Shades of Red (4 page)

“You don't say! My goodness ...” Mrs. Follett waved Darrell inside, but as she turned back to her call, her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Don't worry about a thing, Professor Tooth. Mr. Gill and I will keep everything under control until you return.” Casting a wary eye at Darrell, Mrs. Follett slipped into the inner office and closed the door behind her.

Darrell's heart sank. Professor Tooth not here? She
leaned against the counter and strained to hear Mrs. Follett's voice; she was just considering creeping behind the counter to put her ear to the door when it reopened suddenly. Mrs. Follett emerged, her face looking pink and flustered.

“Can I help you, Darrell?”

“I'm not sure, Mrs. Follett. I'm here to talk with Professor Tooth, but from what I heard of your phone call —”

“Goodness gracious! Darrell, you're old enough to know it is terribly rude to eavesdrop on conversations. That was a private call.”

“I wasn't trying to listen,” said Darrell, relieved she hadn't had time to press her ear to the door. “I just heard you mention Professor Tooth's name.”

“Yes. Well.” Mrs. Follett looked more flustered than ever. “I'm sorry to say that Professor Tooth has been detained and will not be here for the first day back.”

“Detained? Is everything all right, Mrs. Follett?”

“Yes, of course, dear. It's just that the professor is — has missed her flight back from Europe, and her return will be somewhat delayed.”

Darrell turned to leave. “Okay, I'll drop by tomorrow to see her.”

Mrs. Follett shuffled papers on the counter nervously, tried to collect them into a pile, and dropped half of the stack onto the floor.

“Let me help you with those.” Darrell started around the corner.

“
No!
” screeched the secretary, bringing Darrell up short. “No, thank you, dear,” she repeated more quietly, struggling to present an aura of calm. “I'll be just fine. And I'll let Professor Tooth know that you'd like to see her upon her return.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Darrell left the office as the school secretary dived behind the counter to pick up the stray papers.

“Upon her return?” Darrell muttered as she walked upstairs to the study hall. Her questions for the school principal would clearly have to wait. But what would keep Professor Tooth from attending the first day of the new term? A gust of cold wind blew through the front hall and slammed a door closed. She shivered. It was probably nothing. But a cold that could not be explained by the weather seemed to have settled into her heart.

Nothing. Apart from the teacher's name — a Professor Grampian — the course outline was completely blank. Darrell exchanged a glance with Kate, and they joined a group of students straggling down the hall to the old wing of the school. Kate and Brodie had been as surprised as Darrell was to hear of the absent principal, and
the whole school buzzed with the news after orientation, presided over by Arthur Gill.

Mr. Gill was the art teacher at Eagle Glen but stood as second-in-command when Professor Tooth was away. His meeting had been informational and brief, and he had sent the first-year students off to find the new teacher, whom he explained would stand in for Professor Tooth in her absence.

“In her absence?” repeated Kate as they walked down the hall. “That sounds like she's going to be away for a while.”

Darrell nodded. “My conversation with Mrs. Follett made me think it was just going to be for today, but now I'm not so sure,” she said.

Lily Kyushu looked over her shoulder at them. “I just hope this new teacher isn't around long,” she said, swinging her swim goggles on one finger. “The way you two are always going on about history with Professor Tooth, I thought I'd give it a try this term.” She turned back to her friend Andrea. “I don't really like history, but Kate said Professor Tooth has a way of making the past really come to life.” Kate winked at Darrell as Lily and Andrea hurried on ahead.

Darrell waited until the other girls were out of earshot. “That was really clever,” she said disparagingly. “Now we're going to have Lily breathing down our necks in history class. What were you thinking?”

Kate shrugged. “It was just an idle comment — I can't even remember when I said it,” she admitted. “Anyway, Lily and Andrea are so busy at the pool, they'll get their history strictly by the book.”

“Yeah, well until Professor Tooth gets back, looks like we'll get our history that way, too.”

“Is there any other way to get history than by the book?”

