Pamela Dean Read Free Page A

floor. The RA was among them. What was her name, for heaven's sake. Irma? Norma? Nora, all right.
    "What can I expect from the ghost?" Janet asked her. If they were having fun, you might as well let them have it.
    "Not much," said Nora. "She throws books out the window."
    "That could get annoying in the winter."
    "Not your books—ghost books."
    "Whose? All the ones she hated?"
    "It's hard to read the titles when they're flying around," said Nora dryly. The three other girls, all clearly new students as well, giggled a little, in a hopeful way.

    They either knew nothing, or were dreadfully unim
    aginative. "I'd better get
    unpacked," Janet said, and went into her room.
    There she sat on her desk and surveyed it all. Ericson was one of the older dormitories, which meant high ceilings, slightly scarred oak woodwork, wide windowsills, and an old white porcelain sink, with mismatched faucets, in what might once have been the fourth roommate's closet. The carpet was red, like the stairs'; the walls and ceiling were clean white. You could paint them if you wanted to, but it would be a lot of trouble, and the Office of Residential Life was stingy in its allowance of colors. The iron bunk beds were painted white, too; the other furniture matched the woodwork, though it was rather more used-looking. The room had southern, eastern, and northern exposures; the four largest windows looked eastward, and Janet had claimed the desk that looked north. It was all warm, clean, and pleasant. Janet looked at the tumble of books on the bottom shelf, and sniffed.
    She had given up this useless exercise and was putting writing paper and sealing wax and typewriter ribbons into the drawers of her desk when someone knocked on the door and then came in.
    "Hello!" called Janet, so as not to startle the newcomer.
    "Hi," said a comfortingly midwestern voice, and the first of the two roommates—unless there were three—came around the corner. Janet went on smiling, but her stomach protested a little. This roommate—probably the Chicago one, who had written, since she had a tennis racket under one arm and a tape player under the other—was about six feet tall and looked perfectly pleased with this condition. She was dressed more or less as Janet was, except that her blue corduroy pants had been ironed; her Oxford-cloth shirt was not only ironed, but pink, and tucked in, too; her tennis shoes were of a dazzling blueness. She had a nice healthy face with large blue eyes, and a head of straight blond hair, cut just above the shoulders, that put even Lily's to shame. Why doesn't she grow it long?
    thought Janet. All over the country were girls wearing Indian cotton dresses and Earth shoes who would kill for hair like that.
    "Hi," said the roommate, a little less certainly. "I'm Christina. Which—no, let me guess. Are you Molly?"
    "Why, do I look like somebody who doesn't answer letters?"
    "Janet, then. Didn't she answer yours? She sent me a nice one, but it was a little strange."
    Janet bit her lip on the next obvious question; Christina looked earnest, and would therefore probably take it the wrong way. "I was glad you wrote, anyway."
    Christina dumped the racket, the tape player, and a bulging shopping bag onto the nearest lower bunk, and looked at the contents of the bookshelves. "Are all these yours?"
    The dangerous question. "Yes."
    "These are kids' books."
    She sounded more puzzled than disapproving, but whatever tone it was said in, that remark boded no good. Janet held her tongue. "Oh, well," said Christina cheerfully, "I brought my teddy bear." She extracted a gray floppy object from her shopping bag and propped it up against the brown-paper package of bedding provided by the Office of Residential Life.

    Useless, Janet decided, but tolerant. Whether this made her worse than Lily was a question that would bear a deal of examination.
    "Did you have a nice trip?" said Christina.
    "I live in town," said Janet, who had said as much in her letter.