How to Be Brave Page 8

  A silence in the hall snapped Calla back to attention. The headmistress had paused, and smiled another one of those awfully strange smiles of hers. “My goodness. I believe I’ve spoken for far too long. I’m so sorry, girls, but that means we don’t have time for speeches from anybody else. Perhaps we should finish the night there—”

  Good Sister Christine pushed her chair back and stood up. “Nobody’s going anywhere,” she said. “Not yet.”

  THE SECOND (AND MOST IMPORTANT) SPEECH

  “I’d like to say a few words,” said Good Sister Christine. She did not wait for the headmistress to reply. In fact, she did not even look at her. She got up from the table and turned so that she had her back to the men in suits and didn’t see how they looked at her, and then at the headmistress, and how one of them even got up to say something, before sitting down very quickly as an elderly nun glared ferociously at him.89

  Calla had the sneaking suspicion that even if Good Sister Christine had seen this, she wouldn’t have stopped speaking. She had a very determined expression on her face, just like Elizabeth did when she had a deadline and the promise of payment.

  “Good Sister June means the world to me,” said Good Sister Christine. “To all of us. I promise you that even if we can’t talk to her, she will still be here. Even if she’s in the convent with the other praying sisters, she’ll still be our headmistress. Always.”

  One by one the girls in the hall started to applaud, until the sound filled the room entirely. Calla thought she saw Hanna wiping a tear from her eye.

  Good Sister June placed her hand on Good Sister Christine’s arm. She rose, just a little, and murmured something into the younger nun’s ear. Good Sister Christine shook her head. Good Sister June nodded and then sat back down. Her hand, however, stayed on Good Sister Christine’s arm.

  Calla watched all of this with a frown. She had watched adults all her life. She had watched them tell her the truth and she had watched them tell her lies. And right now, it looked as though there was a very big lie going on. She just couldn’t figure out whose or what it was.

  The headmistress coughed. Loudly.

  The clapping faded into silence.

  “It’s all yours,” said Good Sister Christine. “Thank you “so much, Headmistress.”

  AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING, TOO

  The headmistress left the room the moment Good Sister Christine had finished speaking. She was swiftly followed by most of the men in suits before one, the gigantic man that Calla had noticed before the party, came back in and sat next to one of the smaller nuns. He began to talk to her as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening.90

  For a moment, nobody else moved, until suddenly everybody got up at once. The bigger girls began to help the nuns tidy up, whilst the younger girls seized the sudden freedom and began to chat loudly among themselves. Edie, Rose, and Hanna began a fierce argument that didn’t make much sense to anybody at their table but somehow involved all of them. All of them except for Calla, who pushed back her chair and started to walk toward the staff table. She wanted to speak to Good Sister June before she disappeared. She had to. The nun was the nearest thing she had to her mum, and she didn’t want to let her disappear.

  Good Sister June seemed to be on a similar mission. She began to work through the crowd of girls toward Calla in a most determined sort of fashion. She paused only to smile at people and tell them that everything would be all right and she would be back soon.91 When she eventually reached Calla and the two of them stared at each other in the way that people do when they have so much they want to say that they don’t even know where to begin, Good Sister Christine tried to fill in the gap. She said, “June, there’s somebody I need to introduce you to—”

  “That’s not necessary,” said Good Sister June. A small smile creased across her sad face and completely transformed her. “Hello, Calla.”

  THE PROMISE OF GOOD SISTER JUNE

  “Hello,” said Calla.

  “You look so much like Elizabeth,” said Good Sister June. “It’s the hair. Your eyes, too. All of you. Everything.” She seemed both surprised and comforted by it. “Have you heard from her yet? I understand that communications will be difficult.”

  Calla nodded. “She’ll be on a plane now. I’m not sure which one. But when she lands in South America, it’ll be tomorrow night and that’s when she’ll ring me.” The moment that she finished speaking, she remembered that all the phones in the school had been confiscated and went bright red. “I don’t have a phone,” she said, trying desperately to cover her tracks. “It’s just—I don’t. I don’t know why I said I did.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Good Sister June. She glanced behind her. “Your mother told me she was sending you with a phone. I’m glad she did. Make sure you keep it somewhere safe. You might need it sooner than you think. Things aren’t quite right here at the moment, and I’d like to tell you more about that but I don’t think I have time. I wanted to warn your mother, but I didn’t realize how wrong things were until it was already too late. Just listen to me. You might find it difficult to believe right now, but this school is the best place I’ve ever known, and I’m going to get it back. I just need to find something to convince the new governors and right now, they’ve been dazzled by Magda and her wealthy backers. All those people quoting “numbers and results. No wonder their heads have been turned. They’re believing her lies.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Calla slowly. “Don’t you want to go?”

  “Why would I leave the best job I’ve ever had?” said Good Sister June. She smiled, but she didn’t look happy. In fact, Calla rather thought she looked furious.92 “I’m being made to leave, Calla, but I’ll come back. I just have to prove the case against Magda. Find some evidence that she’s up to something. Something that they’ll believe. And until then, I can’t stay here.”

