CHAPTER 12

EVERYONE’S AFRAID OF SOMETHING:
Nomatophobia is the fear of names.

Once back in the Great Hall, the students passed farm gates, portions of an airplane, and much more before arriving at massive double white doors with ostentatious gold leafed detail. The ballroom was vast, grand, and altogether spectacular. The children squinted as they took in the two parts of the sun-filled room. To the right was the drawing room, a neatly arranged sitting area with four charcoal gray armchairs and two matching sofas, and to the left was the classroom.

Traditionally, children’s classrooms contain wooden chairs, dull brown desks, and maybe a poster or two, but not at School of Fear. Mrs. Wellington instead filled the classroom with twenty silver-leafed student desks and matching chairs. Ten rows, consisting of two desks each, descended in size. The last row featured regular child-size desks and chairs, with the row in front slightly smaller and so on. By the first row, the desks were so small that only squirrels could sit at them comfortably. Theo eyed the desks with his customary suspicion.

“Is there lead in this paint? Metallic paints can be extremely high in lead, which is very dangerous to kids.”

“Thank you, Captain Safety, for the tutorial on lead paint. I assure you, the only danger associated with these desks is that of a concussion.”

“I’ve had a lot of concussions,” Garrison said, reminiscing about his many days on the soccer, baseball, and football fields. “Most great athletes have.”

“Someone thinks pretty highly of himself,” Lulu said beneath her breath.

“Shut it, freckleface,” Garrison snapped back.

“Whatever, at least I know how to swim.”

“Stop talking,” Theo interrupted loudly. “I need to hear about the concussions. Does the paint make you cloudy headed, then you trip and fall?”

“Oh, no. It’s a great deal simpler. When I toss the small desks at contestants, they sometimes get concussions,” Mrs. Wellington said genuinely.

“You throw desks,” Theo said incredulously, “at our heads? You know, where we keep our brains?”

“In England, throwing desks at children is strictly forbidden,” Madeleine reported.

“I prefer to think of my methods as ‘highly unconventional’ rather than ‘strictly forbidden,’ as you say,” Mrs. Wellington said unemotionally.

“So you have the small desks just to throw at us?” Garrison asked with disdain.

“It’s a bit more scientific than that. The height and weight of a child influences their fear. For instance, many petite children feel dwarfed by big furniture. Small desks allow them to feel big and strong. It’s a confidence-building exercise.”

“Except when you throw the desks at their heads,” Lulu added.

“You certainly are a sharp one,” Mrs. Wellington said to Lulu with what seemed to be sincerity.

“I know,” Lulu said with obvious self-satisfaction.

This time it was Madeleine who rolled her eyes.

“Please take a seat, but choose prudently, as I loathe seat changes. It messes terribly with my memory. In all honesty, I would prefer you wear the same outfits every day,” she continued while leaning against her elaborate teacher’s desk, “but in the past it has led to rather foul odors, so instead I shall simply ask you to stay at the same desk for the duration of the summer.”

“We could wear name tags,” Madeleine offered earnestly.

“Name tags are even more ghastly than calling you the wrong name. This isn’t a convention center,” Mrs. Wellington huffed.

Madeleine was sure that if Lulu had suggested name tags, Mrs. Wellington would have loved the idea. Irritated, she decided to focus on fumigating her desk in the far right corner. Garrison, tired of the sting of repellent in his nostrils, chose a seat in the row in front of Madeleine. Theo sat next to Madeleine, and Lulu next to Garrison.

“Fiona? Errol?” Mrs. Wellington called out cheerfully.

The cats ignored her, never once stirring from their spot of sunshine on the shiny parquet floor.

“Incredible. Such training,” Mrs. Wellington said dramatically. “I would like to begin with a simple exercise — tell me your fear. Let’s start with the beekeeper in the back.”

Madeleine stared blankly at Mrs. Wellington, apparently unaware that she resembled a beekeeper.

“Come on, darling, you in the safari garb, let’s go.”

“Oh, me? I am petrified of spiders, bugs, insects, and any mixture of the three.”

“Mrs. Wellington, I’d like to share some pertinent information with the group. In 2003 twenty people died from insect and spider bites,” Theo explained.

