Lorelei Lee never goes to school because she pretends to be ill every weekday, and her family believes it, no matter how implausible. During school holidays and weekends, she makes miraculous recoveries but will suddenly feel unwell on Sundays or the last day of the holiday and cannot go to school for a week. She would use a variety of methods to be convincing, such as placing thermometers in hot drinks, making herself cold at night, and create scars by waxing her limbs with plasters, only to be unusually excitable when her father arrived home at the end of every "sick" day with a get-well present.
