No Time to Die

Jenny? Jenny, are you there? Please pick up the phone, Jen. I have to talk to you. Did you get my e-mail? I don't know what to do. I think I'd better leave Wisteria.

Jenny, where are you? You promised you'd visit me. Why haven't you come? I wish you'd pick up the phone.

Okay, listen, I have to get back to rehearsal. Call me. Call me soon as you can.

I retrieved my sister's message about eleven o'clock that night when I arrived home at our family's New York apartment. I called her immediately, if somewhat reluctantly. Liza was a year ahead of me, but in many ways I was the big sister, always getting her out of her messes-and she got in quite a few.

Thanks to her talent for melodrama, my sister could turn a small misunderstanding in a school cafeteria into tragic opera.

Though I figured this was one more overblown event, I stayed up till two A.M., dialing her cell phone repeatedly. Early the next morning I tried again to reach her. Growing uneasy, I decided to tell Mom about the phone message. Before I could, however, the Wisteria police called. Liza had been found murdered.

Eleven months later Sid drove me up and down the tiny streets of Wisteria, Maryland. "I don't like it. I don't like it at all," he said.

"I think it's a pretty town," I replied, pretending not to understand him. "They sure have enough flowers."

"You know what I'm saying, Jenny."

Sid was my father's valet and driver. Years of shuttling Dad back and forth between our apartment and the theater, driving Liza to dance and voice lessons and me to gymnastics, had made him part of the family.

"Your parents shouldn't have let you come here, that's what I'm saying."

"Chase College has a good summer program in high school drama," I pointed out.

"You hate drama."

"A person can change, Sid," I replied-not that I had.

"You change? You're the steadiest, most normal person in your family."

I laughed. "Given my family, that's not saying much."

My father, Lee Montgomery, the third generation of an English theater family, does everything with a flair for the dramatic. He reads grocery lists and newspaper ads like Shakespearean verse. When he lifts a glass from our dishwasher to see if it's clean, he looks like Hamlet contemplating Yorick's skull. My mother, the former Tory Summers, a child and teen star who spent six miserable years in California, happily left that career and married the next one, meaning my father. But she is still an effusive theater type-warm and expressive and not bound by things like facts or reason. In many ways Liza was like Mom, a butterfly person.

I have my mother's red hair and my father's physical agility, but I must have inherited some kind of mutated theater gene: I get terrible stage fright.

"I don't think it's safe here," Sid went on with his argument.

"The murder rate is probably one tenth of one percent of New York's," I observed. "Besides, Sid, Liza's killer has moved north. New Jersey was his last hit. I bet he's waiting for you right now at the Brooklyn Bridge." Sid grunted. I was pretty sure I didn't fool him with my easy way of talking about Liza's murderer. For a while it had helped that her death was the work of a serial killer, for the whole idea was so unreal, the death so impersonal, I could keep the event at a distance-for a while.

Sid pulled over at the comer of Shipwrights Street and Scarborough Road, as I had asked him to, a block from the college campus. Before embarking on this trip I had checked out a map of Maryland's Eastern Shore. Wisteria sat on a piece of land close to the Chesapeake Bay, bordered on one side by the Sycamore River and on the other two by large creeks, the Oyster and the Wist. I had plotted our approach to the colonial town, choosing a route that swung around the far end of Oyster Creek, so we wouldn't have to cross the bridge. Liza had been murdered beneath it.

Sid turned off the engine and looked at me through the rearview mirror. "I've driven you too many years not to get suspicious when you want to be left off somewhere other than where you say you're going."

I smiled at him and got out. Sid met me at the back of the long black sedan and pulled out my luggage. It was going to be a haul to Drama House.

"So why aren't I taking you to the door?"

"I told you. I'm traveling incognito."

He rolled his eyes. "Like I'm famous and they'll know who you are when they see me dropping you off. What's the real reason, Jenny?"

"I just told you-l don't want to draw attention to myself."

