But it was her face that made CeCe sit up in alarm. Sonia’s expression was empty, as blank as a piece of notepaper, her lips slack. Her usual look of quick, quiet intelligence, as if she was thinking fascinating things without saying them, had vanished. Her hands dangled at her sides. Her eyes, which were normally observant and a little wry, were open and seeing—they must have been seeing—but they contained nothing at all.
Lady Loon was restraining Alison, who was kicking and screaming now. Sherri had sagged to her knees, and one of her friends had fainted. The teachers had descended on the group, tugging at Sherri, trying to clear space around the fainted girl. Mrs. Peabody held Alison’s other arm, and CeCe could hear her booming voice. “It’s Special Detention for you, my girl. Do you hear? Get moving. Move!”
CeCe looked back at Sonia. She was watching, watching. Her skin had gone gray.
From the other corner of the room, CeCe saw Roberta get up from her table and try to make her way across the room toward Sonia, her face tight with fear.
“Katie,” CeCe said over the noise. “Is Sonia sick?”
Katie touched CeCe’s wrist. “Quick.” She rose from her chair and CeCe followed, the two of them winding their way through the sweaty, excited crowd of girls toward Sonia. Roberta was coming from the other direction, but her progress was slower, impeded by a thick section of her hockey friends.
Katie dodged expertly through the cloud of wool uniforms, using her elbows and her knees. CeCe followed in her wake, thinking of the color of Sonia’s face. There’s something wrong with Sonia, she thought. How did we not know? How did we not see that there’s something wrong with Sonia?
Sonia was still by the window, unmoving. Katie swooped past her, took her hand, and tugged it. Without thinking, CeCe took Sonia’s other hand so the girl was protected from both sides.
When CeCe was a girl, her rich father had sent her a Christmas present at her first boarding school: a baby doll. The baby had unsettling marble eyes, a hard skull, and two hard hands, molded into tiny fingers that formed into an impossibly adult shape. Sonia’s hand reminded CeCe of one of those hands now—small, cold, folded in on itself, alive but somehow dead. CeCe kept hold of it as she and Katie maneuvered the French girl out of the room. From the corner of her eye, she saw Roberta following, her long legs eating the ground to catch up to them easily, her braid swinging, her forehead stamped with worry.
Sonia made no sound, no protest. Her feet stumbled between Katie and CeCe, but her hands and arms did not move. They left the dining hall and came out into the wet air, the four of them moving as one toward Clayton Hall. “It’s all right,” she heard herself say to Sonia, even though she didn’t know what was wrong. “It’s all right.”
“Should we get her to the infirmary?” Roberta asked. The infirmary was across the common, in the teachers’ hall.
“No.” Katie’s voice was flat. “We’re not taking her to Nurse Hedmeyer. She can’t help anyway. Just get her to the dorm. Keep walking.”
“We should tell someone,” CeCe said.
“Tell who?” Katie turned to her as they walked, and her eyes were so angry that CeCe felt herself pale in shock. “Lady Loon? Mrs. Peabody? About this? They’ll just discipline her. Have you lost your mind?”
“Shut up, Katie,” Roberta said. “She’s trying to help.”
CeCe looked at Sonia’s ashen face, her half-closed eyes. There was something going on she didn’t understand. She was always so stupid, so stupid. “What’s wrong with her?”
No one answered. They entered Clayton Hall, and they helped Sonia up the stairs to the third floor. Sonia tried to walk between them, but her ankles buckled and her head sagged. She said something in French that sounded like a recitation, the words spilling automatically as her lips moved.
None of the other girls knew French, but CeCe watched Sonia’s lips as the four of them hit the third-floor landing. “I think she’s praying.”
“She isn’t praying,” Katie said.
In their room, they put Sonia to bed in her bunk, laying her on top of the covers and pulling off her shoes. Sonia muttered again, and this time there were English words mixed in with the French. CeCe put her ear to Sonia’s lips and caught some words: Please don’t take me there. Please don’t. I’ll be quiet. She was repeating it under her breath. Finally, the girl rolled over on her back and put her shaking hands to her face, shutting them out, her thin legs sticking out from beneath her rucked-up skirt.
Roberta sat at the edge of the bed. Katie stood, looking down at Sonia with an impenetrably dark expression on her face, and then she said, “I’ll get a glass of water,” and left the room.
CeCe looked at Roberta, her long, plainly pretty face, her blond hair tied back. Roberta’s expression when she looked at Sonia was troubled, but deep with understanding. She didn’t think anyone wanted her to talk, but she couldn’t help herself. “How did you know what was happening?” she asked. “How did you know what to do?”
Roberta shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“You’ve seen her do something like this before, haven’t you?”
The pause before Roberta spoke was a beat too long. “No.”
Roberta’s expression slowly closed down, the emotion leaving it. She became as impassive as a statue. Maybe it was Roberta who had had a fit like this, after her uncle tried to kill himself. Maybe, beneath her quiet demeanor, Roberta wasn’t as calm and confident as she seemed. “What does it mean?” CeCe asked her. “Is she sick?”
“CeCe, shut up.”
But she couldn’t. When CeCe was afraid, when she was nervous, she found it hard to shut up. “Katie knew, too. She’s seen this before.”
“No, I haven’t.” Katie was in the doorway, a glass of water in her hand. “I just think on my feet. She’s had a shock of some kind, and she was about to faint. We had to get her out of there so the teachers wouldn’t see. Sonia, drink this.” She reached down, pulled one of the other girl’s hands from her face, tilted her head back, and looked into her eyes. “Listen to me,” she said clearly. “People saw us leaving. It’s over if you don’t get hold of yourself. Girls who faint get sent to Special Detention for being disruptive. Now sit up.”
CeCe opened her mouth to protest, but to her amazement Sonia swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. She swayed for a second, then held out her hand. “Give me the water,” she said, her voice a rasp, her French accent sharpened by exhaustion.
A knock came on the door. “Ladies.” It was Lady Loon. “What is going on in there?”
Katie nodded to Roberta, and Roberta stood and opened the door. “Nothing, Miss London,” she said. “Sonia had a fit of dizziness, but she’s well now.”
Sonia had been gulping the water, but she lowered the glass and looked at the teacher. “I hate blood,” she said clearly.
Lady Loon ran a hand through her disastrous hair. “Afternoon class starts in twenty minutes,” she said. “Anyone not in attendance will be noted for detention. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Miss London,” CeCe said.
The teacher looked helplessly up the hallway, then down again, then wandered off toward the stairwell.
CeCe looked at the faces of the three other girls. What had happened in the dining hall had nearly given Sonia a nervous breakdown. What could be so horrible that it could be brought back by the sight of two girls fighting? She usually felt like the stupid one, but she thought maybe she was starting to see. She didn’t know everything about her friends, but these were Idlewild girls. Idlewild girls were always here for a reason. They were rough, like Katie, or impassive, like Roberta, because something had made them that way. Something they instinctively understood in one another. They hadn’t known what exactly was wrong with Sonia—they still didn’t know—but they had recognized it all the same.
Please don’t take me there, Sonia had said. CeCe didn’t know what it meant, but it was something terrible. Maybe more terrible than anything the rest of them had seen.