Miss Havisham, in a rare concordance with simple student beliefs, actually does live at school. She started doing so during the winter break, when things were even emptier than usual; no longer afforded residence at her boarding room in town after a violent disagreement with its proprietor, she packed her things and paid the cinema boy a nickel to stow them in one of the empty wings. She eats in the dining hall and bathes in the gymnasium lockers. She’s almost always first to class.
In her shame, she doesn’t go exploring much of the school–until one restless April night.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
“They were just here when I arrived for practice,” says Radiane with some chagrin.
Proserpina surveys them: a smaller gathering than at the big match, but still far too conspicuous a crowd of teenage girls to be clattering around in a closed wing.
“What do we do?”
“Start teaching them in shifts, I suppose,” Proserpina says.
“But you haven’t finished teaching me yet!”
“Exactly how much do you think I know?”
“Proserpina!” shouts Ernestine, traipsing over. “Where have you been?”
“Yes, out alone?” asks Radiane.
“No,” says Proserpina, too quickly.
Radiane cocks her head. “Not alone?”
“Not that either!” Proserpina says.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
“And anyway,” she says, “I’m only fourteen, and more anyway, I already have a–a suitor, if you must know.”
It would be different if he were threatening her somehow: she’d know how to deal with that. But instinct tells her that fists are not the proper tools for this situation. Proserpina, exasperated, wishes she knew how to counterpunch a grin that makes her back tingle.
“So which is it,” Elijah says, “you’re too young to pursue, or already caught?”
“Neither,” she finds herself whispering.
Her overall impression of kissing is that it is sort of wet, and rather defuses everything.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Half a world and twelve hours away, another crank is turning on a reel of film, this one crisp and virginal.
“Speed,” says the nervous cameraman, “I think.”
“Cue!” shouts the director. Then: “Go!”
“Is that for me?” asks the chapped and holstered bushranger, squinting dawnward. His voice is squeaky, but his face is all stone and leather.
“Yes! I cued you!”
“But last time you said ‘start.’”
The director’s neck veins pop. “I’m sorry. What word would you like to settle on?”
“You could try ‘action,’” mumbles Dacelo, perched on an apple box in trousers too nice for this dust.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
He shows her where the film feeds from its reel into the intricate wheels of the Kinetoscope, and holds the stock up before a single hot bulb to show her the nearly-identical frames.
“Now blink like this,” Elijah says, “that many times a second, and watch–”
His hand is on hers, cranking the handle; Corbett’s fist withdraws before her eyes, and Fitzsimmons’s head whips around.
“I should be getting back,” Proserpina says, at last and with regret.
“Come by Saturday,” he says.
“You know I can’t–”
“Say I kidnapped you.”
“They’d never believe,” she says dryly, “you won that struggle.”
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
“Knew you wouldn’t miss tonight,” he says, as mustachioed men circle and sweat. “You’ve got a thing for Black Jack Sullivan.”
“I came to tell you I won’t be attending these fights anymore.”
“Oh, I see,” says Elijah, “now you have your own league in there to keep you entertained.”
“In fact, it’s because you made clear the risks–”
“Which risks in particular?” he says crookedly.
Proserpina’s pulse pounds in her healing eye. “Don’t try to be coy.”
“The risk of getting chased around by some squint-eyed cinema boy?”
“The risk of getting caught and–” she hesitates. “By some what?”
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Miss Havisham waits expectantly.
“We had, um, a midnight feast, is all,” explains Iala. “In the dorm.”
“Which dorm?” Miss Havisham asks quietly.
“2B!” says Iala. “3A!” says Ernestine.
“It was sort of in both,” says Iala. “Or either.”
“Only,” says Ernestine, “there was a fight. With food. A food fight.”
“No one was hurt,” says Radiane. “It was all in fun. Gentle fun.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest,” says Iala piously, “someone did get hit with a sausage.”
Miss Havisham’s eyebrow can climb no higher.
Proserpina sits in the back, grumpy, cheeks red and left eye puffing up quite nicely.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Few in history are the referees who have resorted to striking the contestants in order to persuade them to abide by Queensberry rules, but Radiane is not exactly a veteran of the position.
Fewer yet (if not by many) are the boxers who have found this situation a first bit of common ground, and who have siezed the newfound bond to turn their gloves upon the referee in question.
But unique to this match is the interruption of a teenage girl named Georgette: shrieking, leaping from the rubbish bin-cum-cornerpost, defending her friend with the world’s first flying elbow drop.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
“Elijah,” he says, and sticks out his hand.
“A gentleman, Elijah,” says Proserpina, “would take my hand first.”
“You’re not one for the gentle,” he grins.
“That’s an ugly assumption,” she says. Behind her, Radiane hammers the bell and yells for the combatants to break their clinch.
“I’ve seen you at the fights, in your smudge and breeches. Not fooling everyone.”
“Don’t follow me again,” she says coldly.
“I don’t have to, now.”
“You’re displaying an unseemly interest.”
“Another thing we have in common,” he says, and attempts to disappear into the shadows, except she watches him all the way out.
“They’re going to end up on the floor,” says one of the watchers dryly.
“Have a little faith.” Proserpina smiles. “Iala will want to mess up her face a little first, and this way they can’t use their fingernails.”
“So what are their sandwich board names? Messface McRichiegirl and the Scratcher?”
Proserpina realizes, with a motionless shock, that her interlocutor is a boy–around her age, long arms draped over the scaffolding, dark shirt and suspenders blended with the shadows of the large and dusty hall.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says.
“Neither are you,” he points out, correctly.
