The Library Stairs, Chapter Three

The three girls who'd taken charge of Joe came softly to rest by the foot of a broad low staircase. Our hero looked around him. Black-and-white photographs decorated the atrium, and Joe might have expected long glazed rectangles filled with form upon form of bygone scholars, hairstyles and pinafore dresses as they were then, and everyone pretty after a fashion you couldn’t quite make your way back to now.

Might have done.

Only from what he could glimpse, these pictures were anything but the expected.

One of the three girls, smiling as if she’d anticipated just that reaction, showed Joe over.

Was this some sort of promotional still from a forgotten science fiction television series? Joe was at a loss as to what the image was doing in such a prim and proper little school. It hung above the first step, so if the placement of these photos along the upward-winding wall was intended as a chronology, that would make it the earliest.

The other two girls were smiling too. In fact, they seemed near what passed for them as transports of indecent mirth.

Can you imagine, Joe somehow heard above several stifled titters, that the Headmistress was ever a girl the same as us?

Or that she played in a band?

And such music…!

They were no ordinary photographs either. Like everything else strange that happened in these halls, it came on slow. You didn’t notice it at first.

By now, however, Joe did.

The picture was coming alive.

Mini-Flash Robin and Mini-Flash Juniper hadn't even reached half-time before Robin was too flustered to go on. This wasn't like the teasing he was used to from other boys in gym class, keep-away and showing off and such. The girls who were his classmates now didn't do that. They just kept winning.

Chap totes couldn't make it out. But his pants by now were in the worst twist over it.

If Robin hadn't known better, he'd have been willing to swear some of the girls could fly. Very quickly he'd gone from marvelling at this to finding it not remotely funny. Juniper had always been good at games, and he was sure she'd have been in his corner here, only they'd been assigned to different courts so even that was no go.

Desperate, Robin tried once more. He remembered that girl's name from registration. Nanine.

Nothing doing. Nanine didn't even let him get close to intercepting that time.

Out of the corner of his eye, Robin saw that Mini-Flash Juniper was watching from her court and had seen it happen. He squirmed inside.

Their teacher looked barely older than the girls in her form, wearing a neatly pleated gym skirt with her hair tied up in a ponytail. Now she halted beside Robin, pink and pretty and ever so slightly flushed, her whistle bouncing on its string upon the front of her T-shirt.

"Oh, Robin," she said to him sympathetically. "This is another thing I ought to have prepared for. It's just that you and Mini-Flash Juniper came to us on such short notice."

So saying she took him off to one side, while the girls continued to play. For what came next the teacher chose her words carefully, so that Robin might understand.

"You already know they develop faster than boys, don't you?" she began. "Well, that's starting to take on new meanings now. There are certain powers these days, which you haven't ever heard of in either boys or girls. However, the thing about girls maturing first still stands. That's been a little rough on boys, especially in gym. But I'm afraid it's just one of those changes you're going to have to get used to."

Her voice was very kind. Robin sniffed.

"Chap didn't come here expecting to be best or anything," he pointed out.

Patiently, the teacher replied: "Yes, you did. Because that was the world you were expecting. Never fear, though. There may still be a way for you to contribute."

She looked like she'd just had a bright idea. Mini-Flash Robin gaped at her.

"Two little words, which I think you do know," the teacher twinkled back. "Pom-poms!"

END OF CHAPTER THREE