FITZIE IS PUZZLED

"So what happened while I was gone?" Fitzie asked Adam Kendall as Nellie Ollson was bundled into the waiting carriage. Adam, standing next to Fitzie on the porch of the blind school, coughed. "Well, Nellie apparently walked into Mary Ingalls's room, for no reason whatsoever, and found Marjorie Blundell hanging by the neck in Mary's closet, according to Nellie, Marjorie's face was blue and she was dead."

Fitzie scratched his head. "But how did Nellie see all this if she's just gone blind?"

"Well" Adam added dryly, "That was the Headmaster's next observation, which led to Nellie's dismissal. What we don't seem to know is, why Marjorie committed suicide. One of the maids thought she saw what looked like a Braille note, but then when she came back to get it with the Headmaster—"

"Because of course the maids are afraid to touch the bewitched notes themselves." Fitzie shook his head.

"—Yes, the note was gone. So no one knows why any of this happened." Adam looked down at a four year old whose eyeballs had exploded the month previous from rolling in poison oak. "Pruitt, don't pick your nose and eat it. Do you want passersby to think we run a home for idiots?"

Standing by the porch door, Reckness Cardew spun on his heel, walked into the school Common-room and threw a crumpled, badly spelled Braille note into the roaring fireplace and then tapped his way back to his own room, whistling slightly.

MARY IS PERTURBED, AND ADAM DISAPPOINTED

"I—I just don't know what to say about Nellie—she never should surprise me that badly." Mary sighed. "Adam, I feel like I am the cause of all this. Nellie had no business at the school, and faking blindness…of course she's convinced her parents that she actually WAS blind, and that she was shocked into sight by Marjorie's death."

"But she was supposed to have glaucoma, not hysterical blindness" Adam said, laughing slightly. "You can't imagine her parents could be that—obtuse."

Mary laughed, perhaps a little more sadly. "Well, Nellie's Pa is a bit more aware of her character, but her mother is unfortunately very voluntarily gullible. It's really sad."

Mary tapped her desk abstractedly. "And it's so tragic about Marjorie. Poor Marjorie. She always seemed so unhappy, and I tried to give her little hints about improving, but perhaps she didn't want to hear them from me, Adam. I think she had a little crush on you."

Adam moved a little closer to Mary's desk, and, his hand trembling, reached out for hers. His fingers felt her smaller ones. "Mary, I think Marjorie knew I had a little crush on YOU. Perhaps that I was really sweet on you."

There was a silence, and then Mary's hand pulled away from Adam's slightly. "I—I don't want to hurt your feelings, Adam, but… I've been spending a lot of time with Reckness, who is upset about Marjorie's death, he…"

Adam clumsily turned around, stumbling in a way he hadn't since he was twelve years old. "That's-that's fine, Mary. It's really none of my business. I- I thought because we—"

"Yes, the kissing was fun!" Mary's voice trailed behind Adam as he shuffled out of the room, biting his lip angrily. "But, I'm confused…and you're so much older!"

What a lot of garbage. Reckness Cardew was just months younger… Wait, was that Cardew's voice laughing? In the hall? Bastard!

PRUITT AND CORA MAKE DISCOVERIES

Pruitt giggled, as Cora tickled him. Cora was a whole year and a month older than Pruitt. The little boys and the little girls was suppose to play separate. But sometimes Pru and Cora met under the house, pretended they was frogs or snakes.

"Pwoo-itt" Cora said after she finally let him go, "Wet's go upstayawhs 'cause to get candy."

"Tain't no candy up there. Nurse locked it all up after Travis Richfield got sick." Pruitt felt his way out from under the school being careful that he didn't bang his head on a sticking out nail. That had happened before, and after Pruitt's head got treated with iodine, the Headmaster had used his strop.

The children felt the sunshine on their faces and paused a moment, on their hands and knees, fearful of recrimination. They had no idea if any of the seeing teachers (or tattletale partially sighted classmates) would spot them.

Rising, Cora touched the side of the school, her confident fingers tracing the familiar brick as she pulled Pruitt up with her other hand. In thirty years, Pruitt would be teaching mathematics and then becoming a superintendent at the New Hampshire School for the Blind, and Cora a broom constructing factory worker in an anonymous sheltered workshop in Biloxi, Mississippi, but for now she was the leader, as she had been sightless and a student here far longer.

Pruitt felt Cora's hand on his, and effortlessly she pulled him into the house. "I know where some peppermint sticks is." She paused. "I knows 'cause I hid them in the box woom day afore yestiddy."

"Where'd you git 'em?"

"Senior boy, Reckness give them to me." Pruitt heard Cora's laugh. "I give that hairy-face Marj'rie a letter fwom Reckness, and then—" Cora giggled.

But Pruitt didn't laugh.

Cora sneezed slightly as they began climbing the back stairs. "Miss Halperin said Marj'rie got sick and cain't be here no more." There was a pause. "She was stoopid anyways. My sister said that."

Cora's two brothers and five sisters all had blind eyes, and were at the school. Pruitt pulled his hand away.

"I-I think I'm gonna go outside and play with the boys, Cora."

"Why? Don'cha want no candy?" Her voice rose a bit. "You afraid?"

Pruitt felt the long stairwell as he moved downstairs, quite carefully, step by step, and tried to ignore Cora's nasty words.