Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (6 page)
Read Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake Online
Authors: Jennifer Allison
“It’s almost eight-thirty, so we should head to the chapel,” said Marcie. “We meet there each morning for prayer and announcements.”
“Uniform check!”
A few feet ahead, Miss Underhill grabbed a girl by the arm and pressed a ruler against her leg. “An inch too short!” she declared. “See you in detention.” She pulled a little pad of paper from her pocket, scribbled a detention note, and thrust it at the girl like a police officer giving a speeding ticket.
“But it’s the first day of school,” the girl protested.
“Exactly.”
“Watch out for Miss Underhill,” Marcie whispered, glancing down at Gilda’s skirt. “She hides behind corners, and then jumps
out with her ruler to measure your skirt. She gives about twenty detentions every day. Your skirt length looks right, though, just like mine. Good for you!”
Gilda made a mental note to shorten her skirt as soon as possible. She glanced up and caught Miss Underhill watching her with a sharp little smile. Gilda felt a wave of creepiness, remembering Miss Underhill’s warning to “keep your voice down around the dead.”
“Marcie,” Gilda ventured, “do you know anything about the ghost in Mermaid Lake?”
Marcie stopped in her tracks. “Who told you that?”
“Miss Underhill.”
“Now
she’s
scaring the freshmen, too? I have half a mind to say something to the headmistress about that. Listen, Gilda, you don’t have to be frightened, because I think that story is just something the sophomores made up to scare the freshmen. Some girls actually decide not to go to school here because they think it’s haunted! Can you believe that?”
Gilda decided not to mention that she had actually decided to attend the school because she
hoped
to investigate a ghost. She had a sense of vast disappointment, as if she had pinned all the money she owned on a racehorse that had just broken its leg. Had Miss Underhill merely been teasing her?
“But there
was
a girl who drowned in the lake, right?”
Marcie nodded. “Dolores Lambert. She was a freshman. That’s why Mrs. McCracken had that bridge built, because people used to take shortcuts across the ice during the winter, and I guess Dolores tried to do that before the lake was completely frozen. They used to allow ice-skating on the lake in January, but we can’t do that anymore.”
Marcie’s matter-of-fact explanation for Dolores Lambert’s death was a calm, logical contrast to Miss Underhill’s warning about a hysterical ghost. The whole experience now seemed like an intriguing nightmare that didn’t quite match reality.
And now I’m stuck going to school here
, Gilda thought as she and Marcie made their way to the chapel.
With a microphone in hand, Mrs. McCracken stood in front of an ornately carved pulpit, facing the entire student body. The girls sat in pews in the order of their grade level: seniors at the front; freshmen clumped together at the back of the room with their sophomore big sisters who were already in the early stages of ditching their bewildered “siblings.”
Gilda was surprised to realize just how small the school was: each class of students had only about twenty or thirty girls. It was clearly a place where
everyone
knew one another.
“Good morning, ladies!” Mrs. McCracken’s twangy voice echoed through the room. “Looks like you’re all well rested, suntanned, and ready to dig into your studies, right?”
A few morose titters were her only response.
“You’re ready to hit the books, RIGHT?”
“RIGHT.”
“That’s more like it. Now, before we get down to business, let’s sing the Our Lady of Sorrows song together:
“Our lady, our lady,
I know you’ll walk with me.
Our lady, our lady,
Upon the shining sea,
Along the highways of my life,
A true sorority!
Our lady, our lady,
Your sorrows set me free!”
Sitting in a wooden pew surrounded by shy girls in pink skirts, Gilda felt as if she had been sent to another planet to attend school. She wondered what Wendy Choy was doing at that moment and wished she could pass her a note.
“Now we’ll introduce this year’s clubs and activities,” said Mrs. McCracken, after the song ended. “Whatever you’re interested in, there’s a club here for you to join!”
Gilda doubted that they had a club for psychic investigators.