In fact, my parents had agreed to let me attend under a different last name. My mother, after recovering from the shock that I wanted to do theater rather than gymnastics, had noted that the name change would reduce the pressure. My father thought that traveling incognito bore the fine touch of a Shakespearean romance.

They were less certain about my going to the town of Wisteria, to the same camp Liza had. But my father was doing a show in London, and I told them that, at seventeen, I was too old to hang out and do nothing at a hotel. Since I had never been to Wisteria, it would have fewer memories to haunt me than our New York apartment and the bedroom I had shared with Liza.

I put on my backpack and gave Sid a hug. "Have a great vacation! See you in August."

Tugging on the handle of my large, wheeled suitcase, I strode across the street in the direction of Chase campus, trying hard not to look at Sid as he got in the car and drove away. Saying goodbye to my parents at the airport had been difficult this time; leaving Sid wasn't a whole lot easier. I had learned that temporary goodbyes can turn out to be forever.

I dragged my suitcase over the bumpy brick sidewalk. Liza had been right about the humidity here. At the end of the block I fished an elastic band from my backpack and pulled my curly hair into a loose pony-tail.

Straight ahead of me lay the main quadrangle of Chase College, redbrick buildings with steep slate roofs and multipaned windows. A brick wall with a lanterned gate bordered Chase Street. I passed through the gate and followed a tree-lined path to a second quad, which had been built behind the first.

Its buildings were also colonial in style, though some appeared newer. I immediately recognized the Raymond M. Stoddard Performing Arts Building.

Liza had described it accurately as a theater that looked like an old town hall, with high, round-topped windows, a slate roof, and a tall clock tower rising from one comer. The length of the building ran along the quad, with the entrance to the theater at one end, facing a parking lot and college athletic fields.

I had arrived early for our four o'clock check-in at the dorms. Leaving my suitcase on the sidewalk, I climbed the steps to the theater. If Liza had been with me, she would have insisted that we go in. Something happened to Liza when she crossed the threshold of a theater-it was the place she felt most alive.

Last July was the first time my sister and I had ever been separated. After middle school she had attended the School for the Arts and I a Catholic high school, but we had still shared a bedroom, we had still shared the details of our lives. Then Liza surprised us all by choosing a summer theater camp in Maryland over a more prestigious program in the New York area, which would have been better suited to her talent and experience. She was that desperate to get away from home.

Once she got to Wisteria, however, she missed me. She e-mailed every day and begged me to come and meet her new friends, especially Michael. All she could talk about was Michael and how they were in love, and how this was love like no one else had ever known. I kept putting off my visit. I had lived so long in her shadow, I needed the time to be someone other than Liza Montgomery's sister. Then suddenly I was given all the time in the world.

For the last eleven months I had struggled to concentrate in school and gymnastics and worked hard to convince my parents that everything was fine, but my mind and heart were somewhere else. I became easily distracted. I kept losing things, which was ironic, for I was the one who had always found things for Liza.

Without Liza, life had become very quiet, and yet I knew no peace. I could not explain it to my parents-to anyone-but I felt as if Liza's spirit had remained in Wisteria, as if she were waiting for me to keep my promise to come.

I reached for the brass handle on the theater door and found the entrance unlocked. Feeling as if I were expected, I went in.

Inside the lobby the windows were shuttered and only the Exit signs lit. Having spent my childhood playing in the dusky wings and lobbies of halfdarkened theaters, I felt right at home. I took off my backpack and walked toward the doors that led into the theater itself. They were unlocked and I slipped in quietly.

A single light was burning at the back of the stage. But even if the place had been pitch black, I would have known by its smell-a mix of mustiness, dust, and paint-that I was in an old theater, the kind with worn gilt edges and heavy velvet curtains that hung a little longer each year. I walked a third of the way down the center aisle, several rows beyond the rim of the balcony, and sat down. The seat was low-slung and lumpy.

"I'm here, Liza. I've finally come."

