The Daring Game (6 page)

But Eliza preferred Madeline. The older girl was tiny, but she had an air of quiet authority, and her eyes always looked amused. Every time Eliza handed her another square, Madeline would say, “Good for you, Eliza! What a hard worker you are!”

Now Eliza listened to the last notes of the dreamlike melody. There was a yearning quality to the music, and it made her ache for something that seemed just out of reach. The final chord was so hushed it almost didn't exist. Then Madeline sat perfectly still, as if in a trance.

Eliza felt like an eavesdropper. She couldn't just tiptoe away and not say anything. “That was wonderful,” she breathed. “What's it called?”

Madeline swung around on the piano stool. “Oh, it's you, Eliza! That's the
Moonlight
Sonata. I'm trying to get it ready for a recital, but I have a long way to go.”

“Oh no—it's perfect.”

“Thank you!” Madeline sounded as if Eliza's opinion really counted. She glanced at her watch. “I've finished for today. How about you? Did you have a good practice? I heard your Bach.”

Eliza blushed to think how much of the half-hour she'd wasted on other activities. She felt, proud, however, that Madeline was speaking to her as a fellow pianist. “I think I use too much loud pedal,” she mumbled, “but it's hard not to.”

She came in and sat on the windowsill, and they discussed the use of the pedals like two professionals. It was the longest she had ever talked to Madeline, and she chose her words carefully. Madeline listened so attentively that she made Eliza want to be her best self.

“How do you like boarding so far?” the older girl asked her. “Do you miss your parents?”

“I don't really have time to,” Eliza confessed.

Madeline's green eyes crinkled into slits. “Well, they certainly keep us busy here. You seem to be fitting in all right.”

Miss Tavistock had said the same thing last week: “I'm very pleased with you, Elizabeth. You're doing well in your work and really taking part in the life of the school.”

“I like it here,” Eliza told Madeline. She meant it. It had seemed odd to be away from Ashdown for three
whole days during the Thanksgiving weekend at her aunt and uncle's. She had been impatient to get back. The perfect weather added to her satisfaction. It wasn't like a prairie fall, where the wind whipped the branches bare of leaves as quickly as they turned yellow. Here the trees changed slowly, gradually ripening into golds and reds.

“Do
you
like it?” asked Eliza. “How old were you when you came?”

“I came in grade nine. I like it well enough, and Mrs. Fraser's one of the best piano teachers in the province. But sometimes I get tired of it. I'm glad I only have a year to go.”

Eliza was shocked. “Tired of it! I'll never get tired of it!”

“You're certainly enthusiastic,” laughed Madeline. “And it's great to have you in my house. Look at all the house points you've earned for us already!”

The bell clanged insistently from the Old Residence. “Prep's over,” said Madeline. “Let's go to dinner.”

They walked out of the gym together. The tree trunks by the driveway were black shadows against the dim sky. Eliza shivered, partly because of the crisp air, but mostly because of the pleasure of being with Madeline.

T
WO EVENINGS LATER
Eliza sat at the piano at the back of the Blue Sitting Room, her knees shaking, her hands wet and her eyes fixed on Miss Tavistock standing in front of the assembled boarders.

“Hymn 636.”

This would be the worst part: playing one verse alone so everyone would learn the melody. Her hands slipped and trembled on the keys, and she whispered the words to herself to keep time.

Work,
for the
night
is
com
ing
!

Work
through the
mor
ning
hours

She pounded the keys hard and began to relax. By the time the singers all opened their mouths she was in full swing, throwing herself into the melody, playing faster and faster, driven by the force of their voices behind her notes.

Give
every
fly
ing
mi-
i-nute

Some
thing to
keep
in
store

“Slow down, Eliza!” someone whispered in her ear. She tried to, but the rhythm was too infectious. Drawing out the last line as Mrs. Fraser had taught her, however, she finished with a resounding “Amen.” Her hands dropped to her lap; she was panting.

Miss Tavistock smiled. “Thank you, Elizabeth.”

