an errant niece.”
“But—”
Her aunt smiled. “How did I know it was you?”
Noh nodded.
“Because of the harried telegram I got from your father, telling me to go and collect you at Clara’s for the start of the school year. I almost borrowed a car to come get you myself, but then the neighbors called and I knew that you were too smart to stick around until Clara got back.”
“I didn’t want to stay with her, anyway, but my dad said I had to.” Noh’s eyes filled with tears of exhaustion and hunger. Her aunt smiled and held out her arms. Noh happily rushed into the proffered hug. For the next few minutes the tears streamed down her face as she recounted her homeless adventure in only slightly exaggerated detail. When she was finally done, she handed her aunt the polished stone from her pocket.
“I think it’s an evil eye, don’t you?” Noh asked excitedly. She really hoped her aunt would agree. Her aunt turned the polished stone over and over in her hand, deep in thought.
“Maybe you should let me keep this,” her aunt said finally, but Noh shook her head.
“It doesn’t scare me. I’ll just hold on to it for luck,” Noh said firmly, taking the stone back and slipping it into her pocket again. Her aunt gave her a funny grin but didn’t argue with her. Instead she stood up and took Noh’s hand.
“Let’s go get my brave girl something to eat.” She smiled as she took Noh’s bag and led her into the building toward the wonderful smell of newly baked apple pie.
So, She Fancies Herself a Pioneer, Does She?
Noh settled herself into her new room with contented sighs of happiness. The South Wing, which housed all the girls, had been built to look like a villa on the Côte d’Azur. In a very forward-thinking moment the trustees had hired a woman—one of the few women architects in the state—to design the building.
Millicent Farley had grown up in Europe and had been obsessed with the southern coasts of Italy, France, and Spain. When given the commission at New Newbridge, she had been quoted as saying, “I would like to give all the young women of the New Newbridge Academy a taste of what it is like to live in paradise.”
It was said that on quiet spring evenings you could actually hear the roll of the surf from anywhere you happened to be standing in the South Wing. And the smell of suntan oil and cassis was almost palpable every day of the week.
Noh’s own small dorm room was warm and cozy. The small twin bed was made up with soft cream-colored sheets and a bright geometric-patterned quilt that her aunt Sarah had made with her own two hands. The floor was smooth vanilla pine and covered with a pink and mauve woven rug. The walls were bare cream, the paint new and unchipped.
All in all, Noh was pleased. It wasn’t as nice as her room back home, but it would more than do. She was sure that she could learn to live without her TV and computer. Well, pretty sure.
After a quick nap Noh decided to explore her new surroundings. Her visits to the school in the past had been no more than cursory. She had never had the opportunity to really check the place out. She figured that there was no time like the present to remedy that.
Her room was down the hall from her aunt Sarah’s. Since her aunt was one of the dorm supervisors, she lived on the same hall as the youngest girls.
But when Noh got to her aunt’s room, she found the door shut and locked. She knocked twice with the back of her fist, but only succeeded in hurting her knuckles. She waited in vain for Sarah to open the door, but her aunt didn’t so much as cough behind the thick oak door. Finally, Noh got bored with waiting and decided that Aunt Sarah must be out and about. She shrugged her shoulders and made a quick beeline for the exit.
Once she was outside, Noh felt much better. It wasn’t that the girls’ dorm gave her the creeps or anything, but Noh had just never much liked being trapped within four walls and a roof. Noh breathed in the fresh air and started to run. Her first order of business was to take a quick jog around the grounds and sort out what was where.
The wind had started to pick up, and Noh’s dark brown hair whipped across her face and tried to find its way into her nose and mouth. She pulled a shiny sterling-silver barrette from her pocket and pulled her hair back into a not-so-neat ponytail.
She was glad that her hair was stick straight and superfine. Otherwise, the thin barrette would never have held her shoulder-length hair in place. The barrette had been a present from her father on her tenth birthday, and she cherished it. Her father never said, but Noh had the distinct impression that the barrette had been her mother’s.
As she walked across the grounds of New Newbridge, Noh realized that they were even more picturesque than the buildings.
The football field was huge, with bleachers all around. Everett Smithers, the coach at New Newbridge from 1920 to 1950, was considered to be, by those in the know, one of the greatest high school football coaches of that century. A number of boys, after spending four years under the coach’s tutelage, went on to football glory at Notre Dame, Harvard, and Yale. Sadly, after his retirement, football at New Newbridge was never quite the same.
The archery range was beautiful. It had spawned a number of state archery champions and a few “more infamous” students responsible for a number of “unintentional” peer maimings.
