Blow Out the Moon

by Libby Koponen

  “We brought you some roast chestnuts,” she said.

  “And I smuggled out two roast potatoes!” said Jennifer.

  That was so nice of them! And, while I was trying to get to sleep (I was the last one to fall asleep and the first one to wake up in this dormitory, too), thinking of smuggling those potatoes gave me an idea.

  Chapter Thirty-one:

  Food for a Feast

  The next morning I told the idea to the others.

  “Let’s have a midnight feast!”

  “With what food?” Jennifer said.

  We talked it over: It wouldn’t be as much fun with food from our meals, and we weren’t allowed to go into the village. Then Clare said, “My parents are coming to take Carol and me out one Saturday. Perhaps I could go shopping.”

  We made a list of all the things we’d LIKE to get: lemon squash, Cadbury’s chocolate fingers, butter, and lemon curd. Jennifer said that if Clare could get butter and lemon curd, the rest of us could stuff bread into our pockets at tea.

  Clare told me privately that her parents had said that she and Carol could each bring a friend, and she had already decided to invite me. She had just been waiting for her parents to tell her when they were coming.

  Lemon curd comes in a jar and it looks like bright yellow jam. You put it on bread. It tastes kind of like sour lemon candies, or a lemon meringue pie filling that’s not very sweet. Like many English foods, it sounds strange but tastes very good.

  Finally the day came and Clare and I were sitting at a table in a restaurant with her parents, Colonel and Mrs. Sweeting, and Carol and her friend Georgina Miskin.

  It was the first time I’d ever been to a grown-up restaurant without my parents. I think I did everything politely and ate everything properly.

  Mrs. Sweeting did most of the talking. After a while she paused in her conversation and looked at Georgina’s plate. Georgina had eaten everything except her Yorkshire pudding.

  “Don’t you like the Yorkshire pudding?” Mrs. Sweeting said.

  “Actually it’s my favorite thing,” Georgina said politely. “I —”

  “You like to save the best until last,” Mrs. Sweeting said. Then, with a big smile, “How wise you are!”

  I started to say that I did, too; and then I thought it would be better not to, so I didn’t. That’s one of the only times that I’ve started to say something and then stopped myself: I did it because I realized (very quickly, it was as though suddenly I saw myself from the outside) how — unbecoming, I guess you could call it, that remark would be: it would make me seem so pushy and greedy for attention!

  The thought was much faster than that explanation, though. Afterwards I felt quite pleased that I had had the thought quickly enough to keep quiet.

  Meanwhile, Clare’s mother was talking about saving the best until last in life as well.

  When we had put our knives and forks together, Clare said that we had an errand to do for the girls in our dormitory and could we go to the shop by ourselves, while everyone else had dessert?

  Clare’s mother and father both looked mildly surprised; Carol and Georgina looked at each other. Georgina (who I decided I didn’t like very much) was smiling in kind of a superior way.

  “It’s rather a private errand,” Clare said firmly, giving her sister and Georgina a cold look.

  Her parents looked at each other, and then Mrs. Sweeting said we could go.

  “Thank you very much for the lunch — dinner,” I said. “It was delicious.”

  “I’m so glad you were able to come,” Mrs. Sweeting said (in England they don’t say “You’re welcome”).

  Clare and I didn’t talk to each other until we were outside.

  “Do you feel proud to be out in your uniform?” she said. I thought about it.

  “Yes,” I said, finally. “Do you?”

  She nodded.

  We were in a little village, with a green in the middle of the street and old-fashioned shops with big windows divided up into lots of little panes. One had sweets in the window — we went in and found all the things.

  While Clare was paying, I saw a little white box with pale shapes in different colors — hearts and bells and horseshoes — and CONFETTI in pale blue capital letters.

  “What is this?” I said eagerly. “What do you use it for?”

  The woman smiled at me. She looked very nice, I thought.

  “It’s for weddings — when the bride and groom leave.”

  “People throw it,” Clare said.

  “That sounds fun!” I said.

  The woman smiled again, opened the box, and gave it a little shake: Pale shapes floated slowly onto the counter — hearts and horseshoes and bells and what I now saw were meant to be wreaths, in all different cheerful colors.

  “How beautiful,” I said and then, thinking how perfect it would be for the midnight feast, “Let’s get this, too!”

  “But, it’s for weddings.”

  “We can still throw it up in the air at our party!”

  Chapter Thirty-two:

  The Midnight Feast

  The alarm had probably been ringing for a long time when I woke up — I know in my dream a bell was ringing for quite a while.

  When I woke all the way up the bell was still ringing. It took me a little while to figure out where I was, what the ringing sound was, and why I had set the alarm. By the time I had done that, the ringing had stopped and the hands of the clock pointed to six after midnight.

  I sat up. The room was freezing (as usual, a window was open).

  “Clare!” I whispered.

  No answer.

  “Jennifer!”

  No answer.

  “Veryan!”

  No answer.

  I got out of bed — it was REALLY cold — and put on my dressing gown (now I saw why the girls in the school stories always did!) and even my slippers.

