Chapter Eight: The School Bell
"I hear she’s really nice, but gives loads of homework,” Eliza said with a frown about their first period teacher, Ms. Limerick.
“Hmm,” said Elliot distractedly, trying not to drop the pile of newly purchased school books pinned between his arms and chest as he and Eliza maneuvered the jam-packed hallways of Giggleswick’s only school house toward their English class.
“I do hate homework, don’t you?” Eliza continued.
“Hmm,” replied Elliot again, sidestepping a locker door that had nearly swung into his face.
“At least we get to read Julio and Bernadette this semester. Everyone says there’s a kissing scene in the fifth act,” she said excitedly.
“Right,” said Elliot, thinking he’d heard Eliza say something about kissing and hoping she didn’t mean with him. He was too busy taking everything in to catch every word his friend was saying.
“It’s this room,” said Eliza, steering him in through a classroom door to the left where many students were already seated and chatting feverishly. “If we sit in the back, we’ll be able to pass notes.”
Elliot didn’t think this was necessarily the wisest idea, but seeing as he’d never had someone to pass notes with before, he was too flattered to object. Plus, he’d spotted Kory Kreville toward the front of the room and didn’t fancy sitting too close to the half-Ukrainian snob. He followed Eliza toward two empty seats in the back row and happily plopped his arm full of books upon the desk.
Before his backside even hit the seat, their teacher strode into the room amidst a multitude of billowing fabric. Her brightly colored dress floated around her willowy frame, and a butterfly hair-clip held her long flowing locks away from her face. “Attention class,” she trilled softly in a sweet tone somewhere between singing and speaking. “Welcome to your first year of Giggleswickian literature. I am Ms. Linda Limerick, though you may call me Ly-Ly ...” she trailed over to the blackboard and sprawled Ms. Ly-Ly in purple chalk across the board.
Elliot and Eliza exchanged wide-eyed glances, and many other students seemed to be doing the same. There was no way Elliot would be calling their teacher Ms. Ly-Ly, and he had a feeling the rest of the class felt similarly.
“I would like everyone to please take out a writing utensil and blank sheet of paper. We’ll be doing a fun little introductory exercise to practice our writing.” She clasped her hands together and smiled at them, her eyes twinkling. “For the next fifteen minutes I want you all to tell me about the most exciting thing to happen to you over your summer holidays. Remember ... be creative!”
Ms. Limerick slipped behind her desk. “I will be writing something about my own summer holiday to share with you as well. You may begin!” Elliot watched as Ms. Limerick began scribbling furiously with a pen that looked to have a big purple flower sprouting out the end of it.
“Psst,” whispered Eliza, nudging her elbow into his side. “What are you going to write about?”
“Dunno,” Elliot whispered back. His summer had been pretty dull and uneventful, and then he’d gotten himself suspended within the first two weeks of school at St. Bartholomew’s. That wasn’t exactly something he wanted to share with the class. He guessed the boat ride over in Olive Juice would still count as part of his summer holiday since school hadn’t yet started in Giggleswick. That had been pretty exciting, he thought. “I’m going to write about Evol and sailing through the Wailing Wanda Waters,” he told Eliza, thankful to have found something to write about.
“Oooh, that is exciting!” she said as softly as she could manage. “You’re probably the only person in this room who’s been through the Wailing Wanda Waters!”
That thought hadn’t crossed Elliot’s mind, and it made him smile. “What are you going to write about?” he asked Eliza. He glanced over at Ms. Limerick to make sure she hadn’t seen them talking, but Ly-Ly’s pen had never left the paper, and Elliot thought she must have been onto her fourth page by now.
Eliza had already begun writing, though she looked less than eager. “I thought I’d write about my Auntie Agatha’s ninety-seventh birthday party.”
“Was that exciting?” Elliot asked.
“It was for Auntie Agatha,” said Eliza. “She’d never turned ninety-seven before, and her boyfriend had a swimming pool installed for her.”
“How was that exciting for you?” said Elliot curiously, trying not to picture a ninety-seven-year-old woman in a bathing suit.
“I got to use her pool all summer,” said Eliza flatly and returned to her writing.
Elliot began dictating as many details of his voyage to Giggleswick as he could remember, looking up occasionally to check the time and finding Ms. Limerick still engrossed in her writing. Just as he was finishing up a paragraph about Lefty helping them off the boat, Ms. Limerick floated to the front of the class, clutching a leather-bound diary.
“Alrighty then, class,” she sang. “Time’s up. I shall go first, and then we’ll make our way around the room till everyone has had a chance to share. And we mustn't forget to mind our manners ... remember, everyone is just as excited to share their story as you are.”
Elliot heard Eliza groan next to him, and he felt a little lurch in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t at all excited to read his story aloud to twenty strangers.