A tall, willowy girl who wore her dark hair in a chic, short style approached the microphone.
“That’s Danielle Menory,” Marcie whispered. “She’s a senior. She’s a member of about twenty clubs, and she does a
ton
of community service.” Marcie gazed at Danielle with sparkling eyes, as if she were staring at a celebrity.
Danielle adjusted the microphone and began to speak in a soft voice. “Hi. I’m Danielle Menory, and I want to invite anyone who’s interested to join the Eating Disorders Awareness Club. Many of you know that when I was a sophomore, I had a pretty severe eating disorder, and even had to be hospitalized. After I recovered, I realized that lots of other girls have this problem, too.”
Gilda reflected that at her old school nobody would have been willing to stand in front of the entire student body and share something so personal.
Danielle’s introduction to the Eating Disorders Awareness Club was followed by a long series of clubs—everything from the “Young Democrats” and “Young Republicans” to clubs with unusual names like “Kite Fliers’ Club,” “Psoriasis Awareness Club,” and “Future Podiatrists and Gastroenterologists of America.” There were also some religious groups with names like “Mary’s Way.”
Marcie peered at Gilda. “See anything you like?”
“It’s a toss-up between the Future Podiatrists Club and the school newspaper.”
“Do you have any hobbies?”
“I like writing.” Gilda sensed that Marcie would be completely baffled if she mentioned her work as a psychic investigator.
“We’ll find something you like, Gilda. I promise!”
Mrs. McCracken approached the microphone again. “Let’s have a moment of prayer.”
The girls bowed their heads and squeezed their eyes shut.
“Lord, we pray for a happy school year—a year filled with learning and growing. A year of friendship with each other. We pray also for those we have lost.” Mrs. McCracken paused for a moment. “We pray for the spirit of Dolores Lambert, who would have been a senior this very day.”
Gilda’s ears perked up at the mention of Dolores’s name.
“We pause in silence to consider others who are in need of our prayers.”
A loud dripping sound broke the silence:
plop, plop, plop, plop
…
While Mrs. McCracken and most of the other girls did their
best to ignore the distracting sound, Gilda cautiously peeked up and noticed Miss Underhill staring straight ahead, gazing with horrified fascination at a small, metal drinking fountain attached to one of the walls—the apparent source of the dripping.
It’s odd that we only heard the dripping echoing through the room after Mrs. McCracken mentioned Dolores Lambert’s name
, Gilda thought.
Maybe Marcie is wrong. Maybe there really is a ghost
.
THE FIRST DAY–A DAY OF OMINOUS REVELATIONS
Dear Dad,
Miss Underhill was right about one thing: most of the classrooms at Our Lady of Sorrows are pretty crummy compared to the stuff you see when you go on the tour of the school. They all have peeling wallpaper and stained carpeting that smells of mold. The hallways in the school are a little creepy because they’re lined with marble busts of historical people like Shakespeare and George Washington who just sit there like disembodied heads watching us as we walk to our classes. Some of the rooms have fireplaces, but I guess they don’t work anymore, and now they make good places for critters to nest. I think I saw a rat in the freshman locker room, and there was some kind of toxic crud in my locker, which,
incidentally, is too small for my backpack.
Interestingly, the seniors have a common room all to themselves that is rumored to have velvet couches for midday naps, an entertainment center with a flat-screen television, and a small kitchen for making snacks. Of course, no freshman has ever set foot in this room, so it’s hard to say whether this is truth or rumor.
GOAL: Find a way to sneak into the Senior Common Room without getting killed.
Excuse me; I hear the dulcet tones of Stephen bellowing, “GILDA! PHONE!!” from downstairs. Probably Wendy Choy calling with all the gossip back at ye olde public school!
Big disappointment. The phone call was from Marcie Dinklemeyer, who asked whether I got home safely on the city bus. I told her, “I got mugged a few times, but it’s no big deal; I’m used to it!” (I actually did get a couple slack-jawed looks because of the pink school uniform.)
