Reflections by Diana Wynne Jones

delicious!”
    I managed not to describe the worms out loud, but they were awfully hard to eat. That was followed by daffodil buds and shoe soles, with little yellow flowerpots someone told me were Yorkshire puddings. And all the while the winds blew, bringing the ghosts of schoolboys out of the dark hall. Just the place for things to go bump in the night, I thought, wishing we were not staying the night.
    The room where we were to sleep was along corridors, up bare, splintering stairs, along more corridors, through a long room with rows of baths in it, side by side, through another long room with two rows of little tiny washbasins—here, beside each washbasin, hung the boys’ towels, each neatly folded square, and the boys’ sponge bags, each exactly four inches away from the towels (obviously they didn’t clean their teeth while they were at home)—and then along another corridor, through a neat, neat study, and finally up a fourteen-foot ladder to a sort of loft with three beds in it. I don’t know why the school bothered with beds. They were exactly as hard as the floor, except that each bed had a hair shirt on it stuffed with what felt like a gorse bush. You got bruised every time you turned over. And I did a lot of turning over because, soon after midnight, it was borne in upon me that those worms—seafood, I mean—had disagreed with me horribly. By two in the morning, I knew I was going to be sick.
    I tried to put it off. I didn’t know where to be sick, and whatever it was, it had to be down that fourteen-foot ladder in the dark. But being sick is something you just can’t put off. I had to get up. Somehow I found the hole in the floor and fell down the ladder. Then where? The study was far too neat. I blundered out into the corridor and ran along it. There was a door I hadn’t remembered at the end of the corridor, and it would only open when I backed off and ran at it like a bull. I shot out into the place with rows of washbasins. I was desperate by then. But I couldn’t mess up all those neat towels, and the boys would probably be made to clean it up after me. Rows of dim baths now. No, the baths didn’t seem the proper place either. I held my hand over my mouth and ran on. Showers. No. Help! Then another door which I had to butt open with my head. And there at last I found a door which I could just see was labeled SENIOR BOYS ONLY . By that time I was too far gone to care and I burst through that door. I don’t know what the place was—it was too dark—but I do know that as soon as I went in, it started to fill with water. Water was up round my ankles by the time I was ready to back out.
    Then I had to bump and barge my way back to the ladder and climb back up to the loft. I lay down on the gorse bush feeling I never wanted to move again. But the moment I lay down, I found I was going to be sick. Up I leaped. Down the ladder, through the study, along the corridor, through the door that wouldn’t open, past the washbasins, past the baths . . . I did that eight more times. Those things were either worms or they were the fingers of little boys. Each time, the only possible place I could find was SENIOR BOYS ONLY , and each time I went in, it filled with water again. I was still charging back and forth when it began to get light. I was still doing it when the other eight guests started getting up and wondering whether they were allowed to wash in the little washbasins.
    â€œMust you run?” one of them shouted irritably at me as I sped wearily past. “Someone was running and banging all night!”
    â€œThat was me!” I croaked, and made it to SENIOR BOYS , which began to fill with water again at once. It wasn’t meant to flood, I could see now. Water was gushing in from under the linoleum, probably just to spite me. No doubt the ghosts of little boys—all of whom were missing at least one finger—were laughing