“Eh-hem,” Ms. Limerick began, looking as if she were about to launch into a heart-wrenching aria, which was perhaps not far from the truth. “I will now read to you ‘Summer Solstice Bloomed Amongst Us’ by Ly-Ly Limerick ...”
Eliza rolled her eyes. “Oh brother.”
“As I knelt by my garden with my solitary hoe, tilling the moist earth beneath my fingertips, I felt overwhelmed by the majesty of nature. The summer solstice was amongst us, and on this longest day of the year, I was determined to pay thanks to mother nature for this bountiful existence ...” She smiled at them over the top of her diary as if hoping they’d all had this same opportunity to commune with mother nature.
“Tears fell from my face as I gazed in wonder at the simplicity of the daffodils exploding from the ground in such vibrant-yellow sprays of color ...” (It looked as though reading about it had resurfaced her tears, Elliot observed) “... the cherry blossoms seemed to mimic my own teardrops as they fell gracefully from the gnarled branches from whence they’d bloomed, and a faint buzz filled my ears as the honeybees perched sweetly amid the blossoms to pollinate, continuing the circle of life ...”
Elliot’s attention span could not grasp the rest of Ms. Limerick’s soliloquy, and when she’d finally finished her ode to nature some ten minutes later, much of the class was resting their heads in their hands in one way or another.
Ms. Limerick wiped a stray tear from her eye, looking very satisfied with herself, and closed her diary. She thanked the class as if they had been applauding wildly and then directed her attention to a boy sitting at the desk directly in front of her. “Victor, why don’t you share next,” she said, and the boy’s face turned a bright red, his hands clutching nervously at the edges of his notepaper.
“I had a good summer,” he stammered. “I had a good summer because we went swimming. We went swimming because it was my birthday. My birthday was fun.”
Eliza huffed. “Darn, I wrote about swimming too,” she whispered.
Elliot almost said, “At least your writing is ten times better,” but it occurred to him that he had no idea how well Eliza could write, and so he said nothing.
Ms. Limerick blinked severely, and after a lengthy pause, which she was undoubtedly using to formulate a polite response, she said, “Thank you, Victor, for sharing that with us.” She smiled as always, but there was an absence of sparkle in her eyes this time. “I’m sure you’ve left us all wanting more,” she added a bit tritely.
Ms. Limerick moved on to a disheveled looking girl with bushy brown hair sitting next to Victor. “Marigold, would you like to share your story with us?”
“Well, I guess,” said the girl in a gloomy voice. “It’s probably stupid though,” she sighed.
“Ah ah ah,” chirped Ms. Limerick, “there is no ‘stupid’ in this classroom.”
Kory Kreville and the blonde girl sitting next to him were snickering, and Elliot was almost certain he heard Kory whisper “Then she should leave”, clearly referring to Marigold.
“Mr. Kreville, that is not kind,” said Ms. Limerick, sounding like an injured bunny rabbit. “After that remark, you shall read your story last.”
Eliza frowned. “Wow, she’s tough.”
Marigold droned on for a little over a minute about the day her cat had had kittens, and how it would have been the most exciting day of her whole summer had it not been for one of the kittens eating her pet ladybug, Roberta.
Ms. Limerick appeared deeply sympathetic at the loss of Marigold’s ladybug friend, making many coddling noises throughout the girl’s monologue, but most of the students were finding discreet ways of poking fun at Marigold’s expense. Elliot felt his cheeks flush with anger. Despite not knowing exactly how one could become quite so attached to a ladybug, Elliot couldn’t help remembering what it was like to feel as if everyone were whispering behind his back, and he suddenly felt very determined to become Marigold’s friend.
Ms. Limerick asked the blonde-haired girl seated beside Kory Kreville to read her story next. Elliot recognized her from the welcome party, and he leaned in toward Eliza to whisper, “Isn’t that––?”
“Posey-Bernadette La Russo,” said Eliza with an unmistakable scowl. “My arch-nemesis –– always gets the best parts in the school musicals. She has a twin, Priscilla-Beatrice, but Posey’s the pretty one, and everyone treats Priscilla like an ugly stepsister.”
Sure enough, looking nearly identical but undeniably less pretty, Priscilla-Beatrice was sitting a few rows ahead of Elliot and Eliza with an empty seat on either side of her. She seemed understandably disgruntled as her sister Posey boasted about the most exciting day of her summer when she had won the Junior Miss Giggleswick Beauty Pageant for the third year in a row –– her baton allegedly having reached heights no Giggleswickian baton twirler had ever reached before.
After regaling the class with elaborate descriptions of her many pageant gowns and bathing suits, and then complaining about how dreadfully heavy the crown had been on her head, Posey was finally asked to finish things up so that the other members of the class would have their chance to share.
