How to Be Brave

by Daisy May Johnson

    2  Bread makes their stomachs swell up.

      3  I don’t want to give you details but trust me, they would not get a Father’s Day card from any of their children.

      4  All the better to see you with, my dear.

      5  Did you hear about the duck who thought he was a squirrel? He was a tough nut to quack.

      6  Calla comes to play quite a substantial part in this story, but right now we must stay with Elizabeth. Trust me on this.

      7  Mrs. Fraser was EXCELLENT at appearing Unconcerned, and I think we can all learn something from her.

      8  This is a fancy word that means “authority.” Elizabeth had learned it only two days ago, after hearing it on the TV, and felt that this was the perfect time to practice it.

      9  She might be a teacher, but she was still human. Just.

    10  Under normal circumstances you should not listen to somebody on the phone. Their business is not your business, even if they are talking about interesting and scandalous things. However, there was a teacher in Elizabeth’s house, and that was a most unusual circumstance, so Elizabeth decided that normal did not apply.

    11  This is the point where I reward you for paying attention to the footnotes. Are you ready? Okay. Here is the great secret about Good Sister June. She is me. Don’t tell anybody!

    12  She was so very, very new.

    13  An order is simply a very posh and nun-ish way of saying “club.” Nuns are very good at making things sound more complicated than they are, trust me.

    14  Are you sensing a theme here? Good. I knew you were smart.

    15  She is very lovely, but we do all have our faults.

    16  Magda DeWitt is a name that is very important to this story, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about her. She was the sort of girl who did not make sense in buildings: She could only breathe properly in the open fields and under a bright blue sky. She was smart: madly, furiously so, but this was not an easy sort of knowledge for her to have inside of herself. She could not control it easily. She was the sort of girl that some people might have simply called naughty or bad. But Magda was never simple nor straightforward, and the people who thought she was were fools.

    17  A habit is a special type of dress. Nuns have special words for everything.

    18  You might be asking why she fed it rolled oats and not bread. The fact is that Elizabeth was starting to learn about ducks and one of the first things she had learned was that bread was not very good for ducks. Rolled oats, corn, and seeds were much better things.

    19  Chrissie Poplin was one of those girls who was suspicious of things that she had not directly experienced. Thus ducks, olives, and Latvia all featured on the same and rather eccentric list.

    20  It was. Nobody liked those lectures.

    21  She had not discovered, however, one of my favorite secrets, which was the cake tub located just behind Angela Brazil and filled to the brim with slices of sticky and delicious parkin.

    22  This was true. Chrissie and Magda had in fact been friends for precisely two days in their very first year at school, until Magda had insisted on helping herself to Chrissie’s slice of chocolate cake without asking. Taking anything without asking is a very bad decision and taking cake without permission is a very, very bad decision. From that day, Chrissie had decided to make friends with people who understood the value of cake. Magda, as you can see, was still trying to come to terms with the entire affair.

    23  This went down as well as you might have expected.

    24  No, I won’t tell you what it was. Not even if you bribe me with a slice of lemon drizzle.

    25  Sometimes there is “extra work” that involves things like multiplying Brussels sprouts with cabbage and thus is the worst thing ever. Sometimes there is “extra work” that feels a little bit like a firework in your heart. Writing in code was a firework for Elizabeth, and she could not wait to get started.

    26  She does a mean roly-poly with custard now, let me tell you that.

    27  Having broken many of the rules at school, she was innately familiar with them.

    28  This was Penelope Mortimer, and once upon a time, Magda had helped herself to Penelope’s chips without asking.

    29  This was Jasmine Swann, and once upon a time, Magda had helped herself to Jasmine’s crayons without asking. You may be sensing a theme here with Magda helping herself to things she did not own. You would be right.

    30  “I will join you for this endeavor, Elizabeth, and I’m grateful to you for the invitation.”

    31  Everything should be done in time for supper. It’s the best meal of the day. The second best, by the way, is afternoon tea. I am very fond of a good scone.

    32  I’m grateful for the cake, of course, but I’m also rather appalled that she thinks chocolate and jam is a legitimate combination when they do not go together under any circumstances.

    33  And to be fair, Magda and the rest of the world.

    34  Make Sure You’re Crouching When It’s Switched On: A Guide to Helicopter Maintenance. It is quite a straightforward film but there are some scary bits.

    35  Before DVDs, we had videos. They were big and rather bulky, but sometimes very useful on a rainy day.

    36  The lie didn’t convince either of them.

    37  Neither of them believed that lie, either.

    38  Trust me, it was a close thing.

    39  I must emphasize here that Chrissie did not hug both Elizabeth and the duck. She hugged Elizabeth, and let the duck stay at arm’s length. She was a very nice girl but duck-hugging was not her forte.

