The Chickadee Girl

September Morning

On Tuesday night, she'd returned from the year's first student council meeting at eight, and studied for the next day's chemistry quiz. She'd devoured microwave popcorn with her roommate Cass, and carefully laid out the next day's Oxford shirt and pleated skirt on her desk chair. As part of her nightly routine, she'd showered before bed; Cass made fun of her for this, which was also part of the nightly routine. She'd then taken a makeup wipe to the remainder of her mascara, and winced a bit at the sting of her cinnamon toothpaste. 

The Housemaster had given the ten minute lights-out call, so she'd given her hair a quick blast with the hairdryer, and called goodnight down the hall to her friend Daphne. She and Cass had chatted a bit as they lay in the dark, and the dorm settled around them. Gradually, the murmur of Cass's voice faded away as Isa surrendered to sleep.

But when she awoke on Wednesday morning, Isa Piper was alone.

The air was still as she swam up into consciousness - a harsh stillness that made her sit up and take notice. There were no girls calling to each other on their way to breakfast, no gasp-drone-gasp of the aged pipes as they spat out someone's morning shower. The sun was fully up through the curtains. They had overslept. 

But 'they' was a non-starter: the bed on the other side of the room was made, drawn tight to the corners. Cass had left for breakfast without her. Blearily, she stumbled from her own bed, and yanked on her uniform, missing a button in her haste. She bullied her hair into an aggressive top knot. Irritation was bubbling up from underneath bewilderment, now. How could Cass have just left her sleeping? She'd be late for chapel now, and have to skip breakfast entirely. Slamming out into the hallway, she shouldered her book bag while in motion, and gave the glass door at the end of the hall a moody heave. Bitch.

She pounded up the steps cut into the hillside, and walk-ran around the dining hall and across the quad  to the chapel doors. Once there, she paused for a moment to run her fingers through her bangs, correct the missed button, and straighten her tie, emblazoned with the school crest. She held three fingers up to her knee, measuring the distance from the hem of her skirt (no need to give the prefects something else to fuss over). Glancing around the courtyard, she put her ear to the door. She couldn't hear the organ playing inside, so the chaplain must be speaking. She slowly placed her palm on the heavy oak and pushed, bracing for censure from her teachers, and stares from her amused peers. It was impossible not to make an entrance when one was late for morning chapel.

The pews were empty, every one. The imposing stone altar squatted aggressively at the front of the room, the candles atop it flameless. The silence was unapologetic.

"What the hell?" The exclamation was instantly swallowed by the chapel's wine-colored carpet.

She waited a moment, as though someone might pop out from behind a pillar to offer an explanation, or to chastise her for missing chapel. Not knowing what else to do, she moved forward a few steps. A black cloth was pulled over the piano, and tied down at the corners by someone who clearly sought to foil the instrument's escape. The school's gold processional crucifix, usually lugged forward to the altar at the beginning of each day by the chaplain, was clearly still locked away in the vestry. 

And then a horrible thought occurred to her. Was it Sunday? Had she mistaken not only the hour but the day, and raced up here in a flap when she could still have been in bed? For a moment, this thought relaxed her. Oddly, Sunday was the only day the campus had no chapel service, for the school chaplain had another parish that he visited in the nearby village.

But no – if it was Sunday, Cass would still have been sprawled in bed, half-buried in an avalanche of pillows and wool afghan. She couldn't be on weekend leave, either – weekend leave wasn't allowed in September. And the Cass of Sunday morning wasn't the type to go for an early morning run or swim, when the alternative was the week's only opportunity to sleep until noon. Isa furrowed her brow, and strode out through the side vestibule, still half expecting, with every step, to be accosted by a prefect and told off. But the vestibule, too, was silent and empty. From the walls, groups of black and white alumni silently reproached her for each and every one of her shortcomings. You, they seemed to say, are about to catch it. They seemed amused by the thought, too. Bastards.