Grim Hill: Carnival of Secrets

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  We were marched by a student monitor down the oiled wood floors and shown into a large classroom. Instead of tables and chairs, students were sitting in wooden school desks lined in straight rows. I noticed Alice sitting toward the back. At least she would be in our class. Our teacher was the man that had been yelling at us outside. Just great …

  “Where are your supplies?” demanded our teacher, who brusquely ordered us to address him as Mr. Weggleworth.

  “Mr. Weggleworth,” I began.

  “Sir,” he added.

  “Excuse me?” I said in confusion. Mr. Weggleworth brushed me aside and addressed Clive.

  “Why haven’t you brought your school supplies?”

  “We, ah, misplaced them when we moved, Mr. Weggleworth, sir.”

  “If it was up to me, I’d send you both marching right back out the door. Why do they send me the charity cases?” His dour expression matched his unkind words.

  Some students snickered. Don’t teachers know how nerve wracking it is for a person to start a new school? But then I realized his threat was exactly what I wanted. “We don’t have any paper or books or pens either,” I said in a forlorn voice, “Um, Mr. Weggleworth, sir. You might as well send us straight home.”

  For some reason, that seemed to make Mr. Weggleworth angrier. He bellowed for us to sit down, pointing to a desk on the left side of the classroom for me, and a desk a few rows away for Clive. We tried to copy the other kids who all sat rigidly in those desks with their hands folded. We sat up straight and listened attentively during roll call, and while the morning announcements were read, and for prayers, and while we sang the national anthem. It seemed like half the morning we were sitting at attention. I felt like I’d just joined the army.

  We began our lessons with math drills. Once I realized I had to put my hand up for every question, I got into competing with Clive, shooting my arm up for every question, even the algebra word problems. By the end of math class, I was ahead of Clive by three questions, and we were both ahead of the other students.

  “Well,” announced Mr. Weggleworth. “At least our new students aren’t poor and ignorant.” He really seemed unkind, but I didn’t let that daunt me when we started science. We didn’t even move into another room and Mr. Weggleworth stayed to teach us science, too. The other students had memorized the entire periodic table of elements, but Clive and I held our own. That is, until I called out a few elements that hadn’t been invented yet, making the other students laugh at me. But at least we avoided the teacher’s cruel taunts, unlike the hapless students who didn’t have answers ready to recite.

  “Now, class, it’s time for geography. Mr. Weggleworth stood at the chalk board and began scribbling countries. “Call out the capital cities,” he said.

  It was thoroughly enjoyable seeing Clive reduced to a nervous wreck because he couldn’t remember all the old countries and the names of their capitals. It was amazing how many countries and cities had changed in seventy years. Me, well, I managed to stick to the countries that had stayed the same, so I was averaging about the same mark as usual.

  A bell clanged, and Mr. Weggleworth ordered the boys to line up and file out of the room, while he instructed the girls to take their embroidery hoops out of the desk to practice stitching.

  “Where did the guys go?” I asked a girl in a pink dress and blond curls sitting beside me.

  “You shouldn’t use slang,” the girl said primly. Then she pointed to the window. “The boys are outside for physical education.”

  I shot out of my desk and went to the window. “You’re kidding me,” I complained bitterly. “We have to sit here and sew, and they are out there playing soccer?”

  “Good grief,” said the girl tossing her long gold ringlets over her shoulder. “You really are nuts. Everybody knows that girls who play sports get muscles.”

  “So what,” I said.

  “If you must know,” the girl stuck up her chin, “Muscles are unladylike.”

  “That’s crap,” I shouted, sounding completely unladylike. The other girls gasped.

  “You said a very bad word. I’m telling Mr. Weggleworth,” said the golden-haired girl.

  “No, you’re not, Betsy. Or I’ll give you a knuckle sandwich after school.” For some reason, Alice had come to my rescue. Betsy looked a bit frightened and turned back to her handwork.

  For lunch, Clive was allowed to stay outside and play ball with the boys. I sat alone under a maple tree in the girl’s courtyard while the other girls all sat together and talked. I munched the apple I had brought for lunch. My stomach was still grumbling when I finished.