It seemed like hours later by the time everyone but Eliza, Elliot and Kory had read their stories. Even Ms. Limerick appeared to be losing interest, and her sugary-sweet nature had mellowed to little more than a cheerful disposition. Eliza then read her story about Auntie Agatha’s birthday party to the class, and Elliot was thankful that her writing showed considerably more talent than had Victor’s, though he found it strange that so few students seemed to think a ninety-seven-year-old woman swimming in the pool her boyfriend had bought her was at all unusual. He hoped this might have been because the class had long since stopped paying attention, for it was now his turn to read, and his stomach was doing somersaults.
Elliot’s voice shook as he read the first few words aloud, and he glanced nervously over the top of his paper, half-expecting to find each and every student staring intimidatingly in his direction. But, in fact, Ms. Limerick was the only person who seemed to be listening, and he felt the somersaults subside as he read about traveling through the Wailing Wanda Waters in Olive Juice. Upon finishing a few minutes later, he saw to his horror that many of the students had tuned in somewhere during his story and were now boring their eyes into him as if he were some sort of space alien.
“Was it scary?” someone called out.
“Were you blinded by the fog?”
“Did you worry you might never find your way out?”
It seemed as though Elliot was now quite popular, particularly with Ms. Limerick, who was floating over to his side with an expression of ecstasy upon her face.
“My dear Mr. Bisby,” she sighed breathlessly, “you have a tremendous ability for the written word. Never in all my years of teaching has such fluid connection of thought ever escaped a student’s pen,” she gasped, her crystal earrings dangling hypnotically, causing Elliot to see spots as they caught the light.
Though feeling slightly proud, Elliot found himself fidgeting uncomfortably beneath Ms. Limerick’s gooey gaze, and he forced a polite smile upon his face.
“I will be most anxious to read everything you write for me this semester,” she said longingly, coming within two-inches of cupping his face in her hands. But then it was as if something snapped, and she came down from her cloud and returned to the front of the room. “Mr. Kreville, we have three minutes until the bell. You have our attention,” she said and plopped herself back into her desk chair amidst a whoosh of fabric.
According to Kory Kreville, the excitement of his summer culminated the day his brother contracted the measles, which Kory claimed he deserved for having ever been born. Naturally, Ms. Limerick looked aghast at this bitter exposition, but the bell rang and the class leapt from their seats before she could chide Kory for having abused the assignment.
“Please read the first hundred pages of your textbook on early Giggleswickian Literature for next class!” she sang shrilly at them before they could reach the door.
“Ugh ... we were so close to not having any homework,” Eliza grumbled.
They filed out into the hallway, which was once again jam-packed with students rushing off to their next class. “What do you have this period?” asked Eliza.
“Umm,” Elliot pulled his schedule from his pocket, “practical math with Mr. Arbégla.”
“Good. Me, too,” said Eliza. “I wonder if you’re as good at math as you are at writing,” she added mischievously and promptly began impersonating Ms. Limerick. “Oh Elliot, you’re the most handsomest, well-written student I have ever had,” she sang, clutching her chest and swooning dramatically.
“Ha, ha, ha,” spat Elliot, but he couldn’t help cracking a smile. He thought it was Eliza laughing beside him, but a second later Kory Kreville brushed hard against him, nearly knocking the books out of Elliot’s hands. He and Posey-Bernadette were snorting and acting as if something were terribly funny.
“Thinks he’s so special,” burst Kory. He thumped his chest like a heartbeat and mouthed “Ly Ly, Ly Ly” in succession, and Posey cackled hideously as the two of them shot smug glances at Elliot over their shoulders. Priscilla-Beatrice was following close behind with her head down and looked to be carrying all of Kory and Posey’s books as well as her own.
“Don’t let him get to you, Elliot,” Eliza muttered under her breath. “He’s just jealous. Can’t stand not being the center of attention ... same goes for Posey-Buttwipe –– I mean, Bernadette.”
Elliot nodded, but his mood had sunk quite a bit in the last minute. Thankfully, he was quickly distracted by two students from their class who had caught up with him and Eliza.
“Hey there, Elliot,” said a boy with a face full of freckles. “Terry Pepper. Just wondering, did you actually hear the ghost of Wailing Wanda crying?” he asked, keeping a steady pace with Elliot and Eliza as they headed in the direction of their math class.
“Yeah,” said another boy who introduced himself as Jamie Boot, “did you actually see her, or does she wail from beneath the water?”
“No, and um ... no,” Elliot replied, feeling a bit overwhelmed, but thankful for their friendliness.
“What? Really?” said Terry. “But Eliza said you did!”
Eliza made a growling noise at the sound of her name and then smiled sheepishly at Elliot. “It’s not very interesting to sail through the Wailing Wanda Waters and not see or hear Wanda, Elliot,” she said defensively. “I was doing you a favor.”
“Gotta run to class, guys, but look for us at lunch!” Terry called as he and Jamie picked up their pace and headed down a side hallway.