A sense of my sister, stronger than it had been since the day she left home, swept over me. I remembered her voice, its resonance and range when she was onstage, its merriment when she would lean close to me during a performance, whispering her critique of an actor's delivery: "I could drive a truck through that pause!"

I laughed and swallowed hard. I didn't see how I could ever stop missing Liza. Then I quickly turned around, thinking I'd heard something.

Rustling. Nothing but mice, I thought; this old building probably housed a nation of them. If someone had come through the doors, I would have felt the draft.

But I continued to listen, every sense alert. I became aware of another sound, soft as my own breathing, a murmuring of voices. They came from all sides of me-girls' voices, I thought, as the sound grew louder. No-one voice, overlapping itself, an eerie weave of phrases and tones, but only one voice.

Liza's.

I held still, not daring to breathe. The sound stopped. The quiet that followed was so intense my ears throbbed, and I wasn't sure if I had heard my dead sister's voice or simply imagined it. I stood up slowly and looked around, but could see nothing but the Exit signs, the gilt edge of the balcony, and the dimly lit stage.

"Liza?"

There had always been a special connection between my sister and me. We didn't look alike, but when we were little, we tried hard to convince people we were twins. We were both left-handed and both good in languages. According to my parents, as toddlers we had our own language, the way twins sometimes do. Even when we were older, I always seemed to know what Liza was thinking. Could something like that survive death?

No, I just wanted it to; I refused to let go.

I continued down the aisle and climbed the side steps up to the proscenium stage. Its apron, the flooring that bows out beyond the curtain line, was deep. If Liza had been with me, she would have dashed onto it and begun an impromptu performance. I walked to the place that Liza claimed was the most magical in the world-front and center stage-then faced the rows of empty seats.

I'm here, Liza, I thought for a second time.

After she died, I had tried to break the habit of mentally talking to her, of thinking what I'd tell her when she got home from school. It was impossible.

I've come as I promised, Liza.

I rubbed my arms, for the air around me had suddenly grown cold. Its heaviness made me feel strange, almost weightless. My head grew light. I felt as if I could float up and out of myself. The sensation was oddly pleasant at first. Then my bones and muscles felt as if they were dissolving. I was losing myselfI could no longer sense my body. I began to panic.

The lights came up around me, cool-colored, as if the stage lights had been covered with blue gels. Words sprang into my head and the lines seemed familiar, like something I had said many times before: O time, thou must untangle this knot, not I. It is too hard a knot for me t'untie.

In the beat that followed I realized I had spoken the lines aloud.

"Wrong play."

I jumped at the deep male voice.

"We did that one last year."

I spun around.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

The blue light faded into ordinary house and overhead stage lighting. A tall, lean guy with sandy-colored hair, my age or a little older, set down a carton.

He must have turned on the lights when entering from behind the stage. He strode toward me, smiling, his hand extended. "Hi. I'm Brian Jones."

"I'm Jenny." I struggled to focus on the scene around me. "Jenny Baird."

Brian studied me for a long moment, and I wondered if I had sounded unsure when saying my new last name. Then he smiled again. He had one of those slow-breaking, tantalizing smiles. "Jenny Baird with the long red hair. Nice to meet you. Are you here for camp?"

"Yes. You, too?"

"I'm always here. This summer I'm stage manager." He pulled a penknife from his pocket, flicked it open, and walked back to the carton. Kneeling, he inserted the knife in the lid and ripped it open. "Want a script? Are you warming up for tomorrow?"

"Oh, no. I don't act. I'm here to do crew work."

He gave me another long and curious look, then pulled out a handful of paperback books, identical copies of A Midsummer Night's Dream. "I guess you don't know about Walker," he said, setting the books down in sets of five. "He's our director and insists that everyone acts."

"He can insist, but it won't do him any good," I replied. "I have stage fright. I can act if I'm in a classroom or hanging out with friends, but put me on a stage with lights shining in my face and an audience staring up at me, and something happens."

"Like what?" Brian asked, sounding amused.