Darrell jumped at the sound of the quiet voice in her ear. She looked around to see a tall boy with a mop of vivid magenta hair who seemed to materialize out of thin air behind her.

“Paris!” Kate's face went almost as pink as the boy's hair and she started to babble. “We didn't see you. How've you been? Had a nice holiday? Geez, your hair looks great. I was just saying to Darrell —”

Paris grinned and cut her off. “Nice to see you too, Kate.” He hiked his binder higher under his arm. “Funny, but you seem kind of nervous for some reason. Did I interrupt a private conversation?” He looked from Darrell to Kate as they struggled to find something to say. Darrell recovered first.

“Kate was just complaining about Professor Tooth being away,” she said as smoothly as she could manage. “But I'm always ready for a new take on things, myself. We'll just have to wait and see, I guess.”

Paris laughed out loud. “That's not what I heard, but I guess I'll just have to take your word for it, because here we are.”

Eagle Glen had been built in stages, and before the turn of the twentieth century its first incarnation had been as a fishing lodge. Sometime during the First World War regal stone turrets had been added and it had been pressed into service as a convalescent home for injured and ill soldiers. After the wars the building had been used as a hospital and had even served as a hotel for a while, but it had only been converted into a school in recent years.

This hallway was in a seldom-used wing of the school. A cluster of first years including Lily and Andrea stood uncertainly outside the heavy wooden door.

Kate slipped through the group and pushed the door open, stopping just inside. The classroom was filled with the velvet darkness of a room that had been deserted awhile. Darrell followed Kate into the room and bumped her hip painfully on a table near the door.

“Ouch!” She slammed her books down onto the table and reached with both hands along the wall.

Kate slid her laptop onto the desk beside Darrell's pile of books and stumbled towards the only glimmer of light in the room, a thin line of yellow on the outside wall of the classroom.

“I can't find a light switch,” complained Darrell as milling bodies began to fill the room, bumping and crashing into each other and various pieces of furniture.

“It's okay,” called Kate over the muttering voices of the other students, “I think this is a ...”

The roller blind flew up with a clatter, flooding the room with rare winter sunshine and sending a cascade of dust down on Kate's head. Blinded as much by the light as by the previous dark, the students continued to bumble into one another until everyone finally found a seat.

Huge windows lined the outside wall of the classroom, and Kate opened the rest of the blinds before making her way over to where Darrell had pulled out a couple of chairs at a table near the front of the class. Kate shook the dust from her hair and coughed a little. “This place looks like it hasn't been used for a long time,” she wheezed and turned to follow Darrell's puzzled gaze.

At the front of the classroom, a rumpled figure sat curled like a caterpillar in the teacher's chair, palms placed neatly on the desk on either side of a head adorned with hair as white and fuzzy as an old dandelion.

Darrell looked quizzically at Kate. “I've got a question,” she said. “Who is that and what is he doing?”

“That's two questions,” said Kate.

“I've got a more important question,” came a voice behind them. Darrell looked around to see
Paris grinning at her. In spite of her disappointment with the missing principal, it was impossible not to grin back. Paris had a very catching sort of smile. “Is it still alive?”

Kate slid around one of the long heavy tables that apparently took the place of desks in the room and sidled up to the front. She stuck her nose right up to the face of the stranger and hazarded a guess. “Sir?” she whispered. “Excuse me — sir?”

A gentle snore was her only response.

Paris bounded up, delight oozing from every pore. “Not dead, I guess,” he said, barely able to contain his glee. “Reminds me a bit of Lily for some reason.” There was a haughty sniff from the back of the room.

Darrell grinned. “Leave Lily out of this, Paris.”

Paris ignored her and spoke to Kate, who was still hissing in the apparition's ear. “I think you are underestimating the depth of the sleep involved here, Kate.” He put his mouth right beside the ear that wasn't pressed into the desk. “Hello there,” he bellowed.

Nothing.

The entire class looked on in silence, collective breath held, awaiting a response.

“Snnnnrrrrggghhhhh ...”

“Not dead, but certainly unconscious,” Paris noted, his eyes sparkling. “Perhaps — undead?”

