by Kit Pearson
“What you and Helen and the others did yesterday was very serious,” Miss Tavistock began. “But I’m happy to be able to tell you that the other charge against Helen has been dropped.”
All of Eliza’s indifference flew away in a rush. She clenched her fists and waited.
“Jacqueline Chung was here this afternoon, visiting her dog. I overheard her and Linda O’Hara discussing Helen’s prank, although how they heard about it I don’t know. Jacqueline told Linda she had seen Helen at the store yesterday. So I questioned her—she had given Helen the licorice. When Mrs. Crump saw her after closing the store she assumed Helen had taken it, since she’d been lingering in there all evening. I have phoned and told her that Helen did not steal anything.”
“Oh, Miss Tavistock,” breathed Eliza with shining eyes. “Does that mean she won’t be expelled?”
“I wasn’t going to expel her this late in the year, although I was going to ask her not to return. But yes, now she can stay. It is obvious she isn’t a thief, and I apologize to you, as I will to Helen, for suspecting that she took the Pound Money. Perhaps you will return next year also, Elizabeth—although I must say I’ve had enough of both of you at the moment.”
This was almost a joke, and Eliza grinned. She was so happy she wanted to laugh, but then Miss Tavistock became stern again. “Now let’s talk about the other matter. Helen is to be grounded for a month, and you are for three weeks. That means no walks, no films, no Saturdays out and no Victoria Day weekend—you are not to leave the school property. Pamela and Caroline are being grounded also, for a lesser time, and Pamela is no longer your dorm head. You have not shown me that any of you are responsible enough for that position, and Miss Bixley will just have to supervise you more closely. Each of the four of you will apologize to the matrons who were on duty that day, as well as to your aunt and uncle.”
Eliza barely listened to these penalties. None of them mattered, as long as Helen was saved.
“You may go back up to your dormitory now, but I don’t want you to discuss this endlessly, do you understand?”
Eliza nodded and shook the headmistress’s hand fervently. “Thank you, Miss Tavistock! We’ll be so good, you won’t believe it!”
“I’m sure I won’t,” said Miss Tavistock dryly. “Go on to bed, Elizabeth. It’s late, and I still have Helen to speak to.”
CARRIE, JEAN AND PAM were crowded together on Carrie’s bed when Eliza threw herself into their midst. Carrie clutched her so hard that Eliza yelped in protest. “Oh, Eliza,” the other girl whispered. “I missed you! I was so relieved when Miss Tavistock told us you and Helen weren’t expelled. We really thought you might be. But where is she?”
“Talking to Miss Tavistock.” Eliza released herself from Carrie’s grasp and punched a beaming Jean on the arm. Then she looked at Pam. She didn’t know what to say to her.
“I’m sorry, Eliza,” said Pam quickly. “I couldn’t help it. I had to tell. Helen was taking so long.”
Part of Eliza knew she’d never forgive her. She also knew that Pam would never change. Pam, like herself, had only done what she’d thought was right.
“At least it wasn’t worse,” Eliza said finally. “At least we’re all still together.” They sat quietly in the dark and waited for Helen.
18
What Really Happened
B ecause Miss Tavistock had warned them not to, the others were afraid to talk much about what they came to refer to as “the last dare.” But Eliza had to know exactly what had happened, and after school on Monday she dragged Helen off to the edge of the woods to hear the whole story.
They leaned against two tree trunks. It was forbidden to go right into the woods, and although they often did, neither had the energy to break a rule today. Eliza’s nerves were still so jangled that it was a relief to collapse on the cool grass. Helen looked just as frazzled—pale, tired and unusually quiet.
“Okay … why did you get off the bus?” Eliza prompted.
Helen sounded incredulous, as if she were talking about someone else. “Well, it was still early. It seemed a waste to go back so soon. I figured I could hang around Dunbar for at least an hour.”
“But you haven’t got a watch!”