“Yes, that sounds about right. I lost a cousin to a black widow bite that very year.”

“Your cousin died?” Madeleine gasped.

“Well, of course he died. What did you think I meant? I lost him in the park? Honestly, Madeleine,” Mrs. Wellington said, shaking her head. “My portly friend, it’s your turn.”

Theo responded without pause.

“I’m scared of my family dying. Or me dying. Death in general. And along those lines, anything dangerous or worrisome I try my best to avoid. I think of it as being safety-conscious.”

“For the record, dying doesn’t interest me much either. Sporty?”

“I kick butt at soccer, baseball, and basketball.”

“Dear boy, this isn’t an athletic camp… .”

Garrison sighed, looked at his desk, and whispered, “I’m afraid of water — pools, lakes, rivers, oceans.”

“In 2003 3,306 people died from drowning,” Theo interjected confidently.

“And the young lady rolling her eyes back in her head, what are you afraid of?” Mrs. Wellington asked Lulu.

“I’m claustrophobic, which is a fancy way of saying I’m terrified of confined spaces. Let’s just say I really like windows.”

“I don’t have all confined space statistics, but I know that in 2003, forty-six people died due to cave-ins,” Theo said seriously, “which is sort of related, since I think the cave-ins happened in small spaces.”

“Why are you sharing all these horrible statistics?” Lulu screamed.

“And why are all your facts from 2003? Don’t you have anything more recent?” Garrison snapped.

“2003 is the latest National Safety Council book my library has,” Theo murmured.

As if oblivious to the quarrel, Mrs. Wellington responded to Lulu’s claustrophobia. “I once got stuck in an elevator for twenty-six hours. It was so crowded I couldn’t move more than two inches in any direction.”

“Did you use the emergency phone?” Lulu asked.

“Oh, how much you have to learn. Those phones are for decoration, like a painting on a wall or a stop sign in the street,” Mrs. Wellington said before pausing to remember the traumatic incident. “All sixteen of us thought we were going to die, standing up, which is not the way you want to go. If ever given a choice, always choose to die lying down. Of course, we didn’t have this option, since it was so crowded. I must say those twenty-six hours brought us together. We used to meet once a year at the annual Not Just Yet event, but …”

“The Not Just Yet event?” Lulu asked doubtfully.

“It was a wonderful society of people, bound together by the common experience of almost dying. Most of the members were recruited following newspaper stories or occasionally even in the emergency room.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Wellington,” Lulu asked assertively, “what are your credentials?”

“Yes, I am rather curious where you learned this particular curriculum,” Madeleine concurred.

“A beauty queen is always prepared, and that includes knowing her résumé by heart. Now then, I was Miss Teen USA, Miss Massachusetts, Miss New England, Miss Green County, and of course Miss Summerstone. Didn’t you see the pictures downstairs? I would display my crowns, but we have had incidents of theft in the past. Mostly Schmidty borrowing them, but still.”

“I meant your credentials to teach us!” Lulu said loudly.

“Oh, you silly girl! Teachers don’t need credentials. That’s an old wives’ tale.”

“So you have absolutely no valid credentials to teach us about fears,” Madeleine said in shock.

“I assure you that one doesn’t need credentials for fears when one has a Fearnasium.”

“A what?” Garrison asked.

“A gymnasium for exercising fears.”

“Exercise, whether physical or mental, real or imaginary, is a very important part of the day,” Mrs. Wellington announced as she unlocked the faded plywood door that led to the Fearnasium.

“Are there treadmills and weights? ’Cause I’d like to stay in good shape while I’m here,” Garrison asked Mrs. Wellington.

“I’m afraid not, Sporty.”

Garrison sighed and looked away as Mrs. Wellington pulled open the door.

Approximately half the size of a basketball court with a shiny wooden floor, the room could easily have passed for a regular gymnasium. It was the contents of the room that greatly set it apart. An entire wall was devoted to leather-bound books, each covering a different phobia, everything from acarophobia to zelmmiphobia. Upon sight of the books, Madeleine felt a bit better, more at ease. If Mrs. Wellington had read all these books, she must know something.

“Are the books properly secured in case of an earthquake?” Theo asked.