  English people were always talking, in books and real life, about how good for you “country air” was. That was probably why whoever put us to bed at Sibton Park always opened a window once we were under the blankets. Marza was very proud of how healthy we all were. My first term, Matron said once, “You were a pale London child, too, when you first came and now look at you! Marza was just saying yesterday how nice and rosy your cheeks have become!”

  Then I went over to Clare’s bed. I said her name a few times; she rolled over and went on sleeping. I shook her arm a little bit, then a bit harder. She opened her eyes, blinked a few times, then closed them again.

  I grabbed her arm.

  “Clare! The midnight feast!”

  She nodded and sat up.

  It took the two of us a long, long time to wake Veryan and Jennifer.

  Finally we spread the feast on a blanket and sat down on it ourselves, huddled together in a little circle. A little light came in through the windows — from stars? a moon we couldn’t see? No one had a torch: They were always confiscated, so old girls never even bothered to bring them.

  Things we weren’t supposed to have — like torches — were taken away and locked up by Matron. This was called being “confiscated.” You got the things back at the end of term.

  At first, we didn’t talk much: Everyone kept yawning and yawning, you could hear them. Then, I said, “Let’s have a toast! It’s true that we don’t have any glasses, but we can all hold a swallow of lemon squash in our mouths. The last person can say the toast and then we can clink hands — like this.” I made a loose fist and raised it, the way grown-ups raise their wineglasses, and lightly touched it to my other hand. “When we’ve all done it to each other, we’ll swallow the lemon squash! It will be a real toast, just without wineglasses.”

  “All right,” Clare said. “Who’s going to make the toast?”

  “I will,” Jennifer said.

  It was hard not to giggle after we had taken our sips and passed the bottle to the next person, but no one did. Jennifer raised the bottle, and we raised our fists while she said the toast
. Then she took a sip and we clinked fists (exactly the way grown-ups clink wineglasses), swallowed, and all started laughing.

  “Let’s sing something,” Veryan said.

  Everyone thought this was a good idea; we started with a song from singing class we all liked:

  Early one morning

  Just as the sun was rising

  I heard a maiden sing in the valley below.

  Oh, don’t deceive me,

  Oh, never lea-ea-ve me —

  The tune is really happy: very high notes going up and up in a descant. I liked the song so much that I sang a little. But I sang very quietly, so as not to ruin the sound: the others all had pretty voices.

  Ho-ow could you treat a maiden so?

  Remember the vows that you ma-a-ade to your Ma-a-ry

  Remember the bower where you vowed to be true!

  O, don’t deceive me,

  O, never leave me,

  How could you treat a poor maid so?

  By this time everyone was more awake. We sang more songs, and talked, and laughed — I sang out loud on the chorus of one. We always almost shouted it in a Scots accent:

  Oh you’ll tock the high road

  An’ I’ll tock the low road

  But I’ll be in Scotland aFORE ye. …

  Then I said, “Let’s sing a song and then, at the end of it, all throw confetti up into the air at exactly the same time.”

  “Yes, let’s!” Clare said. “What about ‘Auld Lang Syne’ for the song?”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “And, while we sing it, we can wish that we’ll always be friends,” she said, a little shyly.

  “Or at least think of each other whenever we sing that song,” I said.

  Jennifer said, “When grown-ups sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at the end of parties they always stand in a circle and hold hands. Shall we do that?”

  “What about throwing the confetti?” I said.

  “We could do that at the end of the NEXT song. At really grand parties, they sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and then the band plays ‘God Save the Queen.’ ”

  Everyone thought that was a good idea; and, I thought, I could just hum and think of “My Country ’Tis of Thee” while they sang their words.

  So we all stood up and held hands and sang — even I sang:

  Should old acquaintance be forgot

  And never brought to mind?

  Should OLD acquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne?

  I don’t know why, the words aren’t sad, and the tune isn’t sad, either; but the song has a sad feeling. I felt sad, anyway; it was as though I was myself, but also outside myself, watching four young girls hold hands and sing a song about time.

  I don’t know how the others felt — everyone was quiet while Clare shook confetti into our hands. Then Jennifer said, “Let’s not throw it all at once. It will last longer if we do it one at a time. Let’s pause at the end of each line, and each time, one of us will throw hers, starting with you, Libby!”

  I liked that idea and so did everyone else. They sang “God Save the Queen” loudly, and we all threw our confetti REALLY high. It landed on people’s pajamas, and in their hair, and all over the blanket and floor.

  Some landed in the butter (which we hadn’t used at all, I noticed), too.

  That was the end of the party. Jennifer and Veryan carried the blanket to the window and shook it, and Clare and I picked confetti off the floor and threw most of it in the wastebasket (I kept the box and some of the pieces, too).

  “What on Earth are we going to do with all this butter?” Jennifer said. “We can’t just throw it in the wastebasket: she’ll see it!”

  “Rinse it down the drain,” I said.

  “What DO you mean?”

  “Dissolve it: I’ll show you,” I said. I took the butter, unwrapped it, and turned on the water.

  I thought it would just melt like ice and go down the drain, but it didn’t. I tried squishing it and pushing it down the drain with my hands; but all that happened was that my hands got greasy.

