by Monica Nolan
Enid reached for Bobby, and Bobby clasped her hand. The Math Mistress’s ungloved hand was warm and dry. For an instant Bobby was suffused with happiness. She and Enid were truly friends, their petty rivalry and distrust now in the past. Then she wondered: Was Enid just holding her hand because of her fixation on that other gym teacher? Was Bobby a faceless substitute for that long-gone woman? For a second she wanted to fling the hand away. Then Enid gave her hand a little squeeze. Was she, too, remembering that moment in the cellar? Or had she simply tripped, and leaned on Bobby for balance? The darkness was alive with possibilities and pitfalls.
What’s the matter with me? Bobby asked herself, astounded at the way a simple stroll in the woods with Enid had turned into a roller-coaster ride, with Bobby’s heart in the front seat.
“What’s that?” Enid said sharply.
“What?” A branch snapped in the woods to the right of the road. Enid’s hand was tight on Bobby’s as they both strained their eyes, peering fruitlessly into the dark.
“Probably just a skunk,” Bobby whispered. “No, wait—”
Her eyes had caught a faint glow, an orange dot that brightened and dimmed. “Someone’s there, in the underbrush.” She raised her voice. “Whoever you are, come out of there right now.” She waited. “You’ll only make it harder on yourself if I have to come in and get you.”
There was a long pause, and then, crackling and crunching through the dead leaves, the lurker walked toward them, and they could dimly discern her gangly outline. “It’s only Angle,” Bobby told Enid. She struck a match so that the Math Mistress could see the pale, dirt-streaked face of the troubled teen, a cigarette dangling defiantly from the corner of her mouth. Enid released her death grip on Bobby’s hand.
“Angela, do you realize how many rules you’re breaking?” Enid’s voice was high-pitched with anger and fear.
“Plus, you scared the bejeezus out of us,” Bobby broke in.
“Out of bed after lights out, out of bounds, smoking—”
“It’s not so late,” Angle protested sullenly.
“Listen,” Bobby intervened. “We’re all tired, and the woods aren’t the best place to discuss discipline. Put out the cigarette, come along to bed, and stop by my office at lunchtime tomorrow to take your medicine.” She turned away, without waiting to see if Angle would follow, pulling Enid with her.
“God, you’re good,” murmured Enid admiringly. “That was textbook reverse psychology.” Bobby glowed inwardly, making a mental note to look up the term.
Sure enough, after a few paces, Angle came scuffing up behind them. She took a last drag on her cigarette and then squashed it underfoot. “I wasn’t just smoking, you know,” she said argumentatively. “I thought I heard something, and I came to investigate. I thought maybe whoever took old Kayo’s necklace and then returned it was going to play another trick.”
“You’re not afraid of the ghost?” Enid asked.
“Nah. Something’s screwy, but it’s not a ghost, I don’t think.”
They walked a few paces, and now they could see the faint glow of the dorm lights. Angle spoke again. “You know what Linda and the rest of her crew are saying now, don’t you? That Miss Froelich jumped because of her guilty conscience. They say she was racked with shame over her unnatural friendship with Miss Craybill.” Angle slid a sideways look at the teachers. “Linda’s been all hepped on this unnatural friendship biz ever since Sandy loaned her this book—”
“We Too Are Lonely, utter trash. I confiscated it this morning, but clearly it wasn’t soon enough.” Enid spoke vehemently.
“You don’t think it’s true?” Angle asked diffidently.
Both teachers spoke at once.
“What happened to Miss Froelich,” Bobby began, but Enid interrupted.
“Angle, that book is arrant nonsense. The author is no authority—just a hack writer trying to sell copies to readers who get a cheap thrill from the idea of two women—”
“The point is,” Bobby took over, feeling Enid was veering off topic, “that what happened to Miss Froelich was an accident, pure and simple. She was bird-watching, observing the white-breasted nuthatch, and she fell. It’s regrettable, tragic even, but it was an accident.”
“Well, I don’t know about the unnatural friendship bit,” said Angle dispassionately. “But Miss Rasphigi says it’s impossible that Miss Froelich was looking at white-breasted nuthatches when she fell.”
They’d reached the top of the rise, where the road leveled out as it met the Quadrangle. “Why would Miss Rasphigi—” Bobby began, but at the same moment, they all became aware of a distant sound, a faint screech, screech.
