At eleven thirty I turned a page in my pirate novel and found the notice about the mathematics examination. I had been using it as a bookmark.
The examination was tomorrow. It covered the entire term, lasted two hours, and accounted for a third of our final mark. I knew all this because I had written it on the notice myself, underneath the teacher's printed instructions, and boxed it twice.
I opened my mathematics book. There were triangles in it that I remembered liking. There were other things I had apparently done in my own handwriting. For perhaps three minutes I tried to work out how much I could revise before morning. Then I went to wake my sister.
Coris answered her bedroom door with the blanket still round her. Her hair was caught under one armpit.
"I need a favour," I whispered.
"Tomorrow."
"It has to be before tomorrow. Could you curse me?"
She stopped shutting the door.
"With an illness," I said. "A sudden one. I've got the whole-term test and I forgot to study. If I stay home tomorrow, I'll have a whole extra day."
She looked at the book under my arm.
"That's pirates."
I had brought the wrong book. "Yes. That's partly how it happened."
She took it from me, checked my place, and held it out again. "You were nearly finished."
"I know."
"Poor you. Night."
I put my foot against the door before she could close it. She was twenty-one and a witch, but there were still things she had to do with a door like everybody else.
"Please, Coris. Nothing serious. Just enough to get me off school. Something where I can eat."
"You could pretend."
"Mum always catches me. This way, when she rings, you can tell her I'm ill. You can tell the school too. There wouldn't have to be any pretending."
"Except about how you got it."
"They don't ask that."
She leaned her forehead on the doorframe. I could see the warm hollow she had left in her bed. Her room smelled of the dried orange peel she kept in little cloth bags among her clothes. I had always thought that was witchcraft until I tried it with my socks and she told me to wash them.
"I'll swap you," she said. "My ghost-show seat for yours."
"No."
She lifted her head.
"I've got the front row," I explained, as if she didn't know. "That's where the head comes down."
The travelling ghost show was here on Saturday. In the last act, according to the poster, the beheaded duke floated his head along the front row and asked somebody to hold it. I had queued before breakfast for my ticket. Coris had stayed in bed and bought hers that afternoon. From her seat she would mostly see the back of a pillar.
"Then move your foot."
"You weren't even going until you saw my ticket."
She pushed the door against my toes. I withdrew them and spoke through the narrowing gap.
"I'll do your washing."
"You shrink things."
"I'll stop borrowing your headphones."
The door opened again, a little. "You've got my headphones?"
It cost me the headphones just to continue negotiating. I brought them from my room and held them out with both hands. She inspected the cord, wound it round her fingers, and waited while I said please again. This time I left the arrangements to her. I was fifteen; I could still make my voice do something embarrassing if I needed to.
"I can't learn it all tonight," I said. "I did understand it in class. I just need to go over it. Please. I'll leave you alone after this."
Coris rubbed one eye with the heel of her hand.
"I can give you a day ague. Fever, sneezing, green spots. It isn't catching. It'll end at sunset."
"Could you leave out the fever?"
"Not with the one I know."
"Could you do it for an hour? Just while you telephone?"
"Sunset, Philip. Once I've put it on you, I can't change the symptoms or shorten it. I could draw it back into myself, but then I'd be the one with the ague. On my day off. So don't count on that."
I considered green spots. They sounded convincing. I had been sick before, and the parts I chiefly remembered were toast in bed and being allowed to read.
"Sunset's fine."
"You will actually feel ill."
"Yes. I understand."
"Go to bed, then. I'll do it after Mum leaves. And if you wake me again before that, I'm having the ticket."
I went away before she could improve the terms.
At seven the next morning Coris sat on the edge of my bed and asked whether I still wanted it. Downstairs, Mum had left a note about leftovers and remembering to lock the back door. Her early shift had saved us an audience.
I had put my exercise books on the desk in the order I intended to conquer them. There was a clean stack of paper beside them, two pencils, and a biscuit on a saucer. The biscuit was for after algebra.
"Do it," I said.
Coris put her warm palm against my forehead. With her other hand she held my wrist. She took a breath, paused with her lips parted, and let it out through her teeth. Something cool seemed to gather under her palm. It went through my scalp and down behind my eyes.
"That's a horrible feeling."
"Hold still."
She breathed out again, this time with a low humming sound that made my teeth ache. When she lifted her hand, a green spot had appeared on the bridge of my nose. I could just see its edge if I went cross-eyed.
"Mirror."
She passed me the little mirror from my desk. Five more spots were coming up, round and unmistakable, as if someone had pressed peas under the skin. I turned my head to admire the ones on my cheek. Then I sneezed into the mirror.
Coris took it away.
The next sneeze folded me almost in half. I pulled the duvet up. A moment earlier the room had been warm enough; now cold kept finding bits of me I hadn't tucked in properly. My knees hurt. I touched my forehead and found it hot, which was unfair when the rest of me was freezing.
