And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle Page A

Esmée Bodet cried. “An hour at least.”
    “Well, half an hour, then,” Jackie compromised.
    “You’re getting off easy, Pill,” Gloria told the blind and dumb Flip. “Come on, kiddos. Let’s play Ping and relax. Me first.”
    “Second!” “Third!” “Fourth!” came the cries. And, “We can come get Pill in half an hour!” “Race you back to school!”
    She heard them tearing off.
    She could not move or speak or see. All she could do was hear. Strangely enough, instead of being frightened, she felt an odd sense of peace. By divesting her of any voluntary action they had also divested her of any sense of responsibility. She was free simply to stand there against the tree and think what she chose until they came back. She felt that she had done well during the initiation, far better than she had expected Philippa Hunter to do and far better than they had expected the class pill to do. She was not, as yet, uncomfortable, and at first it seemed as though half an hour would pass quickly. There was very little noise in the air around her, just a faint murmur in the grasses, and occasionally when the wind shifted briefly she could hear a faint faraway burst of voices from the school.
    But long before the half hour was over it seemed as though it should have been over. Through her blindfold shecould not see the fog that was beginning to straggle in woolly-looking streamers about the playing fields and the grounds, but she could feel the damp seeping through her blazer and skirt and her body grow numb. Erna had bound her tightly and her muscles began to ache from standing, and the tautened stocking-rope dug into the flesh of her wrists and ankles, and the darkness became oppressive instead of peaceful. She strained against her bonds but could not move them. And now she began to be afraid, to be afraid that they had forgotten her, that no one would remember her, and she would be found there, eventually, when at last someone missed her, frozen to death.
     
    But just as her despair turned almost to panic she heard footsteps. There they come! she thought. But it was not the running steps of a group of girls but a single pair of footsteps walking briskly.
    Her heart began to thump and her imagination again thrust her onto an English highway filled with murderers and madmen. Through her gag she panted. At first she thought the footsteps were going to go on by, that whoever it was would pass without seeing her; but then she heard a low exclamation and felt deft fingers untying the blindfold and the gag.
    “Well, Philippa,” Madame Perceval said, and set to work unknotting the stockings. Flip stepped away from the tree and her stiff legs buckled under her and she sat down abruptly. Madame helped her up.
    “Thank you,” Flip whispered.
    Madame looked at her and raised her eyebrows mockingly. “You look as though you’d been beset by highwaymen. What happened?”
    “It was just an initiation,” Flip said. “It was fun, you know.”
    “Was it fun?” Madame asked.
    “Oh, yes.”
    “And what was supposed to happen next?”
    “Oh, they were supposed to come back and get me in half an hour. But I’m sure I’d been there more than half an hour.”
    “What was the initiation about?” Madame asked. “Or is that a secret?”
    “Oh, I don’t think so,” Flip said. “It was just our class initiating the new girls. I was the only one who really had to be initiated because all the other girls did a courageous deed, so they were exempt.”
    “Why didn’t you do a courageous deed?”
    “I couldn’t think of any. The things I thought would be brave I didn’t think they would, and I couldn’t think of any of the same kind of things the others did.”
    “Things like what?”
    “Things that were funny too.”
    “Like Gloria’s spitting her teeth into Fräulein Hauser’s hand?” Madame Perceval asked with a twinkle.
    Flip nodded. “I don’t think about things being funny until they
are
funny. My mother and