"My voice gets squeaky, my palms sweat. I feel as if I'm going to throw up. Of course," I added, "none of my elementary school teachers left me on stage long enough to find out if I would."

He laughed.

"It's humiliating," I told him.

"I suppose it would be," he said, his voice gentler. "Maybe we can help you get over it."

I walked toward him. "Maybe you can explain to the director that I can't."

He gazed up at me, smiling. His deep brown eyes could shift easily between seriousness and amusement. "I'll give it a shot. But I should warn you, Walker can be stubborn about his policies and very tough on his students. He prides himself on it."

"It sounds as if you know him well." Had Brian known Liza, too? I wondered.

"I'm going to be a sophomore here at Chase," Brian replied, "and during my high school years I was a student at the camp, an actor. Did you see our production last year?"

"No. What play did you do?"

"The one you just quoted from," he reminded me.

For a moment I felt caught. "Twelfth Night" "Those were Viola's lines," he added.

Liza's role. Which was how I knew the lines-I'd helped her prepare for auditions.

Still, the way Brian studied me made me uncomfortable. Did he know who I was? Don't be stupid, I told myself. Liza had been lanky and dark-haired, like my father, while my mother and I looked as if we had descended from leprechauns. Liza's funeral had been private, with only our closest friends and family invited. My mother had always protected me from the media.

"It's a great play," I said. "My school put it on this year," I added, to explain how I knew the lines.

Brian fell silent as he counted the books. "So where will you be staying?" he asked, rising to his feet. "Did they mail you your room assignment?" "Yes.

Drama House." "Lucky you!"

"I don't like the sound of that." He laughed. "There are four houses being used for the camp," he explained. "Drama House, a sorority, and two frats. I'm the R.A., the resident assistant, for one frat. Two other kids who go to Chase will be the R.A.S for the other frat and the sorority house. But you and the girls at Drama House will have old Army Boots herself. I think last year's campers had more descriptive names for her."

Liza had, but Liza was never fond of anyone who expected her to obey rules. "Is she that awful?" I asked. He shrugged. "I don't think so. But of course, she's my mother."

I laughed, then put my hand over my mouth, afraid to have hurt his feelings.

He reached out and pulled my hand away, grinning. "Don't hide your smile, Jenny. It's a beautiful one."

I felt my cheeks growing warm. Again I became aware of his eyes, deep brown, with soft, dusty lashes.

"If you wait while I check out a few more supplies, I'll walk you to Drama House."

"Okay."

Brian headed backstage. I walked to the edge of the apron and sat down, swinging my feet against the stage, gazing into the darkness, wondering.

Brian had heard me say Liza's lines, but he hadn't mentioned the voices that I'd heard sitting in the audience. I thought of asking him about them but didn't want to sound crazy.

But it's not crazy, I told myself. It shouldn't have surprised me that being in a place where I couldn't help but think of Liza, I'd remember her lines. It was only natural that, missing her so, I would imagine her voice.

Then something caught my eye, high in the balcony, far to the right, a flicker of movement. I strained to see more, but it was too dark. I stood up quickly.

A sliver of light appeared-a door at the side of the balcony opened and a dark figure passed through it. Someone had been sitting up there.

For how long? I wondered. Since the rustling I had heard when I first came in?

"Is something wrong?" Brian asked, reemerging from the wings.

"No. No, I just remembered I left my luggage at the front door."

"It'll be okay. I'll show you the back door-that's the one everybody uses-then you can go around and get it."

He led me backstage, where he turned out all but the light that had been burning before, then we headed down a flight of steps. The exit was at the bottom.

"This door is usually unlocked," Brian said. "People from the city always think it's strange the way we leave things open, but you couldn't be in a safer town."

Aside from an occasional serial killing, I thought.

We emerged into an outside stairwell that was about five steps below ground level. Across the road from the theater, facing the back of the college quadrangle, was a row of large Victorian houses. A line of cars had pulled up in front of them, baggage was deposited on sidewalks, and kids were gathering on the lawns and porches. Someone waved and called to Brian.