“That’s it! That’s what I heard!” Angle cried.
“Hush,” warned Bobby, “I think—” She ran toward the quadrangle, Enid and Angle at her heels. At the far end, next to the sundial, stood Miss Craybill, wearing her eggplant-colored quilted satin dressing gown, a candle clasped in her hands. She was looking at the space between Manchester and Dorset. Down the path that led to the wild wooded forest between Metamora and Mesquakie Point rode the glowing bicyclist. Even knowing that the bicycle was merely smeared with phosphorescent paint, Bobby felt the back of her neck prickle. The bicycle seemed to float above the earth, and the homely screech, screech of the unoiled chain only made the black figure riding more uncanny.
“Nerissa!” quavered Miss Craybill. “Is that you?”
The bicycle abruptly turned off the path and disappeared behind the corner of Kent. Miss Craybill crumpled into a heap beside the sundial.
Chapter Twenty-two
The Confrontation
Bobby and Enid ran to the fallen Headmistress with Angle close behind. Miss Craybill’s eyes were closed. Picking up her wrist, Bobby felt her pulse—a fluttering, erratic sign of life. Enid was repeating, “Miss Craybill! Miss Craybill!” as she gently patted the fallen woman’s cheeks.
“She needs a doctor,” said Bobby, dropping the inert hand. “Angle, go get help.”
“Where? Who?” The young teen was jumping from one foot to the other in agitation. Without waiting for a reply, she shouted loudly, “Help! Help!” Bobby bit her lip in vexation.
“Stop that! Go get Miss Rasphigi.” The Chemistry Mistress might have some medical training. At least the errand would calm the excitable teenager. Angle shot off in the direction of the science lab.
Lights were going on in dorm windows, and Miss Otis was hurrying across the quad. “What on earth,” she began with her usual asperity, but stopped short at the sight of Miss Craybill lying prone in her eggplant dressing gown.
“Aggie!” Miss Otis fell to her knees beside the Headmistress. “Aggie, speak to me! It is I, Bunny!” She shook the unconscious Miss Craybill until Enid pulled her away. “Stop it, Miss Otis, you’re not helping!”
A faint groan from the stricken Headmistress contradicted her. “She’s coming to!” said a voice behind Bobby. Looking around, she saw Serena and Alice, in matching plaid bathrobes, clutching one another.
“Bunny, you must take prep for me. I have a splitting headache,” said Miss Craybill weakly. “Tell Nerissa to bring me some aspirin.”
“She’s gone bonkers,” said Laura in an awed voice. She stood next to Ken, who had his pipe in his hand. He must sleep with it, Bobby thought.
“Aggie! Aggie, do you know where you are?” shouted Miss Otis.
Miss Craybill looked at her, bewildered. “At Metamora, Bunny.”
“That’s no test of mental awareness,” muttered Enid to Bobby. “Not when she’s been here the past forty years.”
“Has anyone called the doctor?” demanded Bobby in exasperation.
“I ’ave.” Madame Melville was smoking a cigarette, as impeccably dressed as if it were sherry hour. “We should move her inside, out of the damp and chill, n’est-ce pas?”
Angle panted up, with Miss Rasphigi behind her. The Chemistry Mistress looked at Miss Craybill and remarked, “Medicine is not my field.”
&nb
sp; “Where is Mona?” wailed Miss Otis. “She’s certified in first aid!”
“I’m certified—” in first aid, Bobby was going to retort, but then she paused. Where was the helpful housekeeper? How was it that she, right in Devon, hadn’t heard this whole hullabaloo? Devon was right next to Kent—
Not only right next to Kent—it connected to Kent.
And if the mysterious cyclist wasn’t Miss Craybill, who lived in Kent—
“Enid,” Bobby whispered urgently, “The bicyclist must be—”
She could read the same realization in Enid’s widening eyes.
“Mona!” she breathed.
The two teachers had instinctively moved a few steps away from the rest of the faculty, who were now squabbling over how best to move their Headmistress. Bobby noticed with a sinking heart that the dorm windows were filling with the heads of sleepy students. This latest quadrangle crisis had a growing audience.
“You stay here,” she ordered Enid. “Get Miss Craybill inside, somehow! I’m going to pay a visit to our phosphorescent friend.”