"School," I reminded her.
"I'm going."
"Could you bring the thick blanket?"
She fetched it before taking the telephone into the hall. Through my open door I heard her give my name, say she was my sister, and describe my symptoms with none of the pleasure I had put into imagining them.
"Yes, a day ague. No, it isn't contagious. Yes, I'm staying with him."
There was a pause. I clutched the blanket under my chin. The school might say I could do the test at home. They might send somebody round with it.
"Tomorrow morning," Coris repeated. "At the usual time? I'll tell him. Thank you."
She came back, picked up my biscuit, and took a bite.
"That's my reward."
She put the rest back on the saucer.
"You can do the examination tomorrow. Different paper, same topics. Your teacher said to rest today."
"Put the algebra book here."
She put it on the bed, along with what was left of my reward.
For the first ten minutes everything went reasonably well. I recognized the first example. I understood why the brackets were there. Then I sneezed just as I was writing an equals sign, which became a long accusing scratch across the page. I started again. By the fourth attempt I no longer knew what I was trying to make equal to what.
Coris appeared with tea and toast. She was dressed now, in her loose striped trousers, with her hair twisted up round a pencil.
"How's it going?"
"Can I have another pillow?"
She wedged one behind me. I slid down it. She pulled me up by the shoulders, and for a second I wanted to lean against her and stay there. Instead I pointed out that she had trapped my sleeve.
"Sit forward a bit."
I sat forward. She freed it, put the toast within reach, and opened my pirate novel. She had read it twice already.
"You can't read that here."
"Why?"
"I'm trying to concentrate."
"I'll read quietly."
She settled in the chair. She really did read quietly, which meant I could hear the little snort she made when she reached something funny.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing."
"Which page?"
She showed me. I hadn't got that far.
I returned to the algebra. The toast smelled good until I bit it. Then it seemed to consist entirely of corners. I chewed one mouthful for so long that Coris looked up and asked if I was going to finish it. I said yes and made her go downstairs.
Without her there, the room was boring as well as unpleasant. I read the same example three times. I couldn't remember the first line by the time I got to the last. At nine fifteen I had used six tissues and completed half a question, incorrectly.
I called her back.
"It's too much," I said.
She felt my forehead. "That's about right for it."
"Too much illness. Not enough studying. Can you stop the sneezing?"
"I told you. I can't alter it now."
"There must be something you can do."
"I can get you more tissues."
"I mean with magic."
She stood with the empty tissue box in her hand until I remembered what she had said outside her room.
"You could take it."
"I could."
"It's not that bad," I said.
Her eyes went to the six tissues on the duvet, then back to me. I sneezed again. She handed me a corner of the sheet.
After she brought the new box, I tried to work. I really did. I moved to the desk, thinking bed was the problem, then moved back because I was cold. I took off the thick blanket because I was hot. Coris found me trying to drag it off the floor without putting my feet out.
"Help."
She picked it up and spread it over me.
"I haven't done anything," I said.
She moved the book out from under the blanket. "I can see."
I shut my eyes. The test would be starting now. Everybody else would be turning over the first page. My clean stack of paper still had square edges, apart from the top sheet where I had dribbled tea.
"I can't do this all day."
Coris stopped folding the corner under my feet.
"Well, neither can I."
For a while she stayed on the bed without offering anything else. I lay there holding the edge of her trouser leg, which I hoped she would take for an accident. Her knee was conveniently warm.
"You could have the ticket," I said.
She looked down at me.
"We swap. You take the ague and I'll take your seat behind the pillar."
"Beside the pillar."
"Fine. Beside it."
She put her fingers against one of the green spots. She didn't look as pleased as I'd expected.
"There's most of the day left."
"I'll bring you things. Like you brought me. And you can have the sofa."
"The quilt from your bed."
I nodded. It was the good quilt, with the soft lining.
"And you don't get to moan when I ask for things."
I hesitated. "Some things. I do have to study."
She thought about this, stroking a crease in the blanket with her thumbnail.
"Drinks. Food. Pillows. Ordinary sick things."
"Yes."
"Fetch the tickets first."
We sat facing each other on the sofa with the tickets on the little table. Coris had examined my front-row one for damage, although I had scarcely dared touch it since I bought it. The printed duke was holding his head out of the corner of the picture. Even the tiny version looked worth holding.
She took my wrists.
"I'm drawing back what's left," she said. "It still ends this evening. This isn't another whole day."
"Are you going to be able to stop halfway if you hate it?"
"No. Don't wriggle."
This time she breathed in. Her hands tightened on my wrists. The coolness behind my eyes came forward so suddenly that I blinked, and a green stain spread across the back of her hand. It divided into round spots. My nose cleared. I could breathe through both sides at once.
Coris let go and sneezed all over her lap.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, I don't like that."
