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took what was left of his fag and placed it on a window ledge, where it began to burn a black mark into the wood. I must have made a startled sound, because he looked up and saw me.
    Before I could stop myself, I let out a little screech. Lewis quickly threw his butt out the window and sprayed the room with hair spray from a nearby shelf. Pushing past me, he hissed: “Say a word about this to anyone and you’ll be sorry.”
    I listened for his footsteps, but the tower seemed to have swallowed Lewis up. The scent of hair spray lingered around me.
    My screech attracted two matrons. I didn’t mention Lewis by name, but I said I’d seen a boy in the washroom. They set off in a panic, flinging open bedroom doors up and down the hall. Their peevish voices questioned the other new girls, who must have been unpacking. And then they came back and questioned me all over again. I began to feel uneasy about protecting Lewis, and the second matron misunderstood my evasive tone. With a snakelike flick of her tongue, she loosened her front teeth from her gums and then snapped them, clacking, back into place. I realized she was too angry to speak. Then she said: “We don’t appreciate practical jokes at Bath Ladies College. Any more complaints like this and I’ll give you a gating.”

6
    That evening I was sitting on my bed with my hands over my ears when my roommates walked in. A bell as loud as a fire alarm was reverberating through the tower. Now it died away, and the school seemed weirdly quiet except for the sound of running tap water coming from the bathroom. Up and down the corridor, girls were getting ready for bed.
    I didn’t know what to say to these two grade-eleven girls. I’d skipped two grades, so they looked years older and bigger than me. One was very tall, with dark, heavy-lidded eyes and a skinny, sneering mouth. She moved with the confidence of an acrobat and wore her oily black hair combed across her forehead, while a long braid hung like a tassel between her shoulder blades. She reminded me of somebody.
    The beauty of the other old girl made me stop breathing. Her milk-blond hair and high, plump cheeks made me want to hum Morley’s favourite song about the girl that he marries having to be as soft and as pink as a nursery. I guessed she belonged to the gold-script poster and the alpine flowers—Victoria Quinn in the flesh. And her friend had to be Pauline Sykes, whose brother, Lewis, I’d caught shaving in the washroom.
    “Are you goin’ to get your bath ticket?” Pauline Sykes asked, breaking our silence. I noticed she dropped her g’s the way people did in Dollartown, a village outside Madoc’s Landing. When I don’t eat my vegetables, Sal always asks if I’d like to move toDollartown, where all people have to eat are Dollartown steaks—i.e., slabs of fried baloney.
    I didn’t answer. I felt a little frightened of Pauline Sykes without knowing why.
    “Do I have to tell you again? Get your bath ticket.”
    “I don’t want a bath,” I whispered finally.
    “C’mon, Paulie. Drop it,” Victoria Quinn said.
    “Spoilsport.” Pauline Sykes withdrew to her side of the room and sat down on a chair facing the wall. Then, slowly and loudly, she began to bang her head against the wall. Each thump made the wall quiver with a little ringing noise, and the mirrors above our dressers shook. Almost immediately our door opened, and the frightened-looking matron seemed to fall into the room. She’d taken out her rollers, and two springy kiss curls sprang out of her forehead like the coiled horns of a ram.
    “Who is making that racket!” She looked angrily around the room. “Is it the Sykes girl?”
    “I hate this hole,” Pauline said. Her back was still turned to us, but she’d stopped her awful head banging.
    “Are you listening to me, Pauline?” she said. “You realize that this term Miss Vaughan expects you to play your part in the boarding school. And that means thinking of others besides