Lightning

now that the younger children were washing up for the early dinner.

They had not been in the yard five minutes before Willy Sheener arrived with an electric shrub trimmer. He set to work on a eugenia hedge about thirty feet from them, but his attention was on Laura.

At dinner the Eel was at his serving station on the cafeteria line, passing out cartons of milk and pieces of cherry pie. He had saved the largest slice for Laura.

On Monday she entered a new school where the other kids already had four weeks to make friends. Ruth and Thelma were in a couple of her classes, which made it easier to adjust, but she was reminded that the primary condition of an orphan's life was instability.

Tuesday afternoon, when Laura returned from school, Mrs. Bowmaine stopped her in the hall. 'Laura, may I see you in my office?'

Mrs. Bowmaine was wearing a purple floral-pattern dress that clashed with the rose and peach floral patterns of her office drapes and wallpaper. Laura sat in a rose-patterned chair. Mrs. Bowmaine stood at her desk, intending to deal with Laura quickly and move on to other tasks. Mrs. Bowmaine was a bustler, a busy-busy type.

'Eloise Fischer left our charge today,' Mrs. Bowmaine said.

'Who got custody?' Laura asked. 'She liked her grandmother.'

'It was her grandmother,' Mrs. Bowmaine confirmed.

Good for Eloise. Laura hoped the pigtailed, freckled, future accountant would find something to trust besides cold numbers.

'Now you've no roommate,' Mrs. Bowmaine said briskly, 'and we've no vacant bed elsewhere, so you can't just move in with—'

'May I make a suggestion?'

Mrs. Bowmaine frowned with impatience and consulted her watch.

Laura said quickly, 'Ruth and Thelma are my best friends, and their roomies are Tammy Hinsen and Rebecca Bogner. But I don't think Tammy and Rebecca get along well with Ruth and Thelma, so—'

'We want you children to learn how to live with people different from you. Bunking with girls you already like won't build character. Anyway, the point is, I can't make new arrangements until tomorrow; I'm busy today. So I want to know if I can trust you to spend the night alone in your current room.'

'Trust me?' Laura asked in confusion.

'Tell me the truth, young lady. Can I trust you alone tonight?'

Laura could not figure what trouble the social worker anticipated from a child left alone for one night. Perhaps she expected Laura to barricade herself in the room so effectively that police would have to blast the door, disable her with tear gas, and drag her out in chains.

Laura was as insulted as she was confused. 'Sure, I'll be okay. I'm not a baby. I'll be fine.'

'Well… all right. You'll sleep by yourself tonight, but we'll make other arrangements tomorrow.'

After leaving Mrs. Bowmaine's colorful office for the drab hallways, climbing the stairs to the third floor, Laura suddenly thought: the White Eel! Sheener would know she was going to be alone tonight. He knew everything that went on at Mcllroy, and he had keys, so he could return in the night. Her room was next to the north stairs, so he could slip out of the stairwell into her room, overpower her in seconds. He'd club her or drug her, stuff her in a burlap sack, take her away, lock her in a cellar, and no one would know what had happened to her.

She turned at the second-floor landing, descended the stairs two at a time, and rushed back toward Mrs. Bowmaine's office, but when she turned the corner into the front hall, she nearly collided with the Eel. He had a mop and a wringer-equipped bucket on wheels, which was filled with water reeking of pine-scented cleanser.

He grinned at her. Maybe it was only her imagination, but she was certain that he already knew she would be alone that night.

She should have stepped by him, gone to Mrs. Bowmaine, and begged for a change in the night's sleeping arrangements. She could not make accusations about Sheener, or she would wind up like Denny Jenkins — disbelieved by the staff, tormented relentlessly by her nemesis — but she could have found an acceptable excuse for her change of mind.

She also considered rushing at him, shoving him into his bucket, knocking him on his butt, and telling him that she was tougher than him, that he had better not mess with her. But he was different from the Teagels. Mike, Flora, and Hazel were small-minded, obnoxious, ignorant, but comparatively sane. The Eel was insane, and there was no way of knowing how he would react to being knocked flat.

As she hesitated, his crooked, yellow grin widened.

A flush touched his pale cheeks, and Laura realized it might be a flush of desire, which made her nauseous.

She walked away, dared not run until she had climbed the stairs and was out of his sight. Then she sprinted for the Ackersons' room.

'You'll sleep here tonight,' Ruth said.

'Of course,' Thelma said, 'you'll have to stay in your room until they finish the bed check, then sneak down here.'

From her corner where she was sitting in bed doing math homework, Rebecca Bogner said, 'We've only got four beds.'

'I'll sleep on the floor,' Laura said.

'This is against the rules,' Rebecca said.

Thelma made a fist and glowered at her.

'Okay, all right,' Rebecca agreed. 'I never said I didn't want her to stay. I just pointed out that it's against the rules.'

Laura expected Tammy to object, but the girl lay on her back in bed, atop the covers, staring at the ceiling, apparently lost in her own thoughts and uninterested in their plans.

In the oak-paneled dining room, over an inedible dinner of pork chops, gluey mashed potatoes, and leathery green beans — and under the watchful eyes of the Eel — Thelma said, 'As for why Bowmaine wanted to know if she could trust you alone… she's afraid you'll try suicide.'

Laura was incredulous.

'Kids have done it here,' Ruth said sadly. 'Which is why they stuff at least two of us into even very small rooms. Being alone too much… that's one of the things that seems to trigger the impulse.'

Thelma said, 'They won't let Ruth and me share one of the small rooms because, since we're identical twins, they think we're really like one person. They think they'd no sooner close the door on us than we'd hang ourselves.'

'That's ridiculous,' Laura said.

'Of course it's ridiculous,' Thelma agreed. 'Hanging isn't flamboyant enough. The amazing Ackerson sisters — Ruth and moi — have a flair for the dramatic. We'd commit hara-kiri with stolen kitchen knives, or if we could get hold of a chainsaw…'

Throughout the room conversations were conducted in moderate voices, for adult monitors patrolled the dining hall. The third-floor Resident Advisor, Miss Keist, passed behind the table where Laura sat with the Ackersons, and Thelma whispered, 'Gestapo.'

When Miss Keist passed, Ruth said, 'Mrs. Bowmaine means well, but she just isn't good at what she does. If she took time to learn what kind of person you are, Laura, she'd never worry about you committing suicide. You're a survivor.'

As she pushed her inedible food around her plate, Thelma said, 'Tammy Hinsen was once caught in the bathroom with a packet of razor blades, trying to get up the nerve to slash her wrists.'

Laura was suddenly impressed by the mix of humor and tragedy, absurdity and bleak realism, that formed the peculiar pattern of their lives at Mcllroy. One moment they were bantering amusingly with one another; a moment later they were discussing the suicidal tendencies of girls they knew. She realized that such an insight was beyond her years, and as soon as she returned to her room, she would write it down in the notebook of observations she had recently begun to keep.

Ruth had managed to choke down the food on her plate. She said, 'A month after the razor-blade incident, they held a surprise search of our rooms, looking for dangerous objects. They found Tammy had a can of lighter