She ran to the rear of Kent, skirting the school bus and paneled station wagon, which were little more than hulking shapes in the darkness. She tugged at the metal utility door and to her surprise it opened. Had the cyclist grown careless in her haste? Stepping inside, she felt for a light switch. She was in a back corridor, near the records room. Bobby glanced around, and her eyes were caught by a curved smudge on the wall, just above the baseboard. A bicycle had rested there, if only for an instant. Bobby tried the door to the records room. Locked. Mona would have the key.
Bobby explored further. Where was the connecting door to Devon? It must be the heavy wooden door at the end of the corridor, arched like an entranceway. She tried the knob. Locked. At the end of her patience, Bobby pounded on the door with all her strength. “Open up! Open up in there!”
The crack at the bottom of the door showed a thin line of light. “Just a minute, for goodness sake,” said Mona’s muffled voice. Bobby heard her slide the bolt and the door opened, revealing Mona in an aqua-colored chenille bathrobe. Her big eyes were blinking, her hair was tousled, and her face was flushed with sleep. “Why, Bobby!” She began. Bobby pushed past her, into the room, and Mona shut the door behind them.
They were standing in a walk-in closet. On either side hung gay summer frocks, wool skirts, spare uniforms. There were piles of hatboxes, sweaters, shoes neatly arrayed on a rack, each toe stuffed with tissue.
“What on earth are you doing at this door?” Mona asked in bewilderment. “It’s never used. It’s just a fire exit.”
Bobby began to wonder if she and Enid were off track again. “Didn’t you hear the big brouhaha in the quadrangle?” Bobby asked. “Miss Craybill has collapsed.”
“Oh no!” Mona clutched her bathrobe more tightly around her throat. “I didn’t hear anything—I took a sedative this evening to help me sleep. What happened?”
“She saw a ghostly cyclist and it was too much for her.” Bobby didn’t mention the brand-new ouija board she had noticed at the base of the sundial. The fewer people who learned that Miss Craybill had been attempting to contact Miss Froelich’s spirit, the better.
“Ghostly cyclist!” Mona exclaimed. “Bryce mentioned seeing a ghost, but he put it down to the pork fat from Ole’s svinekoteletter!”
“Never mind the svinekoteletter,” snapped Bobby. “I want the key to the records room!”
“The key to the records room,” Mona repeated blankly. “Now?”
“I think we’ll find a clue to the ghostly cyclist there.” Bobby was watching her closely, but the housekeeper didn’t turn a hair.
“My housekeeping keys are in the sitting room. If the records room key isn’t on that ring, we’ll find Miss Otis. She’ll have it.”
Bobby waited for Mona in her bedroom, a gay bower in ruffled chintz. Miss Otis—was she the ghostly cyclist? She had appeared surprisingly quickly, fully dressed in her Metamora uniform.
It was exhausting, suspecting her colleagues! Bobby looked around the room, so feminine and cozy, with the pink-shaded lamp by the bed, the prints on the wall of people in old-fashioned clothes picnicking and swinging on swings, the braided rug on the floor, the bed, with its chintz-covered comforter turned neatly down. Nothing odd here.
Wait a second—what was with the turndown service? Bobby’s suspicions came rushing back. If Mona had been deep in slumber, why was the bed so tidy? Bobby went to the bed and put her hand on the mattress. Cold. The pillow was askew and automatically Bobby straightened it. A piece of black cloth peeked out from underneath. Bobby threw the pillow aside and picked up the black academic robe that had been hastily stuffed beneath it.
“Here we are,” Mona said, reentering the room, jingling a key ring in her hand. She stopped when she saw Bobby holding the black gown. “No—no,” said Mona. Bobby strode toward her and, seizing the lapels of the aqua chenille bathrobe, she yanked it open. Underneath, Mona wore a full-skirted pine green wool jumper with a snugly fitted bodice, ideal for cycling.
A fierce look flashed through Mona’s eyes as she pulled herself free. She shrugged off the aqua chenille bathrobe and threw it on the bed. “All right! I disguised myself as a glowing bicyclist! What’s the harm? Is there a law against it?”
Bobby was aghast. “What’s the harm? How can you ask that with Miss Craybill collapsed in the quadrangle?”