The stables were well cared for. The horses were either friendly and eager to please or holy terrors that spent a lot of their time in the paddock, munching grass.
Artemis Lake was wide and calm as Noh stood at its edge. Amateur rowers, swimmers, sailors, and fishermen used it in the spring, summer, and fall. In the winter it was a place to go and mope around when one was feeling depressed over an unrequited crush or bad mark on a paper. Visiting the frigid winter lake was good therapy. It reminded you that even when things looked terrible, spring w
as just around the corner to cheer everyone up.
Noh couldn’t help marveling at just how large the New Newbridge Academy was. She had known that this was the case, but somehow she had needed to see it for herself. When she came to the football field, she climbed to the top of the bleachers and sat down for a quick rest. From her vantage point she could see the whole backside of New Newbridge. She was particularly drawn to the burned-out side of the West Wing.
Noh decided that it looked as if some hungry giant had taken a bite out of the building. The missing and blackened-out parts were in stark contrast to the rest of the building, which was still in pristine condition.
Her aunt Sarah had told her that the school trustees had known how rambunctious boys could be, so they had decided to entrust the design of the East and West Wings to an ex–army engineer. William Atherton, a twice-decorated Great War veteran, had seen it as his duty to make the place as strong as an elephant. He had reinforced the walls so that they were fist- and foot-proof, put in the hardest woods for the floors and trim, and even put peepholes in every door to instill that little bit of army paranoia that “Big Brother” was watching.
Until the fire that destroyed the West Wing, the boys’ dorms were truly thought to be indestructible.
Noh wondered when someone was going to fix the West Wing and make it habitable. Not that she minded the creepiness. In fact, it was quite the reverse—she liked the sadness that she sensed emanating from the burned-out old warhorse of a building. She wondered if maybe, somewhere in its depths, there was a kindred spirit just itching to make her acquaintance.
She left the bleachers and football field behind and found herself standing directly in front of the West Wing’s back door. She hadn’t meant to go there, but she was unable to make her feet go in any other direction. Out of politeness she knocked on the door and waited the obligatory ten seconds. When no one came to open the door, she opened it herself.
The knob was cold and hard in her hand. She didn’t think that the steel would be so cold, with the weather outside as warm as it was. She closed the door softly behind her and shivered. The place was a refrigerator. Noh wished that she had brought her jacket, but how could she know that the West Wing would be a deep freeze? She thought about turning around and going back the way she had come until she could crawl into her nice, warm bed and pull the covers over her head.
But she stayed put. The place wasn’t that bad, really, except for the cold.
The sunlight was still alive enough to illuminate Noh’s way, so she didn’t bother fumbling with the electric lights as she began to explore. Her feet made soft swooshing noises as they echoed their way across the room. Noh decided that the place she had entered must have once been the laundry room. She could almost hear the swishing of the washers and dryers.
She left that room and found herself in a long hallway that eventually dumped her out into the front entrance hall. She walked over to a large painting that hung precariously on the wall. It was placed so that it was the first thing anyone saw when they entered the West Wing from the front door.
Noh studied the drawn, grouchy face of the old man in the picture. The painting was done in oil so that the picture’s subject seemed to almost glow with some inner light. It’s a shame that he has such a nasty look on his face, Noh thought. Otherwise, it would have been a truly magnificent painting.
“He looks like he’s got a bug up his butt, huh?”
Noh sucked in her breath and turned around hurriedly at the sound of the voice. The girl was wearing a yellow T-shirt and a pair of hiking boots. The book in her hand was old and dog-eared from reading.
“Yeah, he kinda does, doesn’t he?” Noh responded. She had been frightened by the voice, but now was very happy to see that the voice’s owner was about her own age and looked friendly.
“Do you go to school here?” the girl asked curiously. She scratched her arm as if something were biting her. Noh wondered if there were lots of mosquitoes because of the lake. Maybe she could entice her dad into visiting her by boasting about all the mosquito larvae that were to be found on the school grounds.
Noh nodded her head. “Not yet, but I will be going here when school starts back up again this fall.” Noh watched the girl give her arm one final scratch, then leave the bite alone.
“What’s your name?” The girl didn’t seem to be in the least bothered by the fact that they were all alone in this creepy old building. Noh watched her carefully.
“Noh,” she answered smoothly. “My name’s Noh, short for Noleen.”
The girl thought this was funny. She giggled.
“I’m Nelly. I’m not short for anything.” The girl seemed to think that this was funny too, and laughed again.