“We don’t have earthquakes in Massachusetts.”

“Actually in 1965 …”

“Stop right there, my chubby fact finder. The event you are referring to was not an earthquake. It was more of a hiccup or belch, but definitely not an earthquake.”

“And you’ve read all those books,” Madeleine asked hopefully.

“ ‘Read’ is a strong word. I prefer ‘scanned,’ ‘perused,’ ‘osmoted’ …”

“Osmoted?” Madeleine inquired.

“Oh yes, that’s when you garner information through osmosis. It’s very scientific.”

Outside of the wall of books, the room was rather peculiar-looking, with multiple booths, each dedicated to a different fear. There was a fire booth, where one would sit in a temporized glass box as flames erupted around it. There were life-size dolls, clowns, science fiction-esque creatures, bubbling pots of tar, buckets of simulated vomit, a quicksand sandbox, a massive ant farm, an aquarium filled with creepy critters from the sea, a knife block, puppets, a bathtub, a coffin, stuffed animals, vats of cough syrup, barrels of glass eyes, skeletons, a dentist’s chair, a high school cafeteria table, needles, and much more.

“Mrs. Wellington? Has that been used?” Theo said, pointing to the coffin.

“Used? Dear misguided, morbid Chubby, they aren’t like toasters you pick up secondhand from a garage sale. They are buried in the ground with dead people. I suppose you could dig them up and remove the dead person, but I imagine the smell to be ghastly.”

“What exactly are we going to do in here?” Lulu asked with mounting trepidation as she perused the selection of claustrophobic possibilities.

“For today we’ll just do some imaginary exercises.”

“Imaginary exercises?” Madeleine asked curiously.

“Yes. If used correctly, imagination can prep you for a great deal of life’s hardships. Garrison is to imagine he is submerged in the bathtub, slowly becoming used to the sensation of water. Lulu and Theo are two peas in a pod, or rather coffin, learning to accept confined spaces and mortality. And as for Madeleine, well, you are to embrace being covered in four large and hairy but fake spiders. On the count of three you are to close your eyes and imagine your predicaments.”

Each of the four children told themselves that they would do no such thing. They yearned to think of anything other than what Mrs. Wellington had told them to, but oddly the more they tried to resist, the harder it became. By the time Mrs. Wellington said three, Madeleine’s body was electrified with fear at the thought of hairy, albeit plastic, spider feet on her arm. Lulu felt a sudden surge behind her left eye as she experienced the breath-stifling darkness of the coffin. Garrison began to sweat as he fought the image of water encapsulating his body. Of course, the more he sweat, the realer it became, damp clothes and all. Theo actually showed the greatest ability to control his mind. Perhaps it was his slightly hysterical personality that allowed him to jump from subject to subject in his mind.

While at first terrified by the thought of being in a coffin, he soon wondered how long he had to go without sunlight before developing rickets. As rickets rhymes with crickets, Theo quickly began thinking about the outbreak of Indonesian crickets that caused flulike symptoms in humans after biting them. Theo had meant to follow up and confirm that there were no other long-term effects to the cricket case, but he forgot. And just like that, the exercise was over.

“Good job, contestants.”

“I have a headache,” Lulu moaned while covering her left eye with her hand.

“If you hold your hand like that, you could damage your eye, Lulu. Or you could trip and fall,” Theo warned, oblivious to the girl’s condition.

“I feel a bit weak myself,” Madeleine said as she sat down in the dentist chair to ease her nauseated stomach.

Garrison wiped his brow on his sleeve and walked toward a door behind Madeleine and the dentist chair. It was a heavy metal door, similar to that of a vault with a wheel handle. Scratched in nearly illegible marker was “Munchauser’s Masterpiece.”

“What’s Munchauser’s Masterpiece?” Garrison asked Mrs. Wellington.

“Oh! That room. That room, what a disappointment. He tried to create a machine to beat the track. No need to go in there, contestants,” Mrs. Wellington said while adjusting her wig. “The whole lot of you look exhausted. Come, let me show you to your living quarters. There’s nothing to be afraid of there, but don’t fret; we’ll certainly be returning to the Fearnasium.”

That was what worried Lulu, Madeleine, Theo, and Garrison.