Chapter 2: Adventures in Poster-Hanging

"Yeah," said Annie, holding up the poster. "It's too big to unroll here, but you can see it when I get it back to our room. It's a painting by Joseph Paton of A Midsummer Night's Dream."

"Interesting choice," said Dawn with a grin.

Annie returned the grin, knowing what she and the three friends knew. "I thought it would be a nice thing to have on my wall. Have you guys gotten anything?"

Corrie shook her head. "We just got here."

"Well, we can hang around with you and look more. Salome hasn't picked anything out yet either," said Annie. Salome smiled and shrugged to indicate that Annie was correct. She did seem to be awfully quiet--maybe she felt that Annie was doing all the talking for her.

"Well, I don't see anything here," Corrie said. "Let's look at the next one."

There were posters of all kinds, and even various shapes and sizes; some were huge movie-sized posters like the one Annie had, some large but not enormous, and some smaller, portrait-sized. There were movie posters, prints of classical paintings, modern art, and jokes. Edie considered getting a poster with the end kissing scene from The Princess Bride, but then Dawn announced that she was getting it. Eventually she picked out a smallish poster, a print of the Waterhouse painting The Lady of Shalott. She really liked Waterhouse's soft, misty style. Corrie picked out two posters: a movie poster from Labyrinth (featuring a very large David Bowie) and one with a bunch of little yellow faces depicting different moods. "I'll get a sticker for it," she laughed, "so you can tell what mood I'm in on any given day."

Dawn laughed too. "You'll just leave it on 'cheerful'!" she said.

"That's why I only need a sticker!"

They bought their posters and some goop to stick them to the walls and walked back to Gilkey with Annie and Salome. Corrie's and Annie's posters were so huge that they agreed to help each other put them up. That was how Edie found herself standing precariously on the footboard of Annie's bed in her bare feet, holding the top corner of her poster in place. "Shouldn't someone taller be doing this end?"

"I have even higher to reach!" protested Corrie. "You have a footboard to stand on! The bed is squishy." Annie had thought--and they had agreed--that the poster looked best a few inches away from the wall, but that meant that Corrie couldn't stand on the headboard or even use the windowsill as they had thought at first.

"Oh, I'll take over for you, Edie," Dawn said. "I am taller, you're right. Hang on a minute, I have to take my shoes off." She sat down to slip her shoes off, then climbed up onto the bed. "Okay, let me see..."

"Careful!" cried Edie as Dawn got up next to her on the footboard. This gave her even less space than before.

"I am!" said Dawn. Annie was watching them and giggling. Dawn reached over Edie's head and planted her hand on the wall next to Edie's hand. "Okay, I've got it. You can get down now."

That was easier said than done. Dawn and Edie were now both standing on the foot of the bed, and while it wasn't tilting, it felt pretty precarious. Edie licked her lips and looked at the ground, which seemed awfully far away. The bed was closer. She looked at Corrie. "Will it knock you off-balance if I get onto the bed?"

Corrie chewed her lower lip. "Probably. It's not easy to stand straight up on a bed, you know?"

"Right." Edie looked back at the floor and took a deep breath. She leaned against the wall, placing her hands flat against it. Carefully, she lifted one foot and lowered it to the ground. But, as it turned out, she was not tall enough to stand with one foot on the floor and the other on the footboard. She tumbled over, falling hard onto her side. On the way down, she bumped Dawn's leg; Dawn, in turn, stumbled onto the bed, causing Corrie to lose her balance and the poster to curl back up with a rattle and fall onto the bed with them.

They were all laughing, but Annie came over to help Edie up. "Are you okay?"

"I think so," said Edie, laughing shakily. She wiggled her arm--last night it had been her right arm, this time it was her left arm. "I think I'm going to have a bruise, but it's fine."

"Okay, let's try this again," said Dawn, climbing off the bed so she could stand up again. "We'll do it right this time!"

Annie went over to the bed to uncurl the poster, and Dawn and Corrie managed to hold it up properly. This time, Edie and Annie were able to attach the pieces of sticky goop so the poster would stay up without knocking anybody over or losing the poster again. It even stayed up when Dawn and Corrie let go.