Mona paced the cozy bedroom like a panther in a cage. “That was an accident. She’ll probably be fine tomorrow.” She turned to Bobby and spread her hands beseechingly. “It’s not that I like playing dress-up! I had to. Maybe you can understand…”
“Understand what?”
Mona sat on the edge of the neatly made bed. “I’m in love,” she said simply. “And she’s married. The only times we can see each other are these late nights, at Mesquakie Point. It’s a cold and lonely ride through the woods, but at the end of it, there she is, waiting for me in the replica cabin.”
“I thought the replica cabin was closed at night,” Bobby said.
“I have the key,” said Mona. “Ole’s sister Freya runs the concession there, and I borrowed the key one day and made a copy.” Her eyes took on a dreamy quality. “It’s just a bare little cabin, with a fake antique trundle bed, but to us, it’s a little bit of heaven.”
“But why the crazy dress-up?” Bobby demanded. “You have the keys to the Metamora station wagon. Why not just drive to Mesquakie Point in your regular clothes?”
Mona threw up her hands. “I would have been noticed immediately! You know how Metamora is—what excuse could I make for mysterious midnight drives, except my own mad passion? With a little phosphorescence from the Drama Club, I threw the gossipers off track. I never imagined so many people would spot me.” Mona’s merry laugh pealed out. “Is it my fault there’s so much prowling around campus after lights-out?”
Bobby tried to get used to the idea that Metamora’s housekeeper, who planned the meals, restocked the medicine cabinet, and poured out mug after mug of steaming cocoa, was in the grip of a grand passion. Yet was it so surprising? Hadn’t she wondered about the housekeeper’s predilections from the day they met? And after what Enid had told her tonight…
“Are you meeting Dot Driscoll?” Bobby asked.
The housekeeper sobered at once. “Why do you think that?” Bobby held her tongue. “Don’t make me tell you,” said Mona. “And please, please don’t expose us. You’d put us in terrible danger. Give me a chance to explain to Miss Craybill myself. I promise you, I will.”
Bobby hesitated only briefly. After all, was Mona sneaking off to Mesquakie Point so different from Enid and Bobby in the cellar of the Knock Knock Lounge?
“All right,” said the Games Mistress. “But no more bike rides! You and your friend will have to figure out something else. And you tell Miss Craybill the whole story the minute she’s coherent! You just can’t let her go on thinking Miss Froelich is haunting the campus.”
“
The very second,” Mona promised. She got to her feet. “I’d better go and do what I can to make her comfortable.”
Bobby followed Mona out of Devon, the front way this time. On the steps Mona turned to her. Her face was veiled in shadow. “Thank you, Bobby. I won’t forget this.” She hurried away.
The quadrangle was empty now. The teachers had evidently gotten Miss Craybill inside. The dorm windows were empty too, the spectators gone back to bed. Despite solving the mystery of the ghostly cyclist, Bobby felt an uneasiness she couldn’t shake. She looked at the sundial, glowing faintly white in the moonlight. She looked up at the tower, and in her mind’s eye saw a figure in black plummeting to the earth. Someone had said something, earlier this evening—oh yes, Angle, quoting Miss Rasphigi—
The dizziness caught her unawares, and she almost fell over. Using the shrubbery to pull herself upright, Bobby lurched toward Cornwall, keeping her head down. Would she ever be cured?
Chapter Twenty-three
Peasant Dance, Again
Bobby put the record on the turntable and stood poised to drop the needle. “Class, we’re going to try something new today,” she said nervously.
The students looked at her blankly. Bobby could hardly blame them for their lack of interest when there was so much else happening at Metamora. The girls had seized on last night’s drama and speculated and gossiped until Bobby barely recognized the facts behind the students’ fevered imaginings.
Earlier that morning, in Cornwall, she had overheard Sandy Milston’s version. “She was riding a flaming bicycle,” Sandy was telling an avid group of third formers. “Her hair was glowing, and her face was like a skull, except she had glowing eyes. When she touched her, Miss Craybill fell down, like she was frozen, and she hasn’t spoken since.”
“Hurry up, girls, or you’ll be late for breakfast,” Bobby interrupted this horror comic account of the previous night. As the girls scattered obediently, Debby muttered, “Darn it, I miss everything.” The unfortunate third former had sleepwalked through the excitement, ending up in Bobby’s own bed. The Games Mistress had gotten quite a start when she’d stumbled into her suite well after midnight.