After prayers Helen cornered Eliza as the rest of the boarders milled about the room before returning to prep. “Why did you choose
that
hymn? Are you trying to give us a hint?”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like you're telling us to study,” grumbled Helen. Carrie had told Eliza that Mrs. Fitch, the 7B teacher, was always accusing Helen of being lazy.

“I don't think it means
that
,” said Eliza. “I didn't mean it to, anyhow. I picked it because it's one of the easiest in the book.”

“Listen, Eliza,” said Helen, with one of her owlish stares. “I've been meaning to tell you something. You're getting far too sucky.”

“Sucky?”

“Yes. You know—sucking up to Charlie and Madeline and the rest of them. Playing hymns, knitting squares, studying all the time. You're turning into a goody-goody. When we started the Daring Game I thought you had guts, but now you're acting like Pam.”

Eliza felt a familiar stabbing pain. At her last school she had sometimes been accused of being a teacher's pet. It seemed unfair. Adults were often pleased with her, but that wasn't her fault. She liked having their approval, but she didn't deliberately try for it as Pam did. Her parents had often told her how sensible she was for her age. Once she'd even overheard her Toronto grandmother saying she was “delightfully old-fashioned.” Eliza had cringed at this image of herself. But she couldn't help it if what she liked was often what older people liked.

Helen was waiting for an answer. Eliza tried not to flinch from her accusing look and held her chin high so the tears wouldn't fall from her eyes.

“I don't mean to,” she said at last. “Really I don't. And I'm not like Pam at all,” she added firmly.

Helen shrugged as if she didn't believe her and looked even more disdainful. Before she left the room she said, “I think it's time for another dare. Then we'll see.”

6

The Second Dare

E
liza tried to forget about Helen's accusation, but she could think of nothing else as she tossed in bed that night.

You can't help being yourself,
said a voice in her head. It was her mother's, sensible and soothing as always.

But Helen doesn't like that self, Eliza answered.

Then forget about her. If she can't accept you as you are,
she's not worth having as a friend. Besides, you have Carrie—you don't need Helen.

I do! thought Eliza. But she didn't know why.

Helen was overbearing and not always very nice, not the type of person Eliza usually chose for a friend. There was no reason she had to put up with someone who called her names.

Perhaps, however, the name fit. Perhaps she
was
a goody-goody. She felt angry at Helen for making her contemplate that. Maybe she
should
stay away from her. But it was unfair to dismiss Helen completely, when there was so much about her she didn't know yet. Perhaps that was why Eliza was so drawn to her: she was mysterious.
And Eliza couldn't forget how Helen had stood up for her against Pam. That night, she had seemed like a real friend.

Eliza couldn't work it out. All the contentment she had felt in the last month was spoiled. It was as if Helen had taken a pin and pricked a balloon inside of her.

After that she began to avoid direct encounters with the other girl. Helen hardly spoke to Eliza either, and when she did, she didn't call her “Eliza Doolittle.”

The strain between them wasn't noticed by the others, for the whole school was gripped by the frenzy of mid-term exams. No one in the Yellow Dorm had written real exams before. Pam crept out every morning at six-thirty to cram in the library. Jean carried her English book with her everywhere, whispering the poets they had to memorize. Eliza was especially worried about French and science. She listed conjugations of French verbs on scraps of paper, on her music books and on napkins. Constantly she repeated to herself the sentence Mrs. Lewis, the science teacher, had taught them: “Man Very Early Made Jars Stand Up Nearly Perfect.” The first letter of each word stood for a planet, and the words were in order of the planets' distances from the sun.

The only two who didn't study extra hours were Carrie and Helen. The former said to Eliza complacently, “I've done my best so far. I'm not going to worry about it.” Helen just lay on her bed, cut off from the rest of them by her radio earplug, and scowled.

“Fidget's always picking on her,” Carrie told Eliza. “I think it's mean. Helen fools around a lot, of course, and
her work's always sloppy. But other people are like that too. She says awful things to Helen.”