Elliot and Eliza again chose seats at the back of the room for Mr. Arbégla’s practical math class, which proved to be even duller than their English class had been. The teacher, who had a rather dark tan and greasy black hair, introduced himself as Abacus Arbégla, and then without any further discussion they were working on pie charts and polynomials, or polysomething-or-anothers ... Elliot was never any good at math. Mr. Arbégla’s voice was as monotonous as Ly-Ly Limerick’s was melodious, and if it hadn’t been for his unintentionally amusing South American accent, the class would have seemed a complete waste.
The lunch bell rang at noon, and for the first time in all his years of schooling, Elliot wasn’t dreading the cafeteria. He and Eliza joined the mass of chattering students filing down the hallway toward a pair of double doors where a stout little woman was stationed in a red and white striped apron and hat. Looking like a candy-cane, she handed a food tray and some silverware to each of the students as they entered the cafeteria, smiling warmly and addressing many of them by name.
“How about over there?” suggested Eliza, pointing to an empty table over by the soup counter.
Elliot nodded and followed her through the rows of tables toward the empty one she’d spotted in the back. Before they could reach it, however, he caught sight of a girl sitting alone at a table in the corner. He had a very good idea who it was, and sure enough, upon closer inspection, there was Marigold hiding behind her frizzy curls and heavily prescribed spectacles.
“Eliza,” Elliot called out ahead, “maybe we should join Marigold.”
Eliza looked shocked at such a suggestion and seemed to be having a hard time coming up with a response. “I don’t think so ... she likes to keep to herself,” she said dismissively.
“Nobody likes to sit by themselves,” said Elliot.
Eliza paused stubbornly. “I’m telling you Elliot, she’s a downer.”
“That’s just cause she’s feeling alone. Come on,” he said with a newfound confidence, knowing Eliza wouldn’t abandon him no matter how much she might want to. He saw her frown as someone took their empty table, and then a second later she was following behind him quite begrudgingly.
As they approached Marigold, the girl seemed to be concentrating on her knees and sucking on a lemon, which was making a noise Elliot knew would become quickly annoying.
“Hi, Marigold,” said Elliot cheerfully.
He gave Eliza a pleading look. “Hi,” she conceded.
Marigold hadn’t seen them coming for her head being down, and at the sound of Elliot’s voice, she gazed up at them with a pair of droopy brown eyes. Elliot couldn’t help noting a slight resemblance between her and Eliza’s basset hound, Bert.
“I’m Elliot Bisby, and you know Eliza ... may we join you?” he asked, trying not to sound as though he pitied Marigold, because people sitting alone never liked that.
For several uncomfortable seconds, the girl said nothing. Finally, she drew in a deep breath as if she’d been surviving off of recycled air for the past several minutes and said, “If you really want to ... though no one ever really wants to.”
“Of course we really want to,” said Elliot, smiling awkwardly and sitting down across from her, Eliza following suit. He pulled out his peanut-butter sandwich, taking a few bites while desperately wracking his brain for a conversation starter. After several more bites, the best he could come up with was “Sorry about your ladybug”, which he instantly regretted, thinking this sounded particularly moronic out loud.
Marigold blinked. “Same to you,” she said.
Elliot was confused. “But I haven’t a ladybug,” he replied.
“Well if you ever do have one, it’s sure to get eaten ... they always do,” she said gloomily. “That’s just how it is.”
Elliot and Eliza looked at one another nervously. “Ehem, well,” said Elliot, “think you’ll like Ms. Limerick’s English class?”
“Maybe,” said Marigold. “Maybe not. You never can tell with these things.”
“Right,” said Elliot. He eyed Eliza, hoping she would take a turn, and thankfully she obliged.
“Those are really pretty glasses,” she said. “I don’t think they would look nearly as nice on me.”
Marigold shook her head. “Probably wouldn’t.”
Eliza looked deeply affronted, and Elliot couldn’t blame her, but he had the odd sensation that Marigold had absolutely no idea she’d been rude. Things might have become even more awkward if Eliza hadn’t spotted Terry Pepper and Jamie Boot entering the cafeteria.
“Terry! Jamie!” Eliza called, waving to them.
Elliot saw the two boys turn in their direction. At first they looked eager, but then suddenly their smiles dropped away and they waved back and mouthed “Catch you later” before taking a seat with a group of students Elliot recognized from their English class.
Eliza looked doubly furious this time and refused to talk to Marigold or Elliot the rest of lunch.
Elliot tried to make small talk with Marigold, but breaking through her woebegone exterior had proved more than tiring. He thought he’d maybe succeeded when he started munching on some Knicklebeans and Marigold declared chocolate as one of her most favorite things. But even a conversation about chocolate went downhill, seeing as she was allergic and could never have any. “Figures ... how like me,” she’d said. Elliot stopped talking at this point, but the lack of conversation was almost worse, for Marigold was now sucking on her third lemon of the day.