  I reported all this back to the others and everyone was giggling and making silly suggestions when suddenly, the door opened, the light flashed on, and Matron stood in the doorway.

  She was wearing a dressing gown, and her hair was in two long gray braids: tight ones, not one graceful loose one like Marza’s.

  “What are you doing out of bed — and at the basin — at this hour, Libby?” she said.

  I turned around, keeping the basin hidden behind me.

  “I was rinsing something,” I said.

  Sometimes, when we were getting ready for bed, we did wash our handkerchiefs in the basin.

  “At one o’clock in the morning? I never heard of anything so silly. Get back into bed at once!”

  I was afraid that if I moved out of the way she’d see the butter, but she switched off the light immediately and said that if there was any more talking or “silliness,” we’d have to stand in corners again. (This was the latest punishment for talking after Lights Out: The whole dormitory had to go downstairs, no matter how late it was or how cold, and stand in the corners of the room just outside the Long Room.)

  “It’s odd that the singing didn’t wake her, but the water did,” Clare whispered when she’d left.

  “And lucky,” I said. “We got to have the whole Midnight Feast!”

  In the morning, butter was still in the sink; some might have gone down the drain, but not much.

  In the end we scraped it all off and threw it out the window. Our fingers, handkerchiefs, and the basin were all quite greasy by the time we went down to breakfast, but (we hoped) no one would be able to tell that the basin had been full of butter.

  Chapter Thirty-three:

  Drawing In

  The days were getting shorter and shorter — “drawing in,” they called it. It was almost dark after lessons and completely dark by supper time. So in the afternoon we played in our study. In the evening, we had light lessons like Sewing or French Fairy Tales: in that, Mamzelle read fairy tales out loud to us in French, and I could understand them! (Of course, already knowing the stories helped.)

  “Soon you’ll be eating in the French Dining Room,” she said — but she was teasing me, I think.

  But the best part of these days drawing in was our study. It was a small room with almost no furniture — one table, and two wardrobes of cubbies. We used to climb on top of the wardrobes to play jacks — the carpet (coconut matting) was too rough to play on, because the ball didn’t bounce properly and it was hard to pick up the jacks from it. In America, I didn’t know how to play — I used to spin the jacks, but that’s all. But in England I learned how to really play. It’s a fun game. We also played cat’s cradle and made things out of wool (Clare was especially good at that); we had little rectangles of cardboard that we wove on, and empty spools of thread with nails on the top that we knitted things with.

  The French Dining Room was a smaller room next to the main Dining Room. The oldest girls ate in there, with Mamzelle, and (supposedly) spoke only in French. I say “supposedly” because we were supposed to talk only in French during French Fairy Tales, too, and almost all of our conversations were in English, though we did speak it in a French accent and use French words when we knew them:

  “Le petit chaperon rouge — aussi le petit idiot rouge, don’t you think? Why on earth did she go into the cottage??”

  Jacks is fun, but hard. You sit down (of course) and throw the jacks on the floor. Then you throw the ball up, pick up jacks before the ball bounces more than once, and catch the ball — all with the same hand. You pick the jacks up one by one (onesies), two by two (twosies), and three by three, etc. When you make a mistake — don’t get all the ones you should get in time, or touch one you’re not picking up, or miss the ball — your turn is over. Whoever finishes tensies first gets to pick the next game. I never got up to tensies, but Clare and lots of other people did, so I SAW the other jack games, like double bouncy
(easier), flying dutch man (really hard). I liked jacks even though I wasn’t very good at it.

  In America, I knew cat’s cradle up to this one — but in England, I learned lots more moves. The hardest one was called tramlines: two straight lines that you hooked with your little fingers. Cat’s cradle was really fun; it was so satisfying when you learned how to do it well enough so that it could just keep going and going!

  And of course we talked a lot. That was one of the most fun things about Sibton Park — how much everyone talked and that there was always someone to talk to. And we read (to ourselves, never out loud). We read books, and some people had comic books that told stories. There was one called “Angela Airhostess” about a beautiful stewardess and her adventures, though I didn’t like what it said about America: “In New York she fell in with a fast, Scotch-drinking crowd.” The Americans all wore hideous blue-green suits and talked roughly.

  Those times in our study were cozy. Only our class was allowed in without permission — even teachers and Matron had to knock on the door and ask. We usually didn’t let anyone else in: It was a place just for us. I liked it a lot.

  Even though there was no fireplace or heat, it was never cold (probably because there were fourteen of us, and also because we usually sort of cuddled when we were just sitting around). One of the cubby cupboards went almost up to the ceiling; we climbed on top of it by standing on the table and then sort of pulling and scrambling up. When we sat on that, our heads touched the ceiling unless we slumped a little.

  The other cubby cupboard stood under the window; when you pressed your face against the pane, all you could see was black, even though the Tudor Garden was right outside. You couldn’t see any of the paths or even the sundial. Sometimes, instead of talking, I sat on top of it and wrote stories, and as Hobby Day got closer, I sat there every day and worked on “The Richardsons.”