  “But you’re my guardian—”

  “And I’ll always be that. If you need me, you just get word to me. Send me a signal. We might not be allowed phones, but the convent isn’t far away. And the moment that you need me, I’ll come running. But until then, you look to Good Sister Christine. She’ll help you when I can’t.”93

  Upon hearing her name, Good Sister Christine leaned over. “We’re running out of time,” she said softly. “Good Sister Honey’s stalling but I don’t know how long she can keep it up.”

  “All right,” said Good Sister June. She fixed her big, sharp eyes on Calla’s face. “I’m going to sort this out. All of it. You just need to hold on until then.”

  And if there was one thing that Calla North knew, it was that she knew how to hold on.

  She had, after all, been doing it all her life.

  “Okay,” she said. “All right.”

  THE FIRST MORNING

  On her first full morning at the School of the Good Sisters, Calla opened her eyes and thought about her mum. Elizabeth had been in this very school, and maybe slept in this very bedroom. She’d had a midnight feast on top of one of the flat roofs.94 She’d rescued injured ducks and released them back into the wild. She’d even passed an exam or two. And she would be making her first phone call tonight to Calla, and everything would be all right.

  Even if the school was full of weirdness.

  She rolled over and dug into her suitcase. It was still packed, the clothes piled on top of each other in a sort of “let’s hope for the best” fashion. Calla had the sneaking suspicion that one of the nuns might have issues with that (tidiness is a peculiarly adult concern) and so she told herself to sort it out. But first she needed to check her phone and put it somewhere safe. The memory of accidentally confessing everything to Good Sister June last night was still very present in Calla’s thoughts.

  She found her phone next to a spare pair of socks and underneath another pair of socks. She pulled it out and hid it underneath her bed, pushing it to the side that was farthest away from the door and up against the wall. For good measure, she threw the socks on t
he floor in front of it to distract anybody who got that far. The phone would be safe. And when she had finished all of that, a bell began to ring.

  Reacting more on instinct than on actually being awake (a skill that every boarding school student develops sooner rather than later), Hanna bounced to her feet. She began to get dressed and even though her eyes were still very definitely shut and she was currently trying to put her socks on her head, she was being substantially more productive than Edie. Edie Berger hadn’t even moved yet despite the very loud bell, the fact that Hanna was now falling over more than she was getting dressed, and the fact that the school was almost buzzing with noise. All of the other bedrooms, especially the ones they could see from their windows, had people getting dressed in them. Some of them were more dressed than others, and several looked to be in the middle of a healthy pillow fight, but they were all up.

  Everybody except Edie, who was now, in fact, snoring.

  As she studied her, Calla became convinced that it wasn’t a real-life snore. Another part of her, however, rather admired Edie’s commitment to her sleep. She decided to get dressed and if Edie was still in bed by the time she had her new uniform on, then Calla would accidentally-on-purpose drop something loud and heavy next to her bed. The thought was immensely satisfying.

  Calla leaned back down to her case and tried to find her school uniform. Her old school had insisted on green everything for their uniform. A green tie, and a green blazer, and green shorts for PE. It wasn’t even a good green,95 but in comparison to this uniform, it was perfect. The School of the Good Sisters clearly liked their students to look like something out of Victorian times.96 It was awful. The shirt was scratchy and the collar too high, and the dark gray skirt was far too long. Calla felt as though she was a hundred years old.

  Hanna opened one eye. “The uniform’s horrible. I mean, it looks fine until you get it on. If it makes you feel any better, you end up getting used to it. I felt awful the first time I put it on but I don’t even think about it now.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Four years,” said Hanna. She opened her other eye and started to head toward the door. “All of them have been perfect, but not this one. Not with “her in charge.”

  “She won’t last,” said a new voice. “I am going to make her leave. I am decided.” It was Edie. Who was now, somehow, completely dressed.

  Calla blinked. “How did you—?”

  “You look like a fancy-dress sad person,” Edie said to Calla, ignoring her question. “Like a sad, sad person who has been forced to eat broccoli for breakfast.”

  “She’s wearing the exact same clothes as you,” said Hanna.

  “I am used to the sadness,” said Edie. “But it will not last. Once I am done, we will lose the headmistress, and Good Sister June will come back and we will sort out everything. Even this awful uniform they are so fond of. I promise you. I will sort all of this out.”

  “She’s not joking,” Hanna said to Calla. “She’s actually pretty serious.”

  “I get that,” said Calla, staring at Edie with fascination. She’d never met anybody like her. The girl burned with energy. Calla had the curious sensation that it was not the sort of energy that she ever wanted to get on the wrong side of.

  Edie smiled at the two of them benevolently. “My reign of terror shall begin after breakfast,” she said, heading toward the door. “A meal for which, my friends, we are already late.”

  A DAY LIKE NO OTHER

  Edie was not wrong. They were late for breakfast and even though it was the sort of breakfast that you wanted to be late for,97 they were unfortunately on time enough to get a substantial helping. Calla ate her toast in grim silence and thought about what she would tell her mum that evening. She was not sure that she would tell her the truth98 and so she was figuring out what she would say instead. She eventually settled on telling her that she was all right and that she missed her and that she loved her as much as she loved the last biscuit in the tin. None of these three things were a lie, and they were not quite the complete truth,99 and so they would do.