“I should get back,” Noh blurted out. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Maybe.” The girl smiled. She nodded her head up and down as if she were some kind of marionette puppet.
Yipes, Noh thought.
They stood in complete silence for over a minute, and then Noh broke the spell.
“Okay. Well… er, bye,” Noh said quickly, and made a run for the front door. Finally, something—someone—was giving her the creeps.
Nelly watched the new girl run out the door. She looked down at her arm and scratched the sore spot again. It didn’t really hurt. She scratched it more from habit than anything else.
She would have to tell Trina about the new girl, she thought.
Back at the girls’ dormitory, Noh found the door to her aunt’s room unlocked. Noh knew immediately that she should have knocked instead of just barging in, but she was unable to stop herself. Inside she found her aunt Sarah standing over a giant iron cauldron.
“You’re just in time for some tea,” Aunt Sarah said as she dropped a handful of rose petals into the iron pot.
Noh, Tea in Your Coffee?
Noh backed into the hallway and, without a word, walked slowly toward her room. When she got there, she opened the door and went inside. Closing the door behind her, she crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head.
It had been that kind of day.
She stayed under the covers for a long time. She pretended that she was an embryo living in her mother’s belly, growing very, very slowly. She played a breathing game in her head—every breath she took was really an echo of her mother’s heartbeat.
This continued into the early evening. She finally surfaced from her make-believe world when her stomach started growling. Mrs. Marble was fixing “something and chipped beef”—Noh was certain of it. There was no other smell in the whole world that compared with the smell of good old chipped beef. This made Noh feel better. At the very least, something normal was gonna go into her stomach tonight.
The knock on the door startled Noh out of her chipped-beef reverie. When she didn’t answer, the door opened and her aunt Sarah came in carrying a tray of tea.
“I thought you might be hungry,” Aunt Sarah said in a quiet voice. “Dinner won’t be ready for another hour.” It was as if she were trying to keep herself from saying other things instead.
“You don’t have to have any if you don’t want to,” Aunt Sarah said even more quietly.
Noh looked down at the tray. There were two scones and a peanut butter cookie arranged elegantly around the teapot and mugs.
“Do you want to have something to eat with me?” Noh said just as quietly. Anyone looking in would have thought they were in a library. Her aunt nodded and began pouring the tea.
“When you were little, Noh, you always tried to drink my tea,” Aunt Sarah said as she handed her a mug of honeyed tea. “But you wanted nothing at all to do with your father’s cup of coffee.”
“Oh,” Noh said.
They sipped their tea in silence after that. Noh occasionally stole glances at her aunt from under her lowered eyelashes. She loved her aunt more than almost anyone else, but there was something about her aunt Sarah that—as much as it compelled Noh’s love—also very much intimidated h
er.
“What were you doing? Before, I mean, when I barged into your room without knocking?” Noh blurted out the question, spitting bits of cookie through her lips as she talked.
“I had already had a kinda strange day, and then to see you standing over a big old cauldron like that was even stranger.…” Noh trailed off, unsure if she should be saying all this. But she continued on, unchecked. The words slipped from her mouth like slimy old banana slugs.
“You’re not a wicked witch, are you? I mean, if you are, that’s great, but it’s kinda weird. If you are. A wicked witch. I mean…” Noh trailed off again. This was just like digging your own grave. Every inch you sank deeper into the earth just kinda creeped you out and made you feel slightly nauseated.
Her aunt put a reassuring arm on Noh’s shoulder. “What if I told you that I was going to teach a history class next semester in which one would be pretending to live in the nineteenth century. Well, for the duration of each class, that is, and then one can go back to the rest of one’s day living normally in the present. And the giant “cauldron” you saw will be used to show how one did one’s laundry—back before the advent of mass electrical consumption and the widespread use of modern washing machines.”
Silence, as Aunt Sarah waited for Noh’s response. After her own little diatribe Noh felt kind of sheepish.
“Oh,” Noh said in a very teeny, tiny voice that she hoped her aunt could hear. It wasn’t that she was really that worried about her aunt Sarah being a wicked witch. She didn’t know why she had made such a big deal out of the whole thing. She supposed that it had something to do with being newly alone and feeling strange about her scholarly surroundings.
“But then what if that weren’t really the truth? What if I really were a witch? A wicked witch, like you say. Would that bother you, Noh?” Her aunt didn’t wait for a response. She stood and patted Noh’s head. “You shouldn’t judge anyone on what you see with your eyes alone. And just for the record: I’m not a wicked witch—at least for the next semester—because I’m going to be a pioneer instead.”