By the end of lunch, Elliot was regretting having ever insisted they sit with Marigold and surprised at himself for not feeling terribly guilty about this.
When the bell rang to dismiss them from the cafeteria, Marigold smiled at Elliot and Eliza. “Thanks for sitting with me ... you’re nice people. Not like some,” she said. With this comment, the guilt set in, and Elliot was fairly sure they’d be eating many more lunches with Marigold whether they liked it or not.
“What did I tell you,” said Eliza, breaking the silence a few minutes later as they headed to their history class.
“Does this mean you’re still talking to me then?” said Elliot, glad to hear her voice.
Eliza glared at him, but she couldn’t hold her cold stare for long, and it soon morphed into a smile. “Of course, I am. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’m beginning to think you were right about her,” Elliot admitted. “Not the most cheerful sort, is she?”
Eliza huffed. “Nor the nicest. I don’t know how two people can come from the same parents and be so different!”
“What do you mean?”
Eliza suddenly looked nearly as gooey-eyed as Ms. Limerick been had after hearing Elliot’s writing. “Marigold’s brother, Piper Feeney. He’s a year ahead of us,” she sighed, “and so dreamy.”
Elliot agreed that it was hard to believe someone of that description could be tied to Marigold, and they were almost to their history classroom when her brother’s name was mentioned again. Eliza had caught sight of a poster taped to the wall. “YES!” she exclaimed. “Musical auditions signup! Oooh, and Piper’s already on the list!”
Elliot saw that Posey-Bernadette had also placed her flowery autograph on the list but thought better of mentioning this to Eliza, who seemed to be trying her best to ignore it.
“I hope we’ll be doing a fun one this year, like My Fair Lady or Camelot,” she said excitedly.
“Wait,” Elliot wondered, “you know about those shows?” he asked. It seemed Wally Noodle must have done just as thorough a job “keeping up with the times” with broadway musicals as he’d done with books.
“Yes, I know about them,” Eliza insisted, scribbling her name directly beneath Piper Feeney’s. “If only I could play Eliza and be like Audrey Hephurn!”
“But you are Eliza,” said Elliot.
“The Eliza from the show, you twit!” she hissed.
“Sorry,” said Elliot, laughing. “Can I sign up too?” He had never been in a musical before, but he liked singing and thought it would give him and Eliza something to talk about.
“Oh, please do! That would be loads of fun! You could play ‘enry ‘iggins!” she added in her best cockney accent.
“I think I’ll just try for a non-speaking part,” said Elliot, losing his enthusiasm at the thought of being on a stage. Elliot signed his name beneath Eliza’s, and they walked the rest of the way to their history classroom where, for the third time that day, Eliza suggested they sit in the back.
“I find history particularly dreadful,” she whispered as they took their seats.
Their teacher, Mr. Larry Necker, had already written the day’s agenda on the chalkboard, and when the tall, graying man entered the classroom a few minutes later, he beamed warmly at them and asked each student to introduce themselves.
“Now remember the names of your classmates, children,” he said after they had finished. “It’s quite likely you’ll one day see several of those names in our Giggleswick history books. Never forget that you are history in the making!”
Elliot found it hard to imagine his name ever being printed in a Giggleswick history book considering he’d only been a resident for a few days, but the thought had gotten his attention.
“What do you think I’ll be in the books for?” asked Eliza, and it seemed several other students were busy contemplating the details of their illustrious futures as well. “Perhaps Dame Eliza, Her Majesty of the Stage,” she suggested, flourishing her hand dramatically.
“Oh yes, definitely,” said Elliot, as any best-friend should.
“Alright now, class. Settle down,” said Mr. Necker, though he was looking pleased at their enthusiasm. “For the next several weeks we’ll be studying Giggleswick’s leaders, which will help us on our way to understanding the path our small nation has taken over the years. Now, who here can tell me the name of our very first constable?”
Nearly every hand in the room shot into the air.
“Good, good, good,” said Mr. Necker, selecting a student at random to answer the question.
“Godfrey Gallagher-Garrington de Gadsberry Giggleswick,” said a boy in the front of the room.
“Right, you are! Now, who can name our second constable?” asked Mr. Necker, sounding more curious. He surveyed the room, but there weren’t any hands in the air this time.
Just when it seemed as though Mr. Necker would have to answer the question himself, Elliot saw a pale hand slip silently into the air. To his surprise, the hand belonged to Priscilla-Beatrice.
“Yes, Miss La Russo?” acknowledged Mr. Necker.
“It was Harvey Humperdinck ... I think,” she said quietly.
Eliza leaned over to Elliot. “It would have taken her sister Posey all day just to spell that name,” she said.
“Yes, Miss La Russo! Very good,” said Mr. Necker happily. “You don’t hear of Humperdinck too often, but seeing as he was only our second leader, he played a crucial role in the progression of our history,” he stressed.