  And then she stopped thinking about that because she had to think about surviving her first day at the School of the Good Sisters. Any first day anywhere is a difficult thing, but Calla’s first day here was more complicated than normal. Not only did she have to navigate a completely new school and timetable (with completely new people, every one of them a potential Miranda Price), but she also had to navigate the oppressive presence of the headmistress. She was everywhere and even a sudden plague of stink bombs100 did not distract her.

  Calla’s first lesson was science. This was with a nun called Good Sister Paulette, who spent the first fifteen minutes of the lesson talking about How to Put a Brave Face on Things.101 Good Sister Paulette was trying very hard to toe the line with the new regime, although she did pause to surreptitiously slip Edie a list of notes on how she could improve her stink-bomb-building technique. Once she had finished encouraging the revolution, Good Sister Paulette launched into a fierce lecture about the difference between mass and density. When she had finished, she dictated five nearly impossible questions to be answered for homework before sweeping majestically out of the room. All of the girls stared at each other in shock. Calla was fairly sure that at least three of them were trying not to cry.

  “This is all because of the headmistress,” Edie said darkly. She pushed her chair back and walked to the front of the room, and even though she was barely tall enough to be seen over the heads of the front row, she commanded everybody’s attention. “I am going to get rid of her,” she said. “Let me tell you how.”

  Hanna, who was possessed of a certain amount of common sense, got up and pushed the door shut. Edie gave her a quick nod of approval before continuing.

  “I am going to get rid of the headmistress, and anybody who wishes to join me can. It will be dangerous, and will involve us breaking the law at many points and perhaps one of us might die, but it will be a noble death and definitely worth it.”

  The girls started to talk among themselves and Edie smiled with satisfaction. She gestured up at the board. “A gift to affirm my good intentions in this matter,” she said. “The answer to question number three is forty-two.”

  IN WHICH THINGS GO FROM BAD TO WORSE

  Calla lost her ruler somewhere between science and English, and when she had to underline all of the abstract nouns102 in a passage about kale, she had to use her index finger and hope for the best. The “best” saw a lot of pen on her finger, not much on the exercise book, and Edie offering her a replacement ruler. Unfortunately Edie did this when they were supposed to be working silently. What’s more, she did it at quite a loud volume—one might say, the sort of volume you would use on a ship in the middle of a force-ten gale—and there is a lot that Good Sister Gwendolyn can ignore, but a bellowing Edmée Berger is not one of them. Good Sister Gwendolyn drew herself up to the full extent of her four feet nothing,103 and told Edie she was an impertinent, recalcitrant, and contumacious individual. Edie was not 100 percent sure whether this was a compliment or not104 and so, when Good Sister Gwendolyn had asked her what she thought about this, she replied quite honestly that she did not know what to think, as she hadn’t understood any of it. This had resulted in a lot more yelling from the pocket-size nun and Calla and Edie being given enough lines to keep them writing for the next ten years.105

  As Calla filed dazedly out of the classroom, Edie pulled her aside. “I’m sorry—I did not mean for that to happen. I will do your lines for you, if you want.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “It kind of is her fault a little,” said Hanna as she came over to join them. “But I think it’s the headmistress’s fault more. She’s changed “everything. Good Sister Gwendolyn used to be amazing. She used to spend her days reading in the library and when they got rid of the sofas, she had nowhere else to go so she came and taught. And now she’s so angry all the time.”

  They
began to walk down toward the hall for lunch. Calla didn’t recognize where she was until all of a sudden she saw the familiar corridors and walls from yesterday. They walked past several of the nuns having frantic conversations in their classrooms, and came across the tall man from before having a conversation with Good Sister Paulette about scones.

  “Do you think it’s jam before cream or cream before jam?” He looked thoughtful before a wide, bright smile slid across his face. “Honestly, it’s all the same, isn’t it? You just want the whole lovely thing at once, don’t you.” Good Sister Paulette looked at him and said something that Calla couldn’t hear. It seemed to satisfy the man because he laughed and wandered off happily in the opposite direction. Good Sister Paulette stood there for a moment before walking purposefully after him.

  “Who is that man?” said Calla, gesturing.

  The other girls shrugged. “He turned up with the new head,” said Hanna, “and he’s really into baked goods. I keep seeing him talking to Good Sister Honey about recipes, so that means he’s all right.106 I think. I mean, nobody even knows his name.”107

  She glanced over at Edie, but Edie was busy talking to a small first-year. They watched her give the child a package before ushering her off.

  “Well?” said Hanna when Edie came back to join them.

  “It begins tonight,” said Edie.108 “The first-years are installing a beeper just outside of the headmistress’s bedroom. It’s going to go off at one in the morning and get increasingly louder until she won’t be able to sleep a wink. And the best thing is, she won’t be able to find it unless she lifts the floorboard by her door. It turns out Ellen has impeccable carpentry skills.”