Spying on Miss Muller Read Online Free Page A

a corner. In case we have to dig out, I thought. And I imagined us, the concrete ceiling fallen on top of us. Tables and chairs, too, because wasn’t the dining room right above our heads?
    But there hadn’t been a bomb for a while now, and it felt safe down here. It felt like a place the Germans couldn’t get to. There was a big white chest close to us with a Red Cross emblem on its side. That would be for the bandages and the iodine in case anyone got injured.
    And there was Nursie. I hardly recognized her in her gray-checked dressing gown instead of her stiff, white uniform. Nursie fixed all our complaints with milk of magnesia for our insides, iodine for our outsides. She had a long horse face and a horse-whinny laugh. She was not laughing tonight.
    Looking past Nursie, I saw that all the boarding mistresses were here now—but not Miss Müller.
    â€œMaybe it’s over,” Lizzie Mag said. “I don’t hear anything.”
    â€œMaybe. Or maybe you don’t hear when you’re down in the shelters.”
    I was thinking now about my mother and father. The Germans would never bomb our little town of Ballylo, would they? They probably didn’t even know it was there, with just thirty houses and the church and school and the four pubs. It wasn’t even on the map of County Derry, not unless you looked at a big, detailed one. Would my mum and dad know what was happening in Belfast tonight? They might even hear the bombs falling. If they did, they’d be scared out of their minds about me.
    Greta Ludowski sat alone on the bunk next to us. She leaned against the wall, and I thought she was half smiling. Greta was Polish. She had been smuggled out by her parents when the Nazis invaded their country in 1939. Greta had been through so much, she probably thought this air raid was nothing. She probably thought we were a bunch of rabbits even to be scared.
    â€œJess.” Lizzie Mag dug an elbow into my side and wiggled to the edge of her bunk. “Here come the boys,” she said.
    I forgot about Greta Ludowski. We stared at the boys as they straggled along with the boarding masters. Mr. Stinky Larrimer, who taught chemistry and always walked with his nose twitching as if he smelled a bad smell; plump, dear Mr. Bolton with his round face and round glasses, always nice, especially polite to the girls. His Burberry was wet, his glasses misted with rain. I guessed he’d been out to the shed by the Latin room to get his stirrup pump in case of a fire. There was Mr. Guy, who taught English and was handsome as anything. When he read romantic poems by Robert Browning or Swinburne, we swooned away. We dreamed about Mr. Guy falling in love with one of us, deserting his wife and two children.
    â€œIt could happen. Jane Eyre was a lot younger than Mr. Rochester,” Ada assured us.
    â€œBut it’s not too likely.”
    â€œWhat a ‘guy,’ ” we’d say, and dream on.
    Mr. Guy looked pale and sick tonight, probably from worrying about his wife and children in Bangor, not too far from Belfast as the crow flies. Or the Germans.
    Some of the boys grinned bravely at us as they passed. I could feel us all perk up. Usually we saw the boys only in class or at mealtimes, and if we were caught talking to them, well, it was big trouble. And here they were in the almost dark, close enough to touch. They were real now; the air raid wasn’t.
    â€œThere’s Ian,” Lizzie Mag whispered.
    I was watching for him. His name was the one I muttered in the dorm after lights-out when we played Truth or Dare. “Which boy do you like best, Jessie?”
    â€œIan McManus,” I’d say, my face squished hot against my pillow. I definitely wouldn’t have paid sixpence for anybody else’s picture. Especially since we saved all our pocket money to buy war bonds.
    I tried to smooth down my hair, something which is just never possible. There he was, not tall,