Lucinda Fleming screamed until she was red in the face. She lay in the aisle beside her desk and kicked her legs and flailed her arms and thrashed her head and ponytail back and forth, as if she were being devoured by rats. This was a challenge well beyond The Wurtz's limited capacity. She must have thought that Lucinda was warming up for a suicide attempt. "Oh, Lucinda, who has disappointed you so?" Miss Wurtz cried--or some such idiotic utterance, because The Wurtz always said something amazingly inappropriate. Maybe the kids couldn't resist misbehaving just to see what she would say.
In crafting dramatizations from her beloved novels, Miss Wurtz had an ear for the best lines--many of which she robbed for her own voice-over. In introducing Jack-as-Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, she set him-as-her up perfectly. (Jack was the reasonable sister.) Miss Wurtz said of Elinor, in voice-over: " 'She had an excellent heart; her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.' "
Alas, in Jack's grade-four year, Miss Wurtz would cast him as the immoderate sister, Marianne, whom he detested. It was the meddlesome mother, Mrs. Dashwood, whom he wanted to play, but Miss Wurtz, who conveniently overlooked the fact that she'd cast Jack as blind Rochester, maiden-no-more Tess, A-on-her-breast Hester, and under-the-train Anna, said that he didn't look old enough to be a woman who'd had three daughters.
Though Miss Wurtz seemed at a loss about what to say when something spontaneously just happened, she always spoke with authority, her diction and enunciation perfect, even if what she said revealed a total misunderstanding of the situation. This the children found very confusing.
Hence, when Lucinda Fleming suddenly went stiff as a board and began to bang the back of her head on the floor, Miss Wurtz asked the class: "Which of you thoughtless children has caused Lucinda such anguish and pain?"
"What?" Maureen Yap asked.
"Lucinda is peeing!" Caroline French observed.
Indeed, Lucinda lay in a spreading puddle--her skirt stained a darker gray. In a doomed effort to keep time with the floor-thumping of Lucinda's head, the French twins began the all-too-recognizable patter of their heels; they were not unlike the rhythm section of a band in need of practice. The anticipated blanket-sucking sounds of the Booth twins were ominously replaced by their identical imitations of gagging. They were more like blanket-strangulation sounds; yet, as accompaniment to the spectacle of Lucinda Fleming methodically banging her head in a pool of her own urine, the sounds were more suitable than anything Miss Wurtz had to say.
"Lucinda is having one of her bad moments, children," Miss Wurtz needlessly informed the grade-three class. "What might we do to make her feel better?" Jimmy Bacon, of course, moaned.
Jack wanted to help, but how? "I just kissed her," he tried to explain.
"You what?" Miss Wurtz said.
"On the neck."
Jack saw the eyes roll up in Lucinda Fleming's head; she appeared to be passing to another world. Lucinda emitted a strangling sound of her own--as if she meant to comfort the Booth twins, long separated from their kindergarten blankets. Even Roland Simpson, destined for reform school and ultimately jail, was instantly afraid and (for the moment) law-abiding. And if Jimmy Bacon had been wearing his bedsheet--well, there's no need to spell it out.
Caroline French suddenly looked like a girl with a hundred hamsters rushing through her hair. Those utter boneheads Grant Porter and James Turner and Gordon French--in fact, all the boys in the class, Roland Simpson and Jimmy Bacon included--were absolutely disgusted with Jack. He had kissed Lucinda Fleming, evidently a mentally retarded girl. (Now there was a disgrace to live down!) Perhaps fearful of never being kissed, The Yap began to cry--although nowhere near as noticeably as The Wurtz.
Had Lucinda Fleming swallowed her tongue? Was that the reason for the choking sound she was making? "Now she's bleeding!" Caroline French cried. Indeed, Lucinda was bleeding in the area of her mouth. But it was not her tongue--she had bitten through her lower lip.
"She's eating herself!" Maureen Yap screamed.
