“I’m sorry to interrupt, Ms. Corduroy …”
“That’s fine, Archie. Our little detention has concluded.”
“Good, good. Milrose, stay right there. We are going to have a meeting. Ms. Corduroy, you may sit in if you like.”
“A meeting,” said Munce, with mock enthusiasm. “You mean a session?”
“No, not a session. An informal dialogue.”
Ms. Corduroy, in her capricious mood, decided to stay. She installed herself quietly in a chair at the side of the room, and placed her fingertips together, tent-fashion, in an attitude of amused contemplation.
Mr. Loosten, who affected an insincere, jocular informality with the students, sat partially on a desk, with one foot on the floor and the other swinging.
“Milrose, we have decided that you are in need of Professional Help.”
Ms. Corduroy started. This was a more serious matter than she had anticipated. “Perhaps I should leave the room?”
“No, no. Please stay. You might be able to … constructively intermediate.”
Mr. Loosten enjoyed meaningless phrases, as long as they sounded deeply meaningful.
“Professional Help,” said Milrose Munce. “You mean … I mean, what do you mean?”
“I mean that your … behaviour in the sphere of educational interaction is … indicative of a requirement for attitudinal reassessment.”
“That’s the best you can do? Meaningwise?”
“It means, Milrose, that you are not having a normal, well-adjusted relationship with the empty air surrounding you.”
“What. I breathe …”
“You also converse. You have been noted having conversations. With empty space. With people who are clearly not there.”
“Oh. Old family habit …” Milrose choked.
“Yes, these … behavioural deficiencies are often hereditary. Professional Help is especially useful in such deep, unfortunate cases.”
Milrose was incensed. “If you’re saying that there’s something wrong with my family, then I’m just gonna have to conclude that you’re way out of your league, thinkingwise. But feel free to take it up with them. I’m outta here.”
The silence that ensued, although Archibald Loosten tried to soften it with a look of bogus compassion, was tense. Milrose, despite his tough words, had not risen to leave.
“Your family is not within our therapeutic purview, Milrose. You are. The law does not permit us to Help them. We can, however, Help you.”
“Yeah, well, thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.” This time Milrose did rise, intending to make a casual dash for the door.
“Milrose, talking to things that aren’t there is not the mark of a well-adjusted young man.”
Ms. Corduroy cocked her head. “Have you been having these conversations, Milrose?”
Milrose, without a useful lie at hand, said nothing.
“You have also been noted,” said Archibald Loosten, “slapping on the back people who are, again, not there. Which is to say, slapping non-existent backs.”
“Just, um, trying to give encouragement to the, uh, air around me …” said Milrose, weakly.
“The air does not require encouragement, Milrose. Well-adjusted, normal boys know this.”
“Oh, I do know. Sure I know. It’s just, you know, sometimes I feel the world’s not happy enough, so in the occasional moment of, I dunno, satanic inspiration, I just give it a reassuring ol’ slap on the back.”
“Please,” said Mr. Loosten. “Let’s not blame this on Satan.”
Ms. Corduroy frowned. “Milrose, do you … do you really slap the air on the back?”
“Course not,” said Milrose, sinking further into gloom. “Everyone knows that the air doesn’t have a back.”
“Then what, Milrose, is it that you are slapping?” said Mr. Loosten, with a sleazy, triumphant smile.
“I dunno. Just swatting flies or something.”
“Or something,” said Mr. Loosten, as if that explained everything to his great satisfaction. “Or something, Milrose. We shall Help you with regard to this ‘something.’” Archibald Loosten smoothed the hideous fabric bunched at his fat knee. “Milrose. I am sorry to have to pronounce this … but your social engagement with … empty space … indicates to me—and to others on staff—that you are insufficiently socialized. You have a deficit of real human empathy, which requires you to find companionship in places where companions are manifestly not to be found.”
“Which means what in, like, English?”