She sank sideways against the arm of the sofa. The blotch on my nose had gone. Hers appeared while I watched, followed by three on her cheek. For the first time that morning, I felt hungry.
"Quilt," she said.
I ran upstairs for it. When I returned, she was curled up with her feet tucked under her and my ticket in her fist.
"You don't have to hold it."
She slipped it inside the pillowcase. I tucked the quilt round her and offered to make tea.
"And toast. With butter right to the edges."
I made four slices, two for her and two for me. She ate one corner and left the rest. I asked whether she wanted it cut smaller. She shook her head, then changed her mind, so I cut it into fingers and put the plate back by her elbow.
I set my books out on the table. The page hadn't become easier, exactly, but the first line remained in my head while I read the second. I did a question. The answer agreed with the one in the back. I put a small tick beside it and went on before anything could happen.
"Philip."
I closed my eyes.
"What?"
"My feet are cold."
I fetched her socks.
"The thick ones."
I fetched the thick ones. When I returned she was attempting to blow her nose without taking her arms out of the quilt. I held the box for her until she managed it.
Three questions later she wanted the curtains half closed. Then the book. Then the tea she had left on a side table six inches beyond her fingers. I moved the table closer. She watched this with the air of somebody who had been waiting for me to show a little intelligence.
At lunchtime I heated the leftovers. Coris said the smell was horrible. I took her portion back to the kitchen, ate mine standing up, and brought her a plain biscuit instead.
"On a plate."
"It's one biscuit."
"There'll be crumbs in your quilt."
I got a plate.
She asked me to put the telephone within reach, in case Mum called, and to take the other end of the sofa so she wouldn't have to keep shouting. I brought my geometry there. For nearly half an hour she let me work. Once she reached over and ran a hot finger along the seam of my sleeve, a little way up and down. I left my arm where it was.
Then she began turning from side to side. Her pillow thumped against my elbow.
"What's wrong now?"
"I'm uncomfortable."
"You're taking up most of the sofa."
"I know. I can't get comfortable on it."
She sat up, cross and flushed, and tried to move the quilt out from under herself. I was about to say she was making a performance of it when she sneezed three times without quite getting a breath between. Tears spilled from her eyes. She looked at me, startled and miserable, with a tissue stuck to her lip.
I moved my books and helped her sit forward. I shook the quilt out, put her pillow at the other end, and let her lie with her feet against my thigh.
"Better?"
"Don't move yet."
I stayed. After a while I pulled the geometry back onto my knee.
The afternoon went in pieces: a page of examples, a drink; another page, a search for the softer tissues; one long problem about a cone while Coris complained that the people in my pirate novel should put on dry clothes. I had attended the lessons. Under the panic and the sneezing, some of the work was still there. The pieces began fitting together, although one sort of equation kept coming out wrong and I had to go back two chapters to find out why.
Coris fell asleep with the book open on her stomach. I slid a finger between the pages as I lifted it, then caught myself beginning to read. I closed it, keeping her place with the examination notice.
By five I had filled nine sheets. There were things I hoped wouldn't be on the test. There were also things I hoped would, which was new.
Mum rang to say she was going to be late. Coris, awake again, told her I was improving and asked if we could have money for a takeaway. She didn't mention whose forehead was hot now. When she put down the telephone, she gave me a weak thumbs-up from under the quilt.
Near sunset I sat on the floor with the last of the revision questions. Coris had begun watching the window. The room darkened gradually, then a spot on her wrist shrank to a pinprick and disappeared. She threw the quilt off.
"Finally."
She sat up slowly, testing it, and rubbed her bare cheek. Then she stood and stretched with an enormous, ordinary yawn.
"I want chips."
"Your toast's still there."
She looked at the cold plate and began hunting inside the pillowcase for the ticket.
Next morning I came down dressed for school, with two sharpened pencils and a reasonable chance of knowing what to do with them. Coris sat at the kitchen table in her dressing gown. There were green spots on her cheeks.
I stopped in the doorway.
She coughed a little and pointed at the bread. "Toast?"
"It ended. I saw it end."
"I may be having complications."
One of her spots was an oval. Another had a scratchy tail. On the table, beside her cup, lay the green pencil she used for drawing on her eyelids.
I picked it up.
"That was here already," she said.
"You missed a bit." I held the pencil out to her. "Under your nose."
She reached for it. When she saw my face, she pulled her hand back. I put it down and lifted my schoolbag onto my shoulder.
"I was very ill yesterday," she said.
"So was I."
"I took yours."
"And my seat."
She looked at the bread again. "One slice. I'm already sitting down."
I took a slice from the bag and put it in her hand.
"You haven't toasted it." She took a bite anyway.
"You haven't sneezed."
She tried, immediately and unconvincingly, with her mouth full of bread. I was still laughing when she threw the crust.