Chapter Six: A Slippery Situation (Lauren)

After assembly, the twins and their three friends went to the front of the hall to talk to Calipso. The school had been dismissed and there were just a few stragglers left in the hall. Annie touched Calipso’s shoulder.
“Why were you sitting right in the front Calipso, and why are you still waiting here?” she asked.
“Well, last night I ….” she started to explain, but was interrupted by a stern voice behind her.
“What are you girls still hanging around for?” asked Mrs Sheraton as she walked down the stairs from the stage. “You’re going to be late for your first lessoooon...”
The principal went sailing through the air and landed at the bottom of the stairs, on her back, and seemed to be out cold.
In the meantime, Mary had been searching the school high and low for the Fab Five.
“Hey, there you guys are! Mrs. Glover is doing a spot uniform check and she’s on her way to your dorm. You’d better hurry!” panted Mary. She’d gotten over the nut debacle and was back to being enthusiastic Mary. Mrs Glover was their old, grumpy house matron and she was very strict. She loved to find any reason to have a spot check and she always managed to catch someone out.
“Whoa!” Mary suddenly froze when she saw Mrs Sheraton sprawled out on the floor. “What happened to her?”
“Quick, Mary, Calipso, go back to Oak House and tell Mrs Glover to ring Sister McKenzie. Tell her to come to the hall straight away, it’s an emergency!” ordered Roxanne as she bent down and tried to rouse some sort of response out of Mrs Sheraton.
Calipso ran around Mrs Sheraton, glad to have been asked to assist in the emergency, but without the bright yellow warning sign to remind her that the floor was still wet, she also slipped and fell down in a heap.
Mary raced back to Oak House and it wasn’t long before Sister McKenzie and Josephine arrived on the scene and everyone crowded around them. The nurse instructed the five Grade Tens to help their principal and their friend down to the Sanatorium.
“Make way, make way, wounded people coming through,” shouted Josephine above the noise. “Now, who is responsible for this?” she demanded. “Could this not have been avoided?”
No one said a word, but the girls were all feeling guilty and were wondering the same thing. Could they have prevented the accident by taking last night’s dreams more seriously? Did Calipso have the final piece to the puzzle?

***

Later that afternoon, the Fab Five weren’t feeling so fab. They had just been to visit Calipso in the Sanatorium and the news about Mrs Sheraton wasn’t good. Jade had been reluctant to go with them as she still hadn’t warmed to the new girl. Annie had gone ballistic when Jade had made a comment that Calipso just took up valuable Fab Five space. Seeing her kind and concerned friend so mad had convinced Jade to go with them in the end so as not to upset Annie any more than she already was. Calipso tried to convince her new friends that she was feeling fine but she certainly didn’t look fine. Sister McKenzie ordered her to rest and recommended that she not participate in any physical activities, gym classes, outings or nature walks with Miss Jiggleweed for the time being. Calipso had hurt both her legs when she fell and Sister MacKenzie assured her that she didn’t need to put any extra strain on them. Calipso was very worried about missing all her classes, but Annie offered to take notes for her and she promised to drop off her homework.
“Jade, why do you have such a problem with Calipso?” asked Charlotte once they had left the San, “she’s really very sweet.”
Jade’s friends were unable to understand her attitude towards the new girl.
“I don’t know, she’s just different, and I liked things the way they were,” answered Jade, feeling a little embarrassed about her silly reasoning.
Roxanne had been lost in her own thoughts but decided that it was time for her to let the other’s know what she had been thinking.
“I think Calipso’s lovely and I also think that she might be having mysterious dreams, just like the rest of us. Why else would she have been standing near the stairs in the hall when we dreamt that Mrs Sheraton was going to fall down them? She must have dreamt the missing piece to the puzzle.”
“I don’t know,” argued Chelsea, “she might just not have known where to go, it was her first assembly.”
“Well, if the stories about our dorm are true, then anyone who sleeps in the dorm will fall under its strange spell. Which means that what’s happening to us is probably happening to her too,” deduced Charlotte logically.
***

A couple of days later, Calipso was back in the dorm under the stairs and feeling like her cheerful self again. The very next night, after she was back, the girls’ sleep was interrupted by more puzzling dreams. Calipso woke early and disappeared through the curtain and down the passage. When the others woke up, they were relieved that it was the weekend and they all sat up to discuss their night visions.
“Okay, so who dreamt what?” asked Annie, finding strange dreams that were linked in some way rather exciting.
“I dreamt about some sort of commotion in the Grade Nine dormitory and someone was screaming,” began Roxanne.
“My dream was about Calipso and a Grade Nine. They had been sent to the principal’s office,” continued Charlotte.
“I dreamt that Calipso was called onto the stage during assembly for saving someone’s life by using the Heimlich maneuver,” added Chelsea.
Jade looked confused. “In my dream, Calipso was helping Sister McKenzie in the Sanatorium after proving herself as an accomplished ‘First Aider’. They were giving safety lessons to the matrics.”
Annie nodded while listening to her friends. “Well, I dreamt about Jemima in Grade Nine. She was lying in bed with the flu. She seemed to have a very high temperature and was sucking a Strepsil for her throat.”
All of a sudden the girls’ conversation was interrupted by a piercing scream and it was coming from down the passage. They all jumped out of bed and ran to see what had happened. They heard a commotion coming from the Grade Nine dorm and walked in to see Calipso standing behind Jemima with her arms wrapped tightly around her. Jemima was taking deep breaths and there was a cherry-flavoured Strepsil lying on the floor.
“Thank you for getting that lozenge out of my throat Calipso, that was a neat trick!” wheezed Jemima.
“How did you know what to do?” asked Jade, completely bewildered.
“Well, I wouldn’t normally have a clue, but I watched myself do that in my dream last night. It was like déjà vu!” replied Calipso.
So, it was true. Calipso was also under the spell of the dorm under the stairs. Her dreams were part of the puzzle of events that were going to happen and the girls needed that final piece if they were going to understand any more of their peculiar dreams. It was time to let her in on the secret.