shows that you’re exceptionally suited to help girls learn new skills!”
Bobby’s mind was whirling. “Help girls learn new skills”—that certainly described her love life, but she’d never made the connection between that impulse and the pedagogy courses she’d barely passed. “But my grades—my brains—” Bobby struggled to express herself. “A teacher has to be smart.” How she’d sweated over those lesson plan assignments in Pedagogy II, how lost she’d felt when the class discussed the pros and cons of module-based teaching!
“I won’t pretend your grades and test scores aren’t a hurdle you’ll have to overcome,” Miss Watkins admitted. “They’ll be the first thing your future employers see. But what we counselors are learning is that they’re not always a sound indication of future success in a given field. Quite frankly, I think the real problem is your lack of confidence.”
Bobby sat still, stunned by the vocational counselor’s uncanny perception. She might have fooled her teachers and her teammates with her breezy bravado, but Miss Watkins seemed to see straight through the facade, through to the Bobby who feared that people would discover the depths of her dumbness, that without a position in professional field hockey, she would end up another sports hero has-been, handing out towels at the YMCA, cooking beans over a hot plate in some residential hotel.
“As it happens,” Miss Watkins was continuing, as she riffled through the pile of folders on her desk, “I know a school in need of a physical education instructor, and I think my recommendation and your Elliott College degree will counterbalance those Cs you’re so concerned about. Here.” She pushed a brochure at Bobby. Bobby picked it up, reading the words “We Mold Character” over a picture of a green square of lawn surrounded by gothic gray stone buildings.
“It’s called the Metamora Academy,” Miss Watkins continued. “It’s a small school, rather exclusive. I think you’ll do well there.”
Bobby flipped through the brochure, skimming the descriptions of the “highly trained staff” and “unique educational aids.” She tried to picture herself leading a bevy of exclusive girls through a module on kinetics. Was she really capable of such a thing?
“Shall I give the Headmistress a call?” Without waiting for Bobby’s answer, Miss Watkins picked up the phone and dialed.
Now, three months later, as Bobby leaned on the windowsill of her new home, the picture from the brochure had come to life. Before her lay the quiet green quadrangle, surrounded by gothic gray stone buildings, crisscrossed with flagstone pathways. It was a tranquil scene. The only movement came from a tall, thin girl in a gray skirt and blazer with red piping—the Metamora uniform. She crossed the square of grass, paused a moment by a white column that poked up from a bed of purple flowers at the far end, before turning left and leaving Bobby’s view. Then the place was as quiet and still again as a monastery.
Or a nunnery would be more accurate, Bobby reflected, turning back to her bed, piled high with gym tunics and jerseys. She plucked her Spitfires pennant out from under her old Spitfires uniform and, crossing to the sitting room that completed her two-room suite, she carefully tacked it up above the mantelpiece.
Maybe Miss Watkins was right and she had a gift for teaching. Yet as Bobby unpacked, she couldn’t help wondering if this pedagogical opportunity had come too late. Ever since the accident, she felt changed, in some fundamental way. Before her fall, she could always count on her body if not her brains. But now…
It wasn’t just her nightmares, disturbing as they were. The dizziness and the irrational fear of falling had migrated from her dreams to her waking life. Lately, even a steep staircase could leave her gasping and nauseated. She’d managed to conceal her weakness so far, but what if the students saw her in one of her bad spells? How would she maintain her authority?
Closing her eyes she made herself remember the accident—the shadowy pool—the rippling reflections of the water on the wall—the shrieks of tipsy laughter. She felt again the wet grittiness of the diving board under her damp feet, and the slow-motion sensation of her feet slipping out from under her, her calf banging on the diving board’s edge as she fell—
Bobby opened her eyes with a gasp, swaying dizzily, and grabbed the mantel for balance. It was hopeless. She’d thought maybe she could harden herself against the fear, exercise her willpower the way she’d exercise a weak muscle. But she only made herself dizzy and sick. She’d just have to avoid heights until this queer feeling went away.
Bobby returned to her unpacking. Fortunately, her suite of rooms in Cornwall, the dormitory for the third form, was safely on the first floor, right by the entrance. This was so she could monitor the girls, Mona had explained. Her new duties included enforcing lights-out, censoring reading material, doling out prescribed medications, and confiscating unauthorized snacks. Mona had given her a handbook, with a daunting list of dormitory dos and donts.
Bobby was already having trouble remembering the odd names for each class. The students weren’t called freshman and sophomores, etc, like in most high schools. At Metamora they were third formers, fourth formers, etc. Mona had written it all down for Bobby:
Third Form = Freshmen
Fourth Form = Sophomores
Fifth Form = Juniors
Sixth Form = Seniors
A big part of the job, Mona had emphasized, was “helping the third formers acclimate themselves to boarding school life.” Would Bobby be able to buck up a homesick new student, or console a girl who’d gotten the Curse for the first time?
Even if she wasn’t the housemother type, she did know games, physiology, kinetics, even some of the more obscure branches of ethnic dance, Bobby reminded herself as she unwrapped her lucky stick and swung it experimentally. For a moment she pretended she was back on the field with the rest of the Spitfires, in the final quarter of the game against the Bayard Blackhawks. Block that pass! Send it to Chick! Run up to position! Swing for the goal!
The heavy clunk of her 1962 Nationals trophy falling on the floor pulled Bobby abruptly from her daydream. Swinging her stick at imaginary balls, she’d only succeeded in knocking the statuette off its perch on her desk.
Bobby started guiltily at a knock on the door. Was it Mona, come to check on her? Or maybe the Headmistress, that Miss Craybill who had interviewed her in Bay City?
But when Bobby opened the door, it was neither. A tall, willowy brunette leaned in the doorway, appraising the young phys ed teacher through half-closed eyes.
Chapter Three
Sherry in the Faculty Lounge
“Hello,” she said in a voice that had been polished by whiskey and cigarettes. “I’m Laura Burnham—Metamora’s Art Mistress.”
“I’m—”
“Bobby Blanchard, our new Games Mistress, I know.” Laura uncoiled herself from the doorway and slid sinuously into the room. “Mind if I come in?”
“Please,” Bobby said, unable to take her eyes off the brunette bombshell.
It wasn’t just her va-va-voom figure that made the Art Mistress look as out of place in the Metamora dorm room as an orchid in an alpine meadow. Her thick brown hair was piled untidily on her head and her eyes outlined with kohl. Heavy gold hoops swung from her ears, and she wore a red-checked dress with tiny puffed sleeves. As she bent over to pick up the field hockey trophy Bobby had knocked to the floor, one sleeve slid off her shoulder, giving Bobby a tantalizing glimpse of the Art Mistress’s cleavage.
“I’ve come to collect you for sherry hour in the faculty lounge. Mona sent me—although I’m not really the welcome-wagon type.”
Bobby wasn’t complaining. “Sherry hour,” she said hopefully. “Does that mean…?”
“Just sherry.” Laura dashed Bobby’s hopes for an ice-cold beer. The Art Mistress set the trophy on the bureau after reading the plaque and looked around