“Like what?”

“Well, today was the worst. Fidget came in and caught Helen and Linda O. standing on top of the desks-they were just trying to close the windows. She didn't even tell off Linda, but she yelled at Helen and said no wonder her parents sent her away to school so young-she was such a brat they must have been glad to get rid of her.”

“But that's terrible! Helen should tell Miss Tavistock.”

“It didn't seem to bother her. I don't think anything does. She just laughed really loud, and Fidget took off a house point for rudeness. She was the one who was rude! Some of us thought Helen should tell, but she said to forget about it. And a few kids thought she deserved it. A lot of the day-girls don't like Helen.”

It must have bothered her, thought Eliza. Perhaps Mrs. Fitch's bullying was what had made Helen so withdrawn lately. And why
had
Helen been sent here so young? She had never told them.

“What do
you
think of Helen?” said Eliza, remembering Carrie asking her the same question on their first day.

Carrie shrugged. “Oh, well … Helen's just Helen. She's not so bad.” Eliza wished she could be as untroubled as Carrie was by their complicated dorm-mate.

E
XAM WEEK WAS
appropriately grey and wet. Every morning they shuffled through sodden heaps of leaves, as
they trooped over to the gym for prayers. Many of the trees were bare now, although Eliza's favourite arbutus and the laurel and holly bushes around the Old Residence were still as green as new paint.

Eliza felt purged when exams were over. Each of the seven times she'd confronted the typed list of questions and the blank book to be filled with answers she had panicked. But then she'd taken a deep breath and scribbled down what she knew as carefully as she could. She thought she had done all right, even in French.

The Friday after exam week the boarders were being taken to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre to see a performance of the National Ballet. Eliza had never seen a ballet before, and that morning she tore open her folded blouse eagerly. Every week their blouses arrived back from the cleaners compressed into a starched rectangle. She popped open the sleeves and pulled the folds straight with a satisfying ripping sound.

Miss Bixley was braiding Carrie's hair. “What a lucky girl you are,” she said. “I had lovely hair as a child, you know. I could sit on it, it was so long.”

“It sounds like a lot of trouble to me,” said Helen.

The matron was always telling them about her childhood in New York City, where she had gone briefly on the stage. This was hard to believe, but she had scrapbooks of pictures to prove it.

“Tonight we're going to play the Daring Game,” Helen told them when Miss Bixley had left the room.

“But we're going out!” said Carrie.

“All the better. We'll go to bed later than usual and everyone will expect us to nod off quickly like sleepy little children.”

Jean look scared. “Is the dare for all of us again?”

“No, I think we should draw names. Then I'll decide what the person who's picked has to do. Unless it's my name, of course.”

“You can count me out,” said Pam. “I don't want to have anything to do with it. Why should
you
decide? And why should you all listen to her?” she asked the others.

Eliza wondered why too, as she hurried over to piano practice. She knew Helen hoped it would be Eliza's name that was chosen.

B
UT THE NAME
Helen drew from the four strips of paper she'd dropped into her beret was Carrie's. Eliza was first relieved for herself, then anxious for her friend, until she saw that Carrie didn't mind. She twirled around the dorm in her long pink dressing-gown, her braid flying out behind, pretending to be a ballet dancer. “Okay,” she puffed, landing on Helen's bed, “what do I have to do?”

Helen paced the room. “Let's see, Turps. I dare you to … uhhh …” Eliza wondered if she was hesitating because she'd had a special dare just for Eliza in mind. “… to climb up to the Nursery by the roof.”

“She'll fall!” said Pam at once. “That's too dangerous.”

“No, she won't. It's dry tonight. I climbed down once, and up must be easier.”

“Why not by the fire escape?” Eliza suggested. It was the first time she had spoken to Helen in over a week.

“It doesn't take much courage for
that
,” replied Helen scornfully, looking away. Eliza reddened.

They all peered up at the slanted roof that led to the Junior Dorm above them.

“I can do that,” said Carrie. “Should I come back the same way?”