“I am saying that you, I’m afraid, require Professional Help.”
Ms. Corduroy interjected. She knew well how serious this matter was—Professional Help was not invoked except in the most grave situations—and she felt a need to intervene on behalf of poor Milrose, who did not yet know what he was in for. “Archie, couldn’t we say … Is it not possible to interpret this behaviour as merely quirky? Quirky, yet acceptable?”
“I hear you, Ms. Corduroy. We have considered that. Perhaps Milrose is simply a student who occupies the fringes of normalcy in ways that seem to many truly normal people quite abnormal, but which are not themselves—if irritating—beyond the scale of the acceptably ordinary. This might alter the situation sufficiently that he might not require Professional Help.”
“Yes!” said Milrose Munce. “Exactly!”
“The Professionals, however, disagree.”
The silence that followed was an even less congenial pause. The severity of the situation was beginning to dawn on Milrose Munce, partially because it was clear that Ms. Corduroy was increasingly distressed.
“A boy who is capable of slapping empty space on the back is a boy who will someday be doing all sorts of very peculiar things to non-existent objects that deserve no such treatment. It is a sign, Ms. Corduroy. We know, statistically, that children who start fires will grow into serial killers and cannibals, and we—or at least the Professionals—have determined that boys who have jocular relations with thin air will grow into, well, abominations.”
“Isn’t that a bit … precipitous, Archie?”
“Yeah, isn’t that a bit extreme?”
“I am afraid that we must defer to the wisdom of the Professionals in this matter. It is, after all, their Profession.”
Neither Milrose Munce nor Ms. Corduroy could conjure a rebuttal, as it was clearly true.
“Now, Milrose. This is hardly the end of the world. It is not a punishment. We are doing this for your benefit. The point of Professional Help is that it improves lives. Your life will, we hope, be improved.”
“I like my life.”
“Well, yes. But this is only because you do not realize how miserable you are, deep down. This misery is latent, and hidden, and Professional Help is designed to bring it to the surface.”
“You’re saying these guys intend to make me miserable!”
“You are already miserable, Milrose. You simply don’t know it.”
Milrose was in fact becoming miserable, and was fully aware of this. Professional Help? All because he had slapped his good friend Cryogenic Kelvin on the back? All because he liked to chat with a dead friend, whose existence he could not of course reveal to anyone else, or they would think him mad? Milrose had of course considered this: that perhaps he should simply admit that he was interacting with ghosts. But he knew instinctively that this kind of admission would not help his case.
He looked to Ms. Corduroy for support. She could not hide her own growing sadness, and she touched her birthmark, unwittingly, in a gesture of sympathy for poor Milrose Munce.
The first floor was that much more oppressive as Milrose made his way down the hall from room 117. Although he did not fully understand what had been announced during that informal conversation, he was sick with foreboding. Something had changed. His life, until now amusing, if completely unserious, was turning on some great slow wheel towards something else.
As he dragged himself towards the stairs at the end of the corridor, past terrible c
lassroom doors, he found himself on a collision course with a girl who was moving even more slowly than he was. At first he could only see her hair, as her head was bowed in concentration: clearly her feet, stepping carefully on the floor, were of great interest to her. This hair was unnaturally black, and where it parted in the centre, revealed a complexion unnaturally white.
She was wearing faded crushed velvet, once something like violet: a dress far too long for her, and whose worn fringe trailed behind her like the train of a weird wedding gown. In the front the buttons were undone from the floor to just below the knees, so that her shoes were visible. They were ballet slippers, dyed black. The black ribbons wound about her pale ankles, which were also occasionally visible. She made her way towards Milrose Munce, and he continued towards her, transfixed.
Would she look up in time to avoid their impact? Or would she simply walk straight into him? For Milrose Munce had no intention of altering his course.
It was a game of chicken, but slow and infinitely strange. While it did not precisely lift the heart of Milrose Munce, it did cause him to briefly enjoy his misery: this girl, stepping towards him, seemed the sort of company that misery loves.