  “Look, she’s so poor she can’t even afford lunch,” Betsy said nastily from where she sat in the middle of the other girls.

  “Just keep your mouth shut,” said Alice, defending me again.

  When the bell rang, I was filled with pure gratitude that there was only one more subject before we could leave. But tomorrow will be another day, said that annoying voice in my head. “Not if I can help it,” I muttered.

  Our last subject was something called “penmanship.” Mr. Weggleworth asked students to hand Clive and me sheets of paper torn from their exercise books. Alice passed me several sheets of lined paper and a strange looking long pen. I picked up my pen and began scratching away but the pen was out of ink. I was about to mention the fact, but I noticed the boy in the desk beside me was staring. Then I looked around and watched students dip the tip of the pen into the inkwell that sat on the corner of our desks. I’d wondered what that was for.

  Except when I went to dip my pen in, I noticed several dead flies floating in the ink. I jumped up in disgust.

  “Sit down,” ordered the teacher. “You are supposed to be working on penmanship.”

  “There are dead flies in my inkwell,” I complained.

  Mr. Weggleworth stared at me coldly. “If you can’t make do, then do without,” he said.

  With a queasy stomach I tried not to look at the floating fly corpses as I dipped my pen in the ink and began writing. By the end of the paragraph, my page looked like one of those weird tests on TV where people were supposed to stare at blobs of ink on the paper and say what it reminded them of. Not to mention, my fingers had turned purple.

  “Here,” Alice whispered. She handed me a piece of paper with precision handwriting in beautiful straight lines. Not a smidge of excess ink had splashed on her page. “Take this before Mr. Weggleworth walks down the aisle. Turn it in with your name on it.”

  I’d just managed to switch my page when Mr. Weggleworth began marching between the desk aisles and checking students’ handwriting. He was swishing a bamboo cane behind his back. My heart leapt to my throat when he slammed the cane across the desk ahead of me and shouted to the student, “Those i’s are not dotted.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Weggleworth, sir,” said a boy with bowl cut hair.

  He checked the page I had on my desk while I hid my ink stained hands under my seat. I sighed with relief when he passed me by. Not everyone was as fortunate. Two desks behind me, I jumped when Mr. Weggleworth smacked a student’s writing hand with the cane. He moved toward Clive’s row. He slashed his cane again, and it landed with a sharp smack on another boy’s hands. I flinched. Then he raised his cane again. The kid let out a ragged sob.

  I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Don’t you dare hit him!” I screamed from my desk. “You shouldn’t be caning anybody. It’s illegal, maybe even criminal.”

  Mr. Weggleworth spun on his heels. His eyes bugged as his face darkened several shades. A purple vein throbbed on his forehead as he came toward me. With a quiet voice that dripped icy menace, he said, “What did you just say to me, young lady?”

  A collective gasp rattled around the room as he raised his cane high in the air over his head.

  CHAPTER 21 A Haunting Memory

  Shaking my head in disbelief that messy ink blots could result in such a terrible punishment, I lost it and answered the teacher. I guess
it sounded like a rant in front of the whole class. “Who cares about penmanship, anyways? In the future we’ll all be typing on computer keyboards. And we certainly won’t need to be dipping pens into gross inkwells. We’ll have ballpoint pens. And teachers will be nicer and never hit kids.”

  It was as if the large clock over the blackboard had stopped ticking, and the air had been sucked out of the room. As if in slow motion, Mr. Weggleworth’s face became etched in fury. He lifted his cane even higher and took another step towards me. I froze and my skin grew clammy.

  “You. Are. The. Most. Insolent. Girl.” As he crossed the floor, Mr. Weggleworth punctuated each word with a horrifying crack as he smacked his cane across a desk. “You will be the sorriest …”

  “Cat. Run!” shouted Clive.

  Snapping out of it, I sprang from my desk, knocking over my ink well. Spilled ink dotted with tiny lumps of blue fly goo ran across the floor. I tried to hurry, but it was like one of those nightmares where I moved my legs as fast as I could, but they only went in slow motion.

