Behold, this Dreamer. Charlotte Miller

room and in the girls’ lavatory; spread gossip, often outright lies, about the other girls, freely and without conscience; wore her skirts indecently short; and ran around with all sorts of young men. There were even rumors about the campus that she had been seen leaving a speakeasy late one Saturday night, though Eva could hardly believe that, even of Phyllis Ann.

      It seemed all the girls were changing these days, shortening their skirts and bobbing their hair, wearing makeup, and wishing more than anything else they were Zelda Fitzgerald or Clara Bow, and many of those changes Eva could see little harm in. But Phyllis Ann Bennett was another matter altogether. Whatever she was involved in, Elise Whitley and many of the other girls at the school soon followed suit. She was a bad influence, trouble as the principal had never thought to have at her school, with her indecently short skirts, her cigarette smoking, and loose ways—fast, Eva thought again. She even doubted the girl was still a virgin, though she would never dare utter such a thought aloud.

      “I was addressing Miss Whitley, Miss Bennett. I will get to you in a moment,” the principal said, watching as the girl loudly popped the gum again and then tilted her chin into the air as if she considered herself to have been insulted. “You were about to explain why you were out riding in a motor car with a number of young men, when you were supposed to be in your dormitory here after curfew?” Eva prompted again, looking at Elise.

      The girl glanced again quickly to her friend—for all the world, Eva could not understand how the two had ever become friends in the first place, much less how the friendship had endured over all the years she had been told it had existed. For all their pretensions, they were very different, and, although spoiled and often annoying, Elise Whitley could at times be a likeable girl—but she was just that: a girl trying very hard to be a woman, considering herself very mature and grownup and very worldly, but still nothing more than a child, not even yet knowing what it was to be an adult. Eva doubted if Elise had ever faced one hard truth in all her life, reared in the ivory tower of the Whitley name as she had been, and that bobbing her hair and shortening her skirts had probably been the worst act of defiance she could ever dream up—the girl had a lot of growing up to do if she were ever to be the woman she already considered herself to be, Eva thought; painful growing up if she did not end the friendship with Phyllis Ann Bennett, for it was the principal’s considered experience that girls such as Miss Bennett always came to no good ends, and that they often took everyone else they knew down along with them.

      “We went for a drive with some boys who just got a new car. I guess we forgot the time—” Elise Whitley said after a moment.

      “You forgot the time—that is until these boys you went riding with ran this new car of theirs into an electric pole, and the police brought you back to the school because these boys had been drinking—” Eva looked at her for a long moment. “Do you realize how fortunate you are that those officers did not take you to jail right along with the boys you were with?” she asked, receiving only silence in response to her question, and thus getting the answer she had expected. She sighed and shook her head. “You’re both sixteen now. You should be old enough to realize the dangers a young lady can find herself in when she’s off alone in a motor car with a strange young man—especially if liquor is involved—”

      “But we weren’t drinking,” Phyllis Ann interrupted. “And we weren’t alone. There were two of us, and three of them; and they weren’t strangers—”

      “That very well might be the case, but we have a curfew here for a reason, Miss Bennett. A young lady just does not go off to all times of the night with—” But she let her words trail off, realizing they were being ignored by both girls. “Your parents have entrusted your well-being to us while you are at this school,” she said more sternly. “For the time you are here, you will obey our rules, whether you see a need for them or not—am I understood?” She looked directly at Phyllis Ann, but Elise was the first to respond.

      “Yes, ma’am—”

      “Yes, of course,” Phyllis Ann said, but her face spoke more truth than did her words—she would continue to do whatever it pleased her to do, just as she had always done.

      Eva leaned forward, considering both girls again as she rested her arms on the desktop before her. “Your parents will be informed of your little misdeed tonight, and they will also be informed of this one fact, that if you are again found in one more infraction of our rules, one more food fight in the dining hall, or being caught out of the dormitory after curfew for any reason, or anything else along that vein, you will be summarily expelled from this institution—am I understood?”

      The two girls looked quickly at each other, and then back to the principal—she was understood.

      “For the next two weeks you will both remain in your room in the dormitory at all times when you are not in class. You will take your meals there, study there; there will be no recreation, and no radio—”

      “You can’t—” Phyllis Ann broke in, leaning forward.

      “Young lady, you are in enough trouble as it is. I suggest that you remain silent—”

      Phyllis Ann did not respond, but there was clear anger in her eyes as the principal sat back to consider both girls one last time. “I trust this will be the last time I will see either of you in this office again—” she said, dismissing them both—but, even as she watched the door close behind the two girls, she knew it would only be a matter of time before they would be back, and only a matter of time before they would again be a problem on someone else’s hands other than her own. They never seemed to learn.

      By the end of the first day, Phyllis Ann was already bored with the restrictions placed on them. By the end of the third, she was slipping out of their room to visit other girls on their floor, and by the end of the week she was leaving the dormitory itself. Elise envied her friend’s daring, but she lacked the nerve to make such forays herself, staying alone in their room, worrying what excuses she could make should anyone check to discover that Phyllis Ann was not there.

      But no one checked. The days passed and she was left alone, often for hours at a time, wondering where Phyllis Ann was, and worrying that Miss Perry or one of the instructors might come by to bring the wrath of heaven down on them both.

      On the second Saturday of their punishment, Phyllis Ann was gone most all day, leaving Elise’s nerves in a raw state by the time evening came. She had read until she finished the novel she had been reading, but lacked the concentration to begin another, had tried to write home—but her father was angry with her over Miss Perry’s call, and her mother was worried she might get herself hurt or into trouble on such outings, or expelled if she were ever caught again, and her brothers would never write back. Out of sheer boredom she took up her knitting and tried to occupy her mind and not watch the clock on the table below the windows—where was Phyllis Ann? She’d get them both expelled, slipping out like this and asking Elise to cover for her. Elise had no intention of being sent home, expelled from school, only to have to face her father’s anger; and the reception Phyllis Ann would receive at home would be even so much worse—no, thank you very much.

      She swore under her breath as she dropped a stitch in the knitting, and then went back to pick it up again—she hated to knit, just as she hated to sew or to do most of the other domestic chores her mother had expected her to learn by the time she had entered her teens. She hated needlepoint and sewing, knitting, crocheting, and was notoriously bad at doing anything that did not strike her fancy, having long ago discovered that to avoid doing anything one did not want to do, one had often only to appear to be very bad at doing it.

      She glanced up at the clock, listening for the sound of footsteps in the hall—Phyllis Ann, one of the other girls, the principal, one of the instructors. Phyllis Ann knew what would happen to them if she were caught out of their room—to both of them, for it would be clear that Elise was covering for her—but Phyllis Ann had a tendency to do whatever it was she wanted to do, no matter the consequences to herself or to anyone else. She had tried for half an hour to talk Elise into slipping out with her, and now Elise wished that she had gone—if she were going to be expelled, at least she could have had some fun beforehand.

      She