"Catch you later, Jenny," he said, and started toward the houses.

I headed toward the front of Stoddard to fetch my luggage. As I rounded the corner I came face to face with someone. We both pulled up short. The guy was my age, tall with black hair, wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans. He glanced at me, then looked away quickly, but I kept staring. He had the most startlingly blue eyes.

"Sorry," he said brusquely, then walked a wide route past me.

I turned and watched him stride toward the houses across the street.

I knew that every theater type has a completely black outfit in his closet, maybe two, for black is dramatic and tough and cool. But it's also the color to wear if you don't want to be seen in the dark, and this guy didn't want to be seen, not by me. I had sensed it in the way he'd glanced away. He'd acted guilty, as if I had caught him at something, like slinking out of the balcony, I thought.

Had he heard Liza's voice? Had he been responsible for it? A tape of her voice, manipulated by sound equipment and played over the theater's system could have produced what I heard.

There was just one problem with this explanation-it begged another. Why would anyone want to do that?

By the time I had picked up my suitcase, dragged it around the building, and crossed the street, the guy in black had disappeared among the other kids gathering at the four houses. Drama House, which had a sign on it, was the best kept of the three-story homes. Covered in pale yellow clapboard with white trim, it had a steep pyramid-shaped roof, gables protruding at different angles, and a turret at one comer.

A guy about my height and three or four times my width blocked the sidewalk up to Drama House, two stuffed backpacks and a battered suitcase resting at his feet like tired dogs. He gazed toward the porch, where a flock of girls chattered and laughed. "She's beautiful," he said.

I peeked around him, hoping he'd notice I wanted to get past, but he was lost in wonder. "Which one?" I finally asked.

He blinked, surprised. "What?"

"Which girl?"

He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked embarrassed. "l-l was talking about the house. It's a Queen Anne, the style built at the end of the I800s.

Look at the way they used the different shapes-triangular, rectangular, round, conical. Look at the texture in the roof and front gable."

He had a strong Bronx accent-the kind I associated with beer vendors at Yankee Stadium, not an admirer of nineteenth-century architecture. I stifled a giggle.

"If I was painting it, I'd use colors with more contrast," he went on. "Red, gold, green. Lime, maybe. Yes, definitely. . lime." He swallowed the last word self-consciously. "I'm supposed to be over there," he muttered, slinging on his backpacks, then reaching for his suitcase. He started toward a peeling gray house that had a stuffed plaid sofa and purple coffee table on its front lawn. Obviously, a fraternity.

"Now, that house," I called after him, "could use a paint job."

He turned back and smiled for just a moment. Despite his thick dark hair, bristly eyebrows, and nearly black eyes, his round face looked almost cherubic when he smiled.

As he hurried on to the frat, I continued down the sidewalk to Drama House and up the steps of its wraparound porch. Four girls were gathered there in a tight group, talking loudly enough for three others to hear. I joined the quiet girls.

"So did you get yourself expelled?" asked a girl whose head was wrapped in elegant African braids. Her cheekbones were high, her dark skin as smooth as satin.

"No, Shawna, I did not," another girl replied, sighing wearily.

"How come?" Shawna asked. "Did they keep giving you second chances?"

"Something like that."

Shawna laughed. "Well, how many times did you try, Keri?"

"Not as many as I'd planned. I found out who went to the school where my parents threatened to send me. It would be entertaining for a while, but it'd get old."

As she spoke, Keri combed long nails through her hair, which was cut short and dyed, a high contrast job in black and white. Dark pencil lined her pale eyes-sleepy, half-closed eyes. I knew that look: Liza had used it occasionally to let others know they had better do something if they wanted to hold her interest.

"Hey, Keri, Paul's back," said another girl.

"Is he?" The bored expression disappeared.

"Still hot for Paul," the tall, thin girl observed.

Shawna shook her head. "I just don't understand you, girlfriend."

"Keri doesn't want to be understood," said the fourth girl of the group. She had long black hair and velvet-lashed, almond eyes.