She did not stop. Nor did he. Only when they were within a few seconds of a soft collision did she look up, and straight into his eyes, and this look froze them both, midstep.
Milrose smiled. She did not. Nor did she move aside, even now that she was aware of his trajectory. She simply looked blankly into his eyes, as if she could barely see him. Milrose, because he had a tendency to do such things, waved his hand back and forth in front of her eyes to determine whether she were blind. She grabbed his hand with a movement so quick that he shivered: clearly she was neither blind nor catatonic. Her grip was firm as she moved his hand back to his side and placed it there. That’s where it belongs.
The eyes were not entirely blank now: they were dimly animated, but by what he could not tell. It did not look like amusement, but it did not look entirely different, either.
“Milrose Munce here.”
“I know.”
“Oh. Do I know you?”
“I like to think that nobody knows me.”
“Well, that’s nicely pretentious.”
“Thank you.”
“So how do you know me?”
“I know everybody’s name. I make a point of it. If you know someone’s name, you have the upper hand.”
“True. You have the upper hand. I have, I guess, the lower hand. So what’s your name?”
“If I told you that, I wouldn’t have the advantage anymore, would I?”
“True.”
“Excuse me.” She did not move to the side: it was clear that she fully expected Milrose to accommodate her passage. Which, of course, he did. For she had the upper hand.
As the deliberately nameless girl continued her slow movement down the hall, Milrose tried to collect the last few moments in his mind. Now then. What precisely did she look like? Well, pale. Certainly that was a prominent feature: pallor.
She had what are always termed “delicate” bones, for reasons Milrose had never understood until now. The two bones that appeared above her collar—collar bones?—were so thin and sharp that they did seem as if they required special care. Simply doing up the three buttons at the top of the gown—the ones that were, he recollected, open—would endanger the integrity of those fragile bones. Her face seemed equally vulnerable—structurally, at least—and Milrose was glad they had not in fact collided.
Did her eyes have any colour? No, not that he could discern. They were black, even though he had always been under the impression that black eyes were never truly that shade.
She did have freckles, which did much to mitigate the impression that she was a witch, or—worse—one of those standard-issue girls with pale faces who wear long velvet gowns. Freckles were unexpected. Milrose had the sudden suspicion that she was in fact a flaming redhead, who had subjected her hair to the same treatment that she had her ballet slippers. This pleased him: a redhead, quenched like a fire.
Was she attractive? Always a difficult question. Suffice it to say that Milrose Munce found himself wondering whether she had a birthmark, and what shape it might be.
Something about this peculiar girl put Milrose in mind of the second floor. Even despite such mild irritants as Percy, the second floor did seem the sort of place that the girl in the velvet gown would frequent, were she to enjoy the company of ghosts.
Milrose could not imagine this girl fitting in with his crowd on the third floor. Bored Beulah, with what little flesh she had left, was capable of all manner of subtle gestures, indicating, for the most part, disdain. The girl in the velvet gown was not precisely disdainful. She did seem to have a sense of personal superiority, or at least personal uniqueness, but it was a sincere business, this sense. Milrose could tell that the girl in the velvet gown was in fact sensitive, and perhaps fragile. Beulah, on the other hand, was neither.
No, sensitivity was not Bored Beulah’s strong suit. And fragility was hardly a concern—even falling into a vat of hydrochloric acid had left no mental scars. Beulah liked to pass off her truly appalling death with a shrug: “These things happen.”
Milrose feared that Bored Beulah, though, would make mincemeat of the girl in the velvet gown. Milrose Munce shivered at the thought of subjecting the new girl, with her frail superiority, to the awesome presence that was the posthumous Beulah. The girl in the velvet gown definitely had more of an air of second-floor-esque pretension.
Before leaving the school that day, Milrose Munce was forced to make a brief visit to the basement. The lockers were all situated in that dripping dungeonous pit, and Milrose always left his homework in his locker before going home.