“Nonsense, dear.”

A shadow at the classroom door gathered itself into the person of Mrs. Follett, the school secretary. She bustled to the front of the room and smiled apologetically at the class. “I was a bit worried this might happen, so I thought I'd best pop down here and make sure Professor Grampian managed to get himself settled in.”

Paris leaned over the table and whispered to Kate. “What a pair!”

Mrs. Follett reached down and shook the teacher briskly by the shoulders. “Professor Grampian,” she trilled, her voice taking on a curiously piercing tone.

The effect was immediate. Professor Grampian lifted his fuzzy head from the desk top and looked inquiringly around the classroom. “Ah yes,” he said, as though continuing a long conversation, “now as I was saying ...”

“Lovely to see you, Professor Grampian,” warbled Mrs. Follett, aiming her voice directly into one of the professor's large ears. “Here is your first-year history class, all ready to go.” She beamed at the group fondly. “Professor Grampian has kindly agreed to join us until Professor Tooth is able to return,” she said brightly.

Darrell's heart fluttered a little, and everything that had been bothering her since her arrival at Eagle Glen seemed to fall into her stomach with a solid thump. Where was Professor Tooth?

Paris leaned forward. “This is going to be fun,” he whispered, but Darrell was in no mood for jokes.

“Be good,” she hissed, as Mrs. Follett began to address the class again.

“Now my dears, Professor Thaddeus Grampian has been an honoured teacher at schools all around the country for years, and we are delighted to have him. Please join me in welcoming him to Eagle Glen.”

There was a polite spatter of applause, and Mrs. Follett blushed pinkly and scurried out of the room.

Professor Grampian cleared his throat and began to make his way around to the front of the teacher's desk. It was a painfully slow process, made even longer when the thought apparently struck him that he had forgotten something. He returned, a deeply thoughtful expression on his face, to his original spot behind the desk and retrieved the single sheet of slightly damp paper upon which his head had been resting. With agonizing slowness, he shuffled back to face the students.

In his chosen spot at last, Professor Grampian once again cleared his throat ponderously and, as though he were announcing the coronation, began to read off the class roll.

Taking attendance was done in every class at Eagle Glen, but as the groups were small and most of the students boarded at the school, it was a rare event for a teacher to call the names aloud. Done in a painstakingly slow manner in posh British tones, it was clearly more
than Paris could bear. When Professor Grampian called “Mercer, P.,” Paris poked Brodie hard in the back.

“Ow!” said Brodie, and glared over his shoulder at Paris. Professor Grampian nodded approvingly. Two names later, Professor Grampian called “Sun, B.,” and Paris jumped to his feet.

“Present,” he said with a grin. “And may I be the first to formally welcome you to our classroom, Professor Gramps.”

“Thank you — er,” the ancient professor consulted his notes, “Brady.”

Darrell rolled her eyes.
Professor Tooth had better come back quickly
, she thought.
This place is falling to pieces without her.

Darrell shivered. This old wing of the school seemed so much colder than the rest, and even after a week of classes, it felt like the temperature hadn't increased a single degree. Waiting an eternity while the new teacher lost himself in his own thoughts wasn't helping either. She drew an idle sketch in her notebook as he droned on. He seemed a nice enough old man, if a bit doddery. But this lesson — it was just like everything she loathed from her old school. Kings and queens, wars, dates. A pair of Spanish young people, he from Aragon, she from Castile, placed into an arranged marriage. Darrell
felt dozy and had trouble following the professor's voice, reedy with age. She tuned him out entirely and concentrated on capturing the fuzzy aurora of hair that floated around his pink skull.

The bell to end the class finally rang, jerking Darrell back to reality.

“— and thus emerged one of the most evil persecutions in the history of the world, stemming from no less generous a source than one woman's love and belief in her God.” Professor Grampian smiled genially at the class as chairs scraped and papers were rustled into piles. “Thank you all for your kind attention. We'll discuss the class project in more detail when next I have the pleasure of your company.”