  The cane whooshed, narrowly missing my shoulder. “What! How dare you!” Weggleworth bellowed when Clive grabbed his cane from his hand and flung it out the window. Then he lurched toward Clive.

  Mr. Weggleworth bumped into another desk and tripped with a grunt and sharp hiss of anger. In a flash, we fled from the classroom, probably breaking about a dozen more rules as we ran down the hall and out the door together.

  As we raced past the school grounds, Clive slid to a stop. Breathless, he said, “We’d better hide until school is out. It’s only going to be about fifteen minutes or so, but why take any chances. The last thing we need is another run in with the truant officer.”

  “There,” I pointed to a clump of trees at the edge of the grounds. “When the students leave the school, we’ll just mingle in with them. We’ll be anonymous.”

  As soon as the students flooded past the school grounds, Clive and I joined in – only to discover we couldn’t exactly remain anonymous.

  “Do you know what she said to Mr. Weggleworth?”

  “Did you see what he did?”

  “They ran away from the school! Did you ever hear of that?”

  “Those two are as notorious as Bonnie and Clyde …”

  “Maybe we should split up,” said Clive as we felt the heat of everyone’s stares. I agreed. Clive slipped away and headed down a side street. As I turned a corner, a group of girls barred my way.

  “Where do you think you are you going?” asked Betsy.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “What’s it to you?”

  “We heard you said a bad word in class,” a girl with a million freckles and pigtails said. She added shyly, “… And you talked back to the teacher. Maybe a boy does that sometimes, but I’ve never heard of a girl being so bold.”

  “Did you really defy old Mr. Wiggleworm?” A tall girl with glasses eyed me with curiosity.

  “She did.” Betsy tsktsked. “She’s a bad girl. A good girl shows cheerful obedience.”

  “Don’t you think Wiggleworm had it coming?” came a voice from behind. Alice Greystone walked up and hooked her arm in mine.

  “Except he’ll skin them alive or send them to reform school,” said the girl in pigtails.

  “Probably both,” decided Betsy, looking smug.

  Ignoring them, Alice whispered in my ear. “I want to show you something.”

  “It’s been nice chatting,” I said, staring straight at Betsy. Then Alice and I walked in the opposite direction.

  “I … can’t explain it,” began Alice. “But … you remind me of someone.” She shook her head as if trying to pry a memory loose. “But how can you remind me of somebody I don’t remember?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I had to be careful what I said, as it would do Alice no good knowing she had a sister who vanished into Grim Hill only to be forgotten for seventy years. Although I was curious how I reminded her of Lucinda… “Maybe you could explain what is it about me that makes you feel that way.”

  “I think I’d rather show you,” said Alice. When we arrived at her house, she took me upstairs and asked me to wait in her room. I was surprised when I saw how nice her room was. It was painted a sunny yellow and had a shiny blue linoleum floor with a starburst in the middle. Frilly bed skirts and pillow shams adorned her bed. A dark wood desk sported a fancy colored pen set and leather bound journal. She had an easel for painting, and from the ceiling hung a beautiful red birdcage where a white parakeet chirped. I couldn’t help thinking that Sookie would have loved this room – not that she would have kept it this tidy. We lived in the same house, but in this time period, it was a much grander place, and Alice’s family clearly had a lot more money than we did.

  When Alice returned, I asked, “What is it you wanted to show me?”

  “My … ah, cousin’s room,” Alice said pulling an old-timey skeleton key from her jumper pocket. We went across the hall where there was a locked door.

  I sucked in a breath and Alice looked at me with questioning eyes. I couldn’t help it. It was my room we were unlocking!

  “I’m not supposed to ever come in here,” Alice smiled ruefully, “Which is why I couldn’t resist.” She turned the lock and opened the door.

  I was dying of curiosity. I stepped onto dark green linoleum. This room was not frilly like Alice’s. A twin bed with a plain chenille bedspread was shoved in the corner like an afterthought. A wood desk sat in the middle of the room with a huge globe perched on top. Bookshelves lined one wall.