"I mean, he's good-looking," Shawna began, "but-" "Oh, look who's headed this way," Keri said coolly.

"Boots," muttered the thin girl.

All of us quiet ones turned to see whom the others were eyeing. I figured it was Brian's mother, a.k.a. Army Boots.

From a distance she appeared theatrical, with a wide scarf wrapped around her thick, bleached hair and a big gold chain around her waist, but as she got close, she looked more like a P.E. teacher and mother-with a strong jaw, a determined mouth, but lots of little worry lines around her eyes.

"Ladies," she greeted us, joining us on the porch. "How are you?"

"Fine, okay, good," we mumbled.

"I hope you can speak more clearly than that on stage," she said, then smiled. "I'm Dr. Margaret Rynne. You may call me Maggie."

I thought Brian had said his last name was Jones; perhaps she used her maiden name or had remarried.

"I'm the assistant director, and for the eight of you who have been assigned to Drama House"-she paused, counting to make sure we were eight-"your R.A., or housemother. We'll start promptly. Here are copies of the floor plan. Please find your name and locate your room."

I studied the diagram. Maggie's room, two bedrooms, a multi-bath, and the common room were on the first floor. Four bedrooms and another multi-bath were on the second, and two bedrooms and a bath were nestled under the roof. We were supposed to eat in the cafeteria in the Student Union, but there was a kitchen in the house's basement.

"On each door you'll find a rope necklace with your key attached," Maggie said. "Please remember to-" "Who wants to switch rooms?" Shawna interrupted.

"No room switching," Maggie replied quickly. "Please be attentive to-" "But I have to, Maggie," she insisted, fingering a braid. "I'll never be able to sleep in that room."

"You can sleep with me," Ken said. "I'm in the attic."

I rechecked the floor plan. So was I.

"Each girl will sleep in her own bed," Maggie said. "I would like to remind you all that this is theater camp, not a seven-week slumber party. When the lights go out at eleven, everyone is to be in bed. Our rehearsal schedule is a rigorous one and you must be in top form."

"But I can't be in top form if I have to sleep in that room," Shawna persisted. "My sister goes to college here, and she says the back room is haunted."

"Haunted how?" asked the thin girl, twisting a strand of her light-colored hair.

"There are strange sounds at night," Shawna said, "and cold drafts, and after the bed is made, it gets rumpled again, as if someone's been sleeping in it."

I glanced at Maggie, who shook her head quietly. The other girls gazed at Shawna wide-eyed.

"It's Liza Montgomery," Shawna continued.

Now I stared at her.

"That was her room last year, you know."

"You mean the girl who was murdered?" asked a newcomer. "The one axed by the serial killer?"

"Bludgeoned," Keri corrected with a dispassionate flick of her heavily lined eyes.

Inside I cringed.

"Four weeks into our camp," said the girl with the dark silky hair, "Liza went out alone in the middle of the night."

My stomach tightened. I should have anticipated this, my sister being turned into a piece of campus lore.

"She was found under the bridge, chased under there," the girl added.

In fact, the police didn't know why Liza was beneath the bridge-whether she was chased, lured, or simply happened to be walking there.

"She got it in the back of the head-with a hammer. There was blood like all over the place."

"Thank you for that detail, Lynne," Maggie said.

"Her watch was smashed," Lynne went on.

I struggled to act like the other girls, interested in a story that was making me sick.

"That's how the police knew it was the serial killer. He murders people under bridges and smashes their wristwatches, so you know what time he did it."

"What time did he do it?" asked a new girl.

"Midnight," said Lynne.

Twelve-thirty, I corrected silently, twelve-thirty while I was still trying to reach her.

"Well, I think that's enough for today's storytime," Maggie said, then turned to the four of us who were new. "Ladies, there was a horrible tragedy here last summer. It shook up all of us. But this is a very safe campus and a safe town, and if you follow the camp's curfew rules, there is no reason to be concerned. Keri, Shawna, Lynne, and