    40  Three humans, one duck.

    41  She was not wrong. This small brown duck was a duck that did not live in the United Kingdom but rather several thousand miles away in the Amazon in a location that nobody knew about. Then.

    42  When you are very smart at something, you do not tend to think about the people who are almost as smart as you. And Magda DeWitt was one of those people. She had left school and gone to study and learn all about ducks, but she never managed to know as much as Elizabeth. This is the sort of thing that happens when you try to learn something that you do not wish to learn. Elizabeth loved learning and soaked up facts like a sponge. Magda did not love learning because she was angry, and jealous, and spent her days cursing the name of Elizabeth North every time she read about her.

       Perhaps, upon reflection, it was best that Elizabeth did not think of her. But then, if she had, there would be no story to tell you.

    43  Pun unintentional.

    44  Some boys are quite pleasant, but William Perry was not one of those boys. He was, in fact, as pleasant as a cold kale smoothie with a side order of Brussels sprouts.

    45  Now you and I both know that if somebody you don’t know asks you to get into a car with them, then you run very quickly in the opposite direction. Elizabeth, however, was sometimes Not Great at remembering the important things in life.

    46  It must be noted that this was not the first time Elizabeth had been approached by strange people about her research. Usually she was too busy thinking of Victoria sponges and wingspans to pay them much attention. You, however, should pay very close attention indeed. (Aren’t I helpful? Honestly, I am the best storyteller.)

    47  Linda Bowles and Frederick Parsons met in 1954, while walking their dogs. Linda had a golden retriever called Susan, and Frederick had a small terrier called Darcy, and it was love at first sight for both dogs and humans.

    48  You might not know about shopping from the bottom shelf, and you are lucky if you do not, but the bottom shelf is where the cheapest food is. The tins that are more juice than fruit, more sauce than spaghetti h
oops. They are shelved so low because the supermarket wants you to buy the more expensive things, but sometimes you simply cannot do that.

    49  Spoiler (I am becoming increasingly comfortable with this expression! Thank you, Good Sister Gwendolyn!): It does.

    50  We all have our weaknesses.

    51  This is a fancy word for pocket money. For some reason I’ve yet to figure out, adults get a bit upset if you call it “pocket money.”

    52  Pay attention to this point. It’s kind of extremely important for everything that follows.

    53  Though I admit a pink wafer is a similarly wonderful thing.

    54  And if ever a sentence was the very definition of bravery, then this one was.

    55  They were. This is an important point that you should remember. The nuns were very good at being nuns, but they were not the best at throwing things away. Luckily enough.

    56  Whilst this is a very nice thing for Elizabeth to say, I feel it necessary to point out that she had not met many people at that point in her life.

    57  One on, one in the wash, and four in the cupboard for sock-based emergencies. You will be surprised at how often such things can occur.

    58  She had indeed made soup. It was tomato and came out of a can that had been on sale. It was the sort of recipe that Calla approved of very much because her mother could not mess it up.

    59  And, I think, a little bit bravely.

    60  You may be wondering why Calla was not sent to stay with Mrs. Merryweather. It had been a possibility Elizabeth considered before remembering that Mrs. Merryweather was a delightful soul but had once confused ducks with geese and so was Not Really Suitable When You Come to Think About It.

    61  Happiness. Endless, sudden, incomprehensible happiness.

    62  Who had met Miranda Price.

    63  For Leon and Elsie; in memory of all the times that they played cards with the grandchildren and stole all of their pocket money.

    64  Charlie North, beloved always.

    65  As I am sure you know by now, sometimes Elizabeth forgot how to deal with the real world if it didn’t quack.

    66  The second would be when she hit base camp, and the third at a point to be arranged after that. These are important things for you to know, trust me.

    67  I must disagree with dear Agatha because it is not worth dying to eat anything. If you’re dead, how will you know you’ve enjoyed it?

    68  I am very fond of Good Sister Christine, but she is Quite Wrong here.

    69  She is not wrong.

    70  There was really no need for her to be careful because the nearest car was, at that point, fifteen miles away. It belonged to Mr. Harold Richardson, the local police officer and firefighter (Little Hampden is a small village and one man does everything), who was at that moment visiting his brand-new granddaughter in town.

    71  It is an odd thing to realize but when you are little, you tend to look at adults as these magical beings who Know What to Do in Emergencies. The life that Calla had lived had told her the precise opposite: She knew that adults were simply trying to make it through the world. So she knew to let them pretend that they knew what they were doing, and to simply continue doing what she was going to do.

