The first time Nell sat down in one of Miss Stricken's classrooms, she 
found that her desk had perversely been left
directly behind another girl's, so that she was unable to see anything except 
for the bow in that girl's hair. She got up, tried to skooch the desk, and 
found that it was fixed to the floor. All the desks, in fact, were arranged in 
a perfectly regular grid, facing in the same direction—which is to say, 
toward Miss Stricken or one of her two assistants, Miss Bowlware and Mrs. 
Disher.