Priscilla-Beatrice seemed to be the only one who knew about the next four constables as well, the names of which included Winifred Wyatt, Ichabod Sissiboo, Tallulah Bedburn, and Frederick Garvey.
“Very good indeed, Miss La Russo,” exclaimed Mr. Necker. “Now who can tell me about the constable who succeeded Frederick Garvey after his untimely death just ten years ago this winter?”
This time, the hand that caught Elliot’s attention as it shot into the air belonged to none other than Kory Kreville.
“Yes, Mr. Kreville?” said Mr. Necker, looking eager to have a new volunteer.
“Basil Donovan, sir,” Kory sneered.
A bell went off inside Elliot’s head at the sound of that name. He’d heard it once before, or maybe it was someone he’d met ... no, that wasn’t it. He couldn’t think why the name should mean something to him, but it most certainly did.
“Why yes, Mr. Kreville, that is correct,” Mr. Necker replied. “And so we have reached the end of our list. Now I should see everyone’s hand in the air for this one ... Who is our current const––”
A hand was in the air before Mr. Necker had even finished the question. “Alright, Terry. You were clearly the first.”
“Sir,” Terry Pepper spoke nervously, “I was wondering if you could tell us why Basil Donovan disappeared.”
Several students in the class began whispering frantically. Elliot caught snippets of conversation, but it was the uneasy tone of voice the students were using that jogged something in his memory. It had been Khatia Kreville who had mentioned Basil Donovan’s name at the welcome party, and she had sounded just as tense and fearful as the students around him did whispering back and forth to one another.
“I can, of course, understand why you might find that subject interesting, Mr. Pepper,” said Mr. Necker gravely. “Basil Donovan was undoubtedly the most controversial constable we’ve ever had. But we must not neglect our forefathers out of interest’s sake ... we will get to Donovan in due time.”
The buzz around the classroom died, and most of the students slumped back into their seats. Mr. Necker was clearly anxious to change the subject. “So!” he said more brightly again, “who can tell me the exact day, month and year Godfrey Gallagher and his crew discovered Giggleswick?”
But Elliot wasn’t listening anymore, his mind was now completely captivated by Basil Donovan. Something about the man had instigated fear in the minds of Giggleswickians, and Elliot desperately wanted to know what that was. What did everybody else know that he didn’t? Why had Donovan disappeared, and where could he have gone? The fog completely surrounded all of Giggleswick ... was he even still alive?
One way or another, Elliot was going to find out.
* * *
Elliot tried to ask Eliza about Basil Donovan on their way home from school that day, but it turned out she knew little more than he did on the subject.
“No one really talks about him, Elliot,” she said nonchalantly. “Not really sure why, and I just gave up asking. All I’ve heard is that Donovan started getting power hungry and everyone was afraid he was going to expose Giggleswick, so he was asked to leave.”
“Where’d he go?” pried Elliot, though he was doubtful she would know.
Eliza looked as though she found all of this rather tiring. “Lefty says he took Donovan to America, but Kennedy Kreville has his own opinion of course. Kennedy thinks Donovan may have disappeared and is still lurking around somewhere ... thinks Lefty and Humphrey are just trying to cover it up so as not to start a panic.”
“Is that what your Dad thinks?” asked Elliot.
“Course not, but that doesn’t stop Mr. Kreville from scaring everybody.”
“Yeah,” said Elliot, remembering what Khatia Kreville had said to him and his parents at the party. “The Krevilles acted as if we couldn’t be trusted ... almost as if they thought we might be helping Donovan.”
“Sounds like them,” Eliza confirmed.
They headed in the direction of their respective houses, and just when Elliot thought he might never be able to get Basil Donovan off his mind, Eliza reminded him of the hundred pages of reading for Ms. Limerick they had to do that evening.
“Great,” he muttered.
Those hundred pages took Elliot the entire evening to read, and by the time he was munching on his breakfast cereal the next morning, he wasn’t sure he could remember any of it at all.
“What a waste,” he told Eliza as they walked to school. “I shouldn’t have bothered.”
“Well, luckily you have a best friend that can recall everything she has ever read, seen or heard,” said Eliza, grinning. “Oh, alright –– not everything,” she admitted, “but I do save loads of time on studying! So if Ms. Limerick quizzes us, I’ll help you out.”
“How do you remember so many things?” asked Elliot doubtfully.
“Just blessed, I suppose,” she sighed, skipping a little as she walked.
Elliot rolled his eyes but was indeed relieved to have a friend with such a handy talent.
That morning, Ms. Limerick was in such a good mood that she forgot all about their homework assignment and instead spent the entire class period giving a dramatic reading of the first act of Julio and Bernadette. It had been a rather weepy portrayal of Bernadette, however, as Ms. Limerick found the need to bring herself to tears on numerous occasions, often clutching a rose she’d brought with her for additional dramatic effect.