"Oh, Jack, this disappoints me more than I can say," Miss Wurtz sobbed. By the commotion she made, you would have thought he'd gotten Lucinda pregnant. Clearly his time in the chapel was nigh. This was what could come from kissing: the urine, the blood, the impressive pantomime of rigor mortis--and to think he'd kissed only her neck!
That was when Jimmy Bacon fainted. The Gray Ghost's sudden appearance was so spectacular, Jimmy must have been too frightened to poo. None of the children had seen her coming. Suddenly Mrs. McQuat was kneeling over Lucinda. The Gray Ghost pried Lucinda's teeth apart, thereby rescuing her mangled lower lip. Mrs. McQuat then stuck a book in Lucinda's mouth. "Bite that . . . Lucinda," The Gray Ghost said. "You've done enough to your lip . . . already."
Jack would remember the book. Unfortunately, his memorization skills couldn't always distinguish between the trivial and the important, although Edna Mae Burnham's Piano Course: Book Two, which he'd often seen on Lucinda's desk, was not exactly trivial to Jack Burns. He assumed it was a book his dad had used. Jack was sure William had taught from that very book--he'd probably assigned it to someone, back in those days when he was fooling around with two girls at St. Hilda's. Possibly one (or both) of the girls had been an Edna Mae Burnham reader!
It was all too much for The Yap, beginning with the kissing. Maureen fainted, less spectacularly than Jimmy. It might have been that The Gray Ghost's sudden appearance, especially her kneeling over Lucinda, made it appear to Maureen that Mrs. McQuat was the Angel of Death. But of course The Gray Ghost would know how to attend to someone who'd bitten through her lip. (If she'd been a combat nurse, in whichever war, surely she'd seen more blood than that.)
Miss Wurtz, naturally, could not stop crying--thus the inevitable ensued. "Which of you," Mrs. McQuat began in her breathless way, "made Miss Wurtz . . . cry?"
"I did," Jack answered. Everyone seemed astonished that he had answered for himself--that simply wasn't done. Only The Gray Ghost looked unsurprised that he'd spoken up. "I'm sorry," he added, but Mrs. McQuat turned her attention elsewhere.
Lucinda Fleming was on her feet, albeit unsteadily, blood oozing from her gashed lip; her shirt and tie were soaked. And then there was the urine--Lucinda didn't seem to notice it. The unnatural serenity of her smile was intact, as before.
"You need . . . stitches . . . Lucinda," The Gray Ghost was saying. "Take her to . . . the nurse's office . . . Caroline." Miss Wurtz once more thought that Mrs. McQuat meant her, but Caroline French understood that she was the designated helper. "Not you . . . dear," The Gray Ghost told Miss Wurtz. "This is your class . . . you stay."
The Booth twins were instructed to accompany Maureen Yap to the nurse's office as well. Not entirely revived from her swoon, Maureen looked dizzy. Jimmy Bacon wasn't completely recovered from his fainting spell, either. He was down on all fours, as if he were still searching for Gordon's deceased hamster. Grant Porter and James Turner were assigned the task of taking Jimmy to the nurse. (They were such dolts, Jack doubted that they knew where the nurse's office was.)
As for Jack, he was surprised by how gently Mrs. McQuat took hold of his ear. Her thumb and index finger, which pinched his earlobe, were ice-cold, but when The Gray Ghost led him from the classroom, he was not in pain. And in the corridor, where she released his ear--her cold hand still steering him by the back of his neck--they struck up quite a cordial conversation, considering the circumstances.
"And what is . . . Miss Wurtz's problem . . . this time?" Mrs. McQuat whispered.
He'd been afraid that the issue of the kiss itself might come up, but he hesitated only a second. To lie to The Gray Ghost was unthinkable. "I kissed Lucinda Fleming," Jack confessed.
Mrs. McQuat nodded, seemingly unsurprised. "Where?" she whi
spered.