“Don’t I know it! I should have borrowed yours. I just kept asking people the time. I wandered around all the stores.” She sounded wistful. “That part was great, being able to go wherever I wanted. Then the ticket man at the movie asked me if I wanted to go in for the last part—he said it wouldn’t cost me anything. And he said there was only half an hour left. But when I came out the theatre clock said four-fifteen!”
“But didn’t you realize it was longer when you were watching it?”
“I got too interested. It was James Bond, and it was terrific! I was going to go back then anyhow, even though it would be risky. I would’ve just made it by suppertime. But then I realized I didn’t have bus fare! So I phoned your aunt’s—I thought you guys would think of something.”
“How did you, without any money?”
“First I looked up the number in the phone booth—that took forever, there are so many Chapmans. Then they let me use the phone in the library. And your aunt said you’d gone back to school. Why did you, by the way?”
“I don’t know,” said Eliza. “I just sort of felt something was wrong.”
“Well, I was glad in one way because I knew you’d bluff for me somehow.”
“It didn’t do any good in the end, though.”
“It might have. Thanks for trying, anyhow. It must have been tricky.”
“It was,” said Eliza. “I never want to have to go through that again! But what did you do then? You could have walked, I suppose.”
“That’s what I decided to do, but it was already too late. I couldn’t just stroll into school after supper—what would I say? Especially when I didn’t know what kind of story you’d cooked up about me. I wanted to phone the school to find out, but they made me leave the library when it closed. So all I could think of was not coming back until everyone was in bed.”
“What did you do all that time?”
“I stayed in the park there for a while. There was a baseball game going on. That’s where I found a dime in the phone booth and called you. Then I walked back and hung around in Crabby Crump’s, reading magazines. She couldn’t stand that, of course, so she finally kicked me out. Then she …” Helen’s voice became low and angry, and she stopped.
“I know what happened then,” Eliza said quietly. “Miss Tavistock told me. Crabby Crump accused you of stealing.”
Helen kicked the grass. “I couldn’t believe it, after everything else that day! There I was, sitting innocently on the bench outside the store, waiting for the sun to go down. And Jackie and her older sister came by. They talked to me for a while, and I told them I’d sneaked out to go to the store. They laughed—they think we do stuff like that all the time! Luckily Jackie’s sister doesn’t go to Ashdown. She didn’t care, in fact she thought it was great. Anyhow, they went in and bought some red licorice, and gave me some. Did I ever need that! And later Crump closed the store, saw me eating it outside and accused me of stealing it.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her the truth, but she didn’t believe me, of course. She walked away muttering to herself, the way she always does. I forgot all about it until Charlie said she’d phoned. And then Charlie didn’t believe me.”
“But why didn’t you tell her about Jackie?” This was what Eliza found the hardest to understand.
Helen’s eyes receded behind her glasses, as if she couldn’t remember. “I don’t know … Once she mentioned stealing, I just sort of clammed up, it seemed so useless to defend myself. Especially when …” She paused.
Eliza said nothing; they were both thinking about the same thing.
“Do you know,” Helen continued slowly, “I almost told her about the Pound Money? Not the first time she asked—I-I didn’t feel like saying anything more then—but
when she apologized later. It didn’t seem right to let her think I wasn’t a thief when I was. I probably should have told her …”
Eliza hated the shame in her friend’s voice. This wasn’t Helen! Helen was strong and daring, not downcast like this.
When she thought about it, though, it occurred to her that, deep down, Helen was always afraid. That explained why she was so brash all the time: she had to be, to cover up her fear. It was embarrassing to know this—and to know that Helen knew she knew. It made a bond between them they could never talk about.
“I’m glad you didn’t tell her,” Eliza said quickly. “You didn’t want to have to leave Ashdown, did you?”
“I guess not,” Helen admitted. “I’m not old enough to be on my own, so I may as well be here. I sure don’t want to live at home.”
“I thought you might have run away,” murmured Eliza.