  My mouth went dry and my heart began to ache for a girl who never got a chance to live her dreams. And by the looks of Lucinda’s room, she had a lot of dreams.

  One bookshelf was cluttered with titles on Egyptology, Vikings, Ancient Greeks, and anything and everything about archeology. My gaze lingered on a book of Celtic mythology. That’s the book Alice had given Jasper for research – rather, the book she would give him. A couple of the other bookcases were dedicated to flying and airplanes. Stacks of National Geographic magazines filled the remaining shelves.

  A gigantic map on one wall had multicolored pins sticking everywhere. All of them were tagged in the order in which Lucinda wanted to travel. A pair of old-fashioned soccer boots stuck out from underneath the bed, and a soccer ball sat on a bed table. Above the table hung a poster titled: “Babe Didrikson, Woman gold medalist. Olympics 1932”. Scrawled below in Lucinda’s messy penmanship were the words – MY HERO.

  As we looked around at the objects in the room Alice began to speak. “Remember how I said you reminded me of someone, Cat? What you said today about girls wanting to play sports, gave me that feeling – that you reminded me of someone.”

  She closed her eyes. “Standing here in this room I feel it even more, especially when you said that stuff about boys not being better.” Alice pointed to another poster on the wall. It was of a woman pilot in goggles, a leather helmet and huge scarf. Underneath her picture was the caption:

  “Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others. Amelia Earhart.”

  “I remind you of Amelia Earhart?” I said, flattered.

  Alice shook her head. “No, I don’t think that’s it. It’s about someone else who said whacky things.”

  So much for being flattered. I kept staring at all the books and maps and thought about how my own room was plain, and that I hardly made any future plans. But I did love sports. Lucinda’s and my fates had another huge thing in common – Grim Hill – so maybe we weren’t so different. “I’m guessing you’re talking about the girl who lived in this room.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Alice approached the wall. “This poster is only a few years old. How can I know so much about Amelia Earhart, her flights, the fact she and her plane vanished … but I have no memory of the girl who lived in this room.” Then Alice looked straight at me, saying, “But for some reason, I don’t think you’d call that strange.”

  My thro
at felt scratchy as I struggled to find the right thing to say. Finally, I continued, “One day you will find out the mystery behind this room and all about the girl who lived here. And I promise, you’ll be super happy.”

  “That’s right. You’re a fortune-teller. What are ballpoint pens?” Alice asked with a dubious expression.

  “I can tell you they are a thousand times better than nibs and inkwells.”

  We laughed together and I took a last look at my ‘old’ room. I found myself wanting to remember all the details. We left, but before locking the door, Alice stood outside in the hall for a moment and mused, “I don’t think I mind that we’re moving soon. This room feels haunted.” Yes, by the sister you’ve forgotten! I thought.

  On my way out of the house, Alice filled a paper sack with loaves of bread, bananas, cheese, and so many tins of beans and soup that I could hardly carry it. Then she handed me another bag stuffed with more dresses. I thanked Alice for her kindness.

  When I neared the graveyard, I set the bags on the ground and rubbed my aching arms. Clive spotted me from down the street and broke into a run. He looked frantic when he grabbed my shoulders. “Cat, I waited here to meet up with you. What took you so long? I thought that maniac Weggleworth caught you. I was about to go back to the school and look for you.”

  “I got sidetracked,” I said, pulling the stupid bows out of my hair.

  “You know,” he said. “My gran was sure wrong. There’s nothing good about the olden days. People keep telling us right out loud how we’re poor and ignorant, and outlaws. The teacher went ballistic when you refused to be the kind of girl he expected – sitting still and being shy and polite. They’re all cruel and judgmental.”

  “Says the most judgmental guy I know,” I said with a wry smile.

  “People can change,” he shot back.

  “Oh, I know. I have.” I gave him a pointed look. “Once you told me I had an unreliable heart. But – I just needed time to figure out who I liked.”