The feeling of doom was not alleviated by his descent into the basement. Milrose generally found that a vague feeling of personal damnation would accompany this journey into the bowels of the school. (He did like that expression: “the bowels of the school.” He had employed it in conversation more than once, to chilling effect.) The basement hallway always reeked of something being unsuccessfully covered up by the smell of something else. Which two smells these were, Milrose chose not to identify.
The lockers were shut, but he knew that those without locks on them were capable of opening at any minute, like the windows of a Christmas advent calendar, to reveal a rotting athletic corpse: Imploded Ig, for instance, who had been practising without a helmet, and while carrying the football had plowed straight into a goalpost (which was itself uncharacteristically unpadded); arrogant Ig whose head was concave, so that only one eye remained spherical, while the other was close to flat—a fried egg with a hazel yolk.
Vain Ig chose to remain locker-bound on this dreadful day. Instead, it was Hurled Harry who threw open the door to a pint-sized locker and howled an ear-splitting greeting.
“Hi, Harry. To what do I owe your dulcet voice?”
“What’s ‘dulcet’?”
“A word that describes a lot of things, but not your voice.”
“You don’t look so happy, Munce.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t all be as cheerful as you. What with our lack of hoofprints and all.”
Harry had not been a jock. He had been a jockey. Harry was four foot eleven, which is short for, say, a basketball player, but perfect if you want to sit on a horse. The school did not have an equestrian program—so few have—but Harry had been training at a professional track.
The horses were not fond of Harry, because he was afraid of them. Horses are like that. And so they took every opportunity to drag poor tiny Harry through low-hanging branches, or toss him playfully into pools of manure. He survived the grand majority of these incidents. In fact, he survived all of them but one. Still, that’s all it takes, isn’t it.
One truly hotheaded horse, Sociopath, was exceptionally contemptuous of timorous riders. Harry had never trained with Sociopath, as the horse’s reputation preceded him: six jockeys to date had been
maimed by this proud horse, and one of them still required a machine in order to breathe. Harry’s mentor, however, a tiny, cruel man by the name of Savonarola, decided that it was time for Harry to overcome his fear, and that Sociopath would be the horse to effect this change. If Harry could tame Sociopath, then he would surely never fear another horse. Note the word if.
Sociopath had taken the very first opportunity to toss poor Harry. It is not hard for a horse to toss a boy as diminutive as Harry. And Sociopath had not only the strength to do so but the coordination to aim a human projectile extremely accurately wherever he wished. On this particular day, Sociopath was in an especially criminal mood, and he chose to hurl poor Harry in the path of an entire posse of oncoming steeds. These horses, even if they had wished, would not have been able to slow down before trampling the jockey—and, to be honest, they were too busy competing with each other to give thought to a tiny, useless human in their path.
And so Harry—what was left of him, at any rate—ended up bearing a truly magnificent array of hoofprints, including a prominent U stamped right in the centre of his face.
“So what’s bugging you, Munce?”
Hurled Harry was the closest thing to a friend that Milrose had in the basement. It seemed that dead jocks were excruciating in proportion to their size. The larger athletes suffered from swelled heads (this seemed to involve a thickening of the skull, without an actual increase in its capacity), whereas Harry was never permitted to feel physically superior, and so retained an element of humility. Also, the tendency on the part of the basketball players to use Harry as a medicine ball contributed to his modest sense of self. He and Milrose might have been reasonably good friends, in fact, were Harry less annoying.
Unfortunately, Hurled Harry had chosen to compensate for his size through the cultivation of his voice. Harry was loud. Loud, without having anything much to say, and without having the kind of voice you want to hear at all, much less at Harry-like volumes. Even before he had taken to howling and wailing—back when he was alive—Harry’s voice had been capable of peeling carrots. Now it could skin whole rabbits.
Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help Page 3