I have a ton of homework tonight, by the way. Anyone who goes to a girls’ school hoping to do assignments about lip gloss and how to make extra-moist fudge brownies (like me) is in for a rude awakening.
POSSIBLE HAUNTING EVIDENCE:
Loud dripping of a water fountain followed the mention of Dolores Lambert’s name during Mrs. McCracken’s prayer. Could this be significant?
Gilda grabbed her
Master Psychic’s Handbook
to see if it offered any insight. She turned to a chapter “Modes of Spirit Communication.”
A spirit who died under traumatic circumstances may occasionally communicate using the material that caused his or her death. In other words, an individual who was electrocuted may “speak” through the use of electricity (turning televisions and other appliances on and off, etc.), a person whose death resulted from drowning may use water as a kind of “medium.”
Gilda thought for a moment, then turned to her typewriter:
Was Dolores’s ghost trying to make her presence known through the dripping of a water fountain? Marcie says the school isn’t haunted, but I think I picked up some kind of psychic vibration today.
Dear Dad,
Remember the stories Mom used to tell
about her religion teacher in high school—the nun who used to bang her wooden leg on the desktop to get her students’ attention? Well, I was hoping my religion teacher would be just as bizarre and entertaining, but it turns out that Miss Appleton is disappointingly young and normal. She kept saying how she wanted us to enjoy her class.
“You don’t have to win a Nobel Peace Prize or save someone’s life to be ‘good,’” she said. “It’s the little things–the smile someone gave us when we needed it most, the helping hand, the homemade chocolate-chip cookies baked on a rainy fall day that matter most. Good behavior doesn’t always get directly rewarded.”
Then Miss Appleton made us write two lists: “Bad things I’ve done recently” and “Good things I’ve done recently.”
- “Forgot” to give Mom the message when Brad Squib called.
- Congratulated Stephen on the birth of his new zit.
- Stuck gum under desk at school.
- Whispered “under Canada” instead of “under God” during Pledge of Allegiance.
- Wished that Marcie Dinklemeyer would wake up with a sudden case of Alzheimer’s, causing her to forget all about her big-sister duties.
- Shortened my uniform skirt one inch below the uniform regulation length to avoid looking like Marcie Dinklemeyer.
- Initiated psychic investigation.
- Flossed teeth regularly.
- Abstained from gossip due to lack of opportunities at new school.
Dear Dad,
Have I told you how everyone supposedly gets a crush on my English teacher, Mr. Panté? I’ve decided that won’t happen to me, though, because he isn’t my type. He has dark, curly hair that hangs down almost to his shoulders and a kind of puffy, bedraggled, razor-stubbly look. He could be good-looking, but he looks like he needs a shower. (Considering the dress code here, I’m surprised Mrs. McCracken hasn’t mentioned something to him about that. Maybe
she did and he refused.) If he would just shave and put on some clothes that don’t look as if he spent the night camping out in a lawn chair, he might actually be cute. But like I said, he isn’t my type.
Mr. Panté told us that he’s a poet as well as a teacher. This made us all pretty curious, so we started asking him lots of questions. We learned how he dropped out of law school and got married to a banker who pays most of the bills so he can spend his spare time writing.
“My wife’s friends like to call me her ‘trophy husband,’” he said.
I get the feeling Mr. Panté can’t stand his wife’s friends. I don’t see why anyone would call him a “trophy husband” in the first place, though.
Then a girl named Sheila who seems kind of daft called him “Mr. Panty” by mistake, and he got really mad.
“My last name is pronounced PANTAY,” he said. “I’ve already heard all the jokes, so don’t even bother.” He wrote his name–“PANTÉ”–on the blackboard in big letters.
“But I wasn’t
joking
, Mr. Panty,” Sheila said. And she wasn’t, either–I could
tell–but he gave her a detention anyway.
GOAL: Come up with a panty joke Mr. Panté hasn’t heard yet.