“Gee willikers,” said Elliot, “she’s mental.”
Eliza agreed, and when Ms. Limerick assigned them another hundred pages of reading from A History of Giggleswickian Literature before the end of class, she called her a few nastier things as well.
“If she doesn’t mention the reading again tomorrow, that’s the last time I’m doing her homework!” Eliza warned as they made their way to math class.
Mr. Arbégla’s lesson came and went exactly as it had done the day before, and exactly as it probably would the rest of the year ... dull as could be. The only bright spot was that he hadn’t seemed able to muster up the energy to assign any homework before the lunch bell rang, at which time Elliot and Eliza sprang from their seats and dashed out the door.
“If we hurry, we might be able to make it there before Marigold –– then we won’t feel so guilty for not sitting with her,” said Eliza in-between gasps of air as they hurried down the hall.
Though Elliot thought this was a little mean, he couldn’t deny hoping they’d manage to avoid Marigold’s gloomy companionship at lunch as well, and when they entered the cafeteria a minute later, Eliza spotted Terry Pepper and Jamie Boot alone at a table and rushed to join them.
“Hey guys!” Terry shouted, waving them over, and as soon as Elliot and Eliza sat down, he went into a mad rant about all the homework they’d been assigned for English. “Jamie’s going to read the first half, and I’m going to read the second,” he said proudly. “Heyyy, wait a minute ... if you two joined us we’d only have to read twenty-five pages each!” he added happily.
Eliza was the only one who didn’t look thrilled at this suggestion. “Nice try, Terry, but we can’t all sit together and share answers if she quizzes us ... it’s risky enough with two people.” Terry and Jamie’s faces fell, but then Eliza reminded them that Ms. Limerick would probably have her hands full with another scene from Julio and Bernadette tomorrow, so they shouldn’t worry too much. “I’m probably just going to skim,” Eliza added casually before biting into an apple.
Elliot felt slightly bitter knowing that Eliza would probably remember much more from their reading after having just skimmed it than he would after reading it, but he tried not to dwell on this seeing as she was willing to help him out.
Terry and Jamie were still curious about Elliot’s trip through the Wailing Wanda Waters, but before Elliot could answer many of their questions, he was suddenly distracted by a shadow cast over the right side of their table. When he glanced up from his sandwich, there was Marigold holding her tray and staring down at them with her usual blank expression.
Most people would have at least said something or asked if they could sit down, but Marigold just stood there blinking, apparently hoping for an invitation. Elliot scanned Terry, Jamie, and Eliza’s faces. Terry and Jamie seemed to have realized the situation was inescapable and had replaced their wide-eyed expressions for polite smiles, but Eliza appeared to be lingering under the impression that by not looking at Marigold, she might just go away.
It seemed as though it were up to Elliot to speak, and when he felt like he could delay no longer, he said, “Why don’t you join us, Marigold.” His voice had cracked midway, but thankfully Marigold either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care, for she sat down next to him and pulled a lemon from her lunch bag.
“Did you have a good morning, Marigold?” asked Terry kindly.
She shrugged, diverting her eyes. “Some of it was good,” she said.
Suddenly no one seemed to know what to talk about, though Terry and Jamie were soon trying their best to make Elliot’s voyage to Giggleswick sound much more exciting than it had actually been.
“You mean there weren’t any thirty-foot waves?” Jamie persisted, spraying potato chip crumbs as his spoke.
Elliot was about to shake his head when he thought better of it. “Well ... they were probably more like forty-foot waves!” he said importantly. “All of us were throwing up and grabbing onto anything we could ... it was awful!” he added, pretending to shudder at the thought.
“Cooool!” said Terry and Jamie, high-fiving one another.
Then a squeak came from Marigold’s direction as she stopped sucking on her lemon. “I don’t think that’s true,” she said matter-of-factly in her characteristic drone.
Terry, Jamie, Elliot and Eliza exchanged dumbfounded looks. Of course it hadn’t been true, but Marigold’s comment had zapped all the fun out of lying.
They returned to their lunches but were never able to recover their previous mood before the bell rang, dismissing them from the cafeteria.
Elliot was hopeful they might get around to learning about Basil Donovan that day in history class, but it seemed Harvey Humperdinck had been a bit more influential than everyone had expected. He’d been responsible for forming the Offices of Tranquility and for developing Giggleswick’s monetary system, but was perhaps most noted for his Chimney Ordinance of 1792, which mandated that each Giggleswickian chimney be of twenty-three feet and eleven inches in height, owing to his great personal distaste for varying chimney lengths.
The next day’s history class saw them only marginally closer to learning about the controversial constable. They had covered Winifred Wyatt’s term that lesson, and as the first lady constable, she had brought a sprinkling of feminine charm to the Offices of Tranquility by hosting the first ever Constable’s Christmas-Cookie Bake-Off, which became an annual tradition. More importantly, she had funded extensive research on the indigenous Foogerton trees and the many uses of foosap. Allegedly, she’d even personally contributed to that research by having had an affair with Willy B. Foogerton himself, which eventually caused the demise of the culinary wizard’s marriage to his wife, Bambi. Winifred, however, had been such a popular constable that nobody but Bambi had seemed to mind about this.
When they still hadn’t discussed Basil Donovan by Thursday, Elliot started searching outside the classroom for answers. That evening, when he and Eliza had been working on their writing assignments from Ms. Limerick at the Noodles’ house, Elliot had tried asking Mr. Noodle about Basil Donovan.
Wally had cringed at the sound of the former constable’s name and then tried to escape the question by purposely dribbling coffee down his front and dashing off to the master bedroom to change. But when he returned a few minutes later, Elliot brought the subject up again.
“I heard Kennedy Kreville thinks he disappeared and might still be lurking around somewhere,” said Elliot, trying to bait a response.
It had worked. “Gah!” Wally heaved, wringing his hands in the air. “He would say that! That man has some sick psychological need to live in a constant state of paranoia! I tell you, Basil Donovan is in America where he should have been all along!”
Elliot started to ask why Donovan should have been there all along, but the spark had left Wally’s eye, and he now looked worried he might have said too much. Sadly, he hadn’t slipped anything Elliot hadn’t already heard from Eliza, however.
Wally was rather jumpy the rest of the evening, dropping more than one piece of silverware at dinner, and when he’d asked Mrs. Noodle what “delicious flavor” she’d added to the chicken and she’d replied “Basil”, he toppled right out of his chair and onto a disgruntled Bert who’d been waiting for scraps by the edge of the table.
“He knows more than he’s telling,” Elliot whispered to Eliza as he passed her the bread basket.
Eliza nodded. “I think you’ve gotten all you’re going to get from him though,” she warned.
“Now, children, it’s not polite to whisper,” said Mrs. Noodle sternly as she dished a spoonful of mashed potatoes onto her plate.
Elliot and Eliza apologized but did not offer an explanation.
The rest of dinner was a bit quiet for the usually chatty Noodle family, and then it took Elliot and Eliza till nine o’clock that evening to finish Ms. Limerick’s writing assignment. Thankfully, she had not assigned them another hundred pages of reading, not that Elliot and Eliza would have done it anyway ... all week Ms. Limerick had forgotten about their homework in lieu of continued dramatic readings from Julio and Bernadette. Their last class, she had even sported a lace veil so as to make herself appear more maiden-like.
“I wonder what props she’ll use to reenact the kissing scene,” Eliza had said to Elliot, and before he could catch himself, he’d let out a snort of laughter, which had earned them an icy glare from Ms. Limerick, i.e. Bernadette.
The next day came and went with no more word on Basil Donovan. Their history class had covered Tallulah Bedburn’s term as constable, but her heritage had proved more interesting than her governing. Apparently, Tallulah’s grandmother had been Native American and had gotten work aboard Godfrey Gallagher’s ship by disguising herself as a man. Though never proven, it was rumored that her grandmother and Godfrey Gallagher had had an affair while out at sea, which produced a love child who would later become Tallulah’s mother.
“Does that mean Godfrey Gallagher was Tallulah Bedburn’s grandfather?” asked Victor Tuttle, who was also in Elliot and Eliza’s English class, and apparently just as slow at putting two-and-two together as he was at putting more than two words in a sentence.
“Yes, Victor, that is the rumor,” Mr. Necker replied.
By this point, Eliza had lost what little interest she’d had in Giggleswickian history and had begun passing notes back and forth to Elliot, typically asking what he thought she should sing for her musical audition, or what she should wear in order to look prettier than Posey-Bernadette. Elliot couldn’t have cared less about musical auditions or Tallulah Bedburn’s speculative heritage, however; his thoughts were much too occupied by a burning desire to know more about Basil Donovan. Whatever it was Donovan had done, or wanted to do, he had caused many a Giggleswickian to jump at the sound of his name. No one seemed to know exactly where he was, but one thing was for certain ... they all feared he might one day return.
What Elliot couldn’t understand was why Wally Noodle of all people had been so shaken by the thought of Basil Donovan. If Wally was so certain that Donovan was in America, why then was he still afraid? What harm could Donovan cause when five miles of unnavigable fog and the Atlantic Ocean lay between him and Giggleswick?
This thought rolled around in Elliot’s head, occasionally interrupted by talk of Tallulah Bedburn or Eliza’s audition preparations, until the pieces finally started falling into place.
It came to him just as the tiny metal hammer struck the dismissal bell, and once the ringing in his ears had subsided, there was only one thought left on Elliot’s mind ...
What if there really was a map?