    72  It is a description that applies to all of us forced to wear such impracticable outfits.

    73  Sound familiar?

    74  There are other towers at the school (in one of which we store baked beans and bedding, in case of a very specific emergency), and they are called Tower bedrooms as well because we are imaginative about a lot of things except the naming of rooms. The North Tower bedroom is up a spiral staircase laid with green carpet, and the tower itself pokes out from the roof as though somebody was decorating a cake and had just figured out how to do a fancy thing with their icing bag. It is a perfect bedroom for mischief and tricks, and it has always been my favorite.

    75  I have checked with Calla and she informs me that her questions were of the following nature: 1. Why Is the Headmistress Clearly Evil? 2. What Is a WASHCLOTH???? (she insisted I put the extra question marks here) and 3. Are the Girls in this Bedroom Anywhere Near as Horrible as Miranda Price?

    76  She thought this with some justification because “I’m okay” was, after all, the only thing Calla had said for the past ten minutes.

    77  This was a lie.

    78  This was not.

    79  She did. Trust me.

    80  What a list! Truly, Hanna could be terribly brilliant at times.

    81  Good Sister Honey is an excellent pilot.

    82  Quite an understandable reaction under the circumstances. I am no fan of algebra myself. In fact, I am not fond of most math unless it can help me work out the appropriate jam-to-cream ratio on a freshly baked scone.

    83  This will not make much sense to you now, but later it will. Trust me.

    84  As I imagine you would, were you being observed by a cabal of inquisitive girls. Poor Gareth. He really did have a lot to put up with. You’ll learn more about him shortly.

    85  To be fair to Rose, raisins in cookies can be really quite unfortunate.

    86  Admittedly that was zero paintings, because Elizabeth had long since sold everything that she could sell, but that was not the point.

    87  Boiled sardines, with mung bean mash. Horrific, isn’t it? I had to have a slice of Victoria sponge just to get over the thought.

    88  Of all the complex things she was, I can assure you that Magda DeWitt has never been remotely humble.

    89  This was Good Sister Gwendolyn. She really can be most ferocious at times.

    90  And as far as Gareth knew, it wasn’t. Gareth had been doing his job, and now that the headmistress was on her way back to the study, he had some free time to ask Good Sister Honey about how to make her cheese scones. His heart has always been in baked goods, and Good Sister Honey’s scones are remarkable things. The secret is mustard.

    91  This was not the sort of thing that people tended to say at retirement parties, but, as you have probably gathered, this was no normal retirement party.

    92  She was.

    93  It may be understood between you and me that Good Sister June’s emotions were about to get the better of her. This is why, after she finished speaking, she looked away and found something very interesting on the wall to study. It is how adults deal with things. It’s not necessarily the best way to deal with things, but it’s what we do.

    94  “Anchovy sandwiches,” said Elizabeth with delight. “Anchovy sandwiches are hideous things, but at midnight, outside, on a roof, they are the most perfect thing in existence.”

    95  I am reliably, if somewhat crudely, informed that it was a “snot green.” And not the sort of snot green that’s nice, the sort of snot that you get after thirteen weeks of being ill. My apologies for the detail, but I think it’s only fair that you suffer just as I have.

    96  I think this is a tad unfair, but Calla has insisted on this being reported verbatim. This is what she thought and so it goes in, and even though I think she’s being somewhat hyperbolic, she’s very persuasive.

    97  Mackerel fillets and sprouted seeds, with rye toast and organic peanut butter.

    98  What good would it have done under the circumstances?

    99  “The school is super weird and I sort of maybe want to come home.”

  100  This is not a euphemism for a fart. Edie had been busy overnight in the laboratory putting together several items for her campaign against the headmistress and the first of these were stink bombs. They smelled a little bit of stinky socks, rotten eggs, and spoiled milk, and were very effective. I was not sorry to miss them.

  101  Normally I am
not comfortable with putting random capital letters in the middle of a sentence, but this was the sort of statement that required them.

  102  Honestly, nobody knows what these are.

  103  A feat she had not achieved for the past five years due to a particularly determined spell of lumbago.

  104  It was not.

  105  “I will not come to a lesson unprepared.”

  106  In the eyes of Hanna, nobody who enjoys baked goods can be a bad person. She is Not Wrong with this, though there is an exception for those people who like eccles cakes and nothing else. They are not the best sort of people.

  107  I do. He’s called Gareth. He’s actually quite pleasant, though he is—at this point in the story—making a lot of bad decisions.