Helen looked at her with amazement. “You did? Where would I go? Maybe once I would have considered it—before this year. But things are better here now. Or else I’ve changed.” Helen hesitated, then continued slowly. “Eliza … did you think I had stolen something again? I wouldn’t have, you know, no matter how hungry I was. I guess I just don’t need to anymore.”
Eliza thought she might as well be truthful. “I did wonder,” she confessed, “but I hoped you hadn’t.” There seemed no point in telling Helen she had lied for her. “And of course, you didn’t,” she said warmly. “You have changed.”
Helen absorbed this in silence, as if she weren’t quite sure that it was true.
“Tell me the rest!” urged Eliza. “Was it scary to sneak in?”
“That part was the easiest. I came in the back gate and ran across the grass to the fire escape. Lucky all the curtains were pulled in the matrons’ sitting room. Not that it made any difference,” she added gloomily. They both sat and pondered how near she had come to being safe.
“I can’t believe so much happened in just two days,” said Eliza finally.
“Neither can I,” said Helen. “In fact, I would even be glad if nothing else happened for a while.”
19
“Those Returning”
I t was the morning of Graduation Day, and all of the boarders except the graduates were putting out the chairs for the second time. Right after breakfast they had taken them from the gym and placed them in careful rows on the lawn. Then the sky darkened and a few drops of rain fell: back to the gym went the chairs, to be set up in there. But just before lunch it cleared up again, and Miss Tavistock decided to take a chance on the weather. “So much nicer to have the ceremony outside,” she said.
“Why can’t she make up her mind?” grumbled Helen, unsuccessfully trying to carry three chairs at once. “You’d think we were slave labour.”
Eliza rescued a falling chair and added it to hers. Helen was certainly her old self again, after being subdued for a long time. During the weeks of their mutual confinement to the grounds, the Yellow Dorm had stuck close together—especially Eliza and Helen, whose sentences had been the longest. Now they were all free. Two weeks ago Eliza had finally been able to go out on Saturday, and last week Helen had come too. Uncle Adrian had taken them fishing. Helen was the only one who caught a salmon.
“It’s hard to believe the year is almost over,” said Eliza. They stopped to rest, hiding behind a bush so they wouldn’t be caught. “Only one more week!”
“Don’t keep saying that!” complained Helen. “Then you’re leaving for good.”
Eliza looked at her sadly. The hardest person to leave behind was Helen. Harder than Carrie, who had promised to come to Edmonton in August. Eliza knew Helen’s parents would never send her on a visit.
A letter from Eliza’s mother had decided her future:
… Dad and I have been wondering if you’re going to want to return to Ashdown next year, since you’ve enjoyed it so much. But I’m afraid we just can’t manage it right now after all the extra expenses of this year. Besides, we do think you’re still a bit young to be away from home, especially when there’s no longer a reason for it. We’ll see about sending you back in grade ten, if you want to go then.
I hear from Susan you’ve been up to some mischief! You’re certainly going to miss all the fun you’ve had and the friends you’ve made …
Eliza reacted to the last sentence first. “Fun” and “mischief” indeed! Aunt Susan and Uncle Adrian were the same—they’d been eager to hear the whole story of the dare. “You girls are little devils,” Uncle Adrian had chuckled after Eliza had reluctantly told them a censored version. Her family would never understand how serious it had been.
Then the import of the letter sank in. She wasn’t coming back. With distaste, she reflected on the ugly modern school she would have to attend in Edmonton, all the dreaded activities that went on in that building, and the old friends from whom she now felt so distant.
After this year, however, she felt braver. Perhaps she could look upon Westview Junior High School as a kind of dare.
And she pictured being free from that school every day at three o’clock, riding her bike home and doing what she liked: reading in her own room that she’d organized to perfection, exploring the river valley with Jessie, playing cribbage with her father before dinner.
The world within Ashdown’s stone walls was secure and full of beauty—but lonely, too. The other world was disagreeable and uncomfortable, but it was where her family and home were. She couldn’t have decided between the two, and most of her feelings after reading her mother’s letter had been relief at not having to.
The worst part was leaving Helen. “I’ll see you sometime,” she assured her now. “We’ll be back in Vancouver to visit. If it’s not during the holidays we’ll come and sign you out. Won’t that be weird? I’ll be an outsider then …”
“Oh, I’ll survive,” said Helen blithely. “I’ll find another new girl to train. Lots of kids come in grade eight.”
Eliza flinched; it was still so easy to be hurt by Helen. Then she reminded herself that nonchalance was her friend’s usual way of covering up her real feelings.
“Did I tell you,” Helen continued casually, “that I’m going to be in the upper grade eight class next year?” Helen’s marks had improved simply because she’d spent so much time studying in the past weeks. There’d been almost nothing else to do during their confinement.
“Do you want to be?”
“I guess so. It doesn’t mean I’m turning into a brain like you, Eliza Doolittle,” she added hastily, “but it’s a change. And Charlie’s going to ask my parents if I can take acting lessons on Saturdays.”
“Will they let you?”
“Sure … they’ll just get my grandmother to pay for it.”
“I’ll write to you all the time, Helen,” promised Eliza. “And you have to write back and tell me everything that’s happening.”
“I will—you’ll be shocked!” Helen looked down at the rose petal she was shredding. “And some day we’ll both be finished school. Maybe we can travel together or something …”
That was a relief. Eliza’s deepest worry was that the other girl would forget about her.
“Do you want to get older?” she asked Helen curiously as they picked up their chairs again.
“Of course. I want to grow up and be free! To be finished with school and my family and just be on my own.”
“But it’s awful, all the things you have to go through as a teenager.”
“Sure it is, but you have to go through them to get any older, don’t you? And I don’t intend to ever get as goony as Pam. Nobody’s going to make me do anything I don’t want to.”
Eliza studied her friend for a few seconds and decided that probably nobody ever would.
AFTER LUNCH she balanced on the railing and listened to Madeline practise “Land of Hope and Glory” on the piano that had been moved onto the balcony of the Blue Sitting Room. Eliza was all ready for the ceremony, dressed in her clammy white dress. She rubbed
her shiny legs against each other, making them scratch; the grade sevens were being allowed to wear nylons for the first time. Below them the chairs were finally settled in long empty rows that would be filled in an hour with students and parents. Jean was racing a reluctant Bill, on his leash, around and around the lawn. The others were still upstairs changing.
The last swelling notes of the march ended. It was so solemn, it made Eliza shiver. Madeline would play it for the opening procession. “You’re going to get your dress dirty, sitting there,” she told Eliza.
Madeline was not coming back next year either. Mrs. Fraser said she could take her no further in piano, and so Madeline was going to live with relatives in Toronto and attend the Royal Conservatory of Music. Eliza felt better about leaving herself when she knew Madeline was going too.
“It’s funny,” mused Madeline. “On graduation days I always used to imagine how it would feel, to march up the middle to this music. Now I never will.”
“What about Brian?” asked Eliza. It was the first time she had mentioned him since the beginning of the term. “When Beth told me you had plans for next year, I thought maybe you were going to go to school in Kelowna so you could be near him.”
“I wouldn’t do that! What about my piano lessons? No, I’ve known Toronto was in the works for a long time—it just took a while to get it organized. I’ll miss Brian a lot, but we have plenty of time. My music is the most important thing to me now.”
Eliza grinned. “Maybe you’ll be famous one day and I can say I knew you.” She paused. “Madeline … can I write to you sometimes?” It had taken days to work up the courage to suggest this; it was the reason she’d changed early and come out to listen.
“Of course you can write, silly.” Madeline looked amused, as usual. “And I’ll write back. We won’t lose touch, I promise. And if you come back to Ashdown later, and I’m living close enough, I’ll come to your graduation.” Madeline was the only person to whom Eliza had mentioned this possibility. She didn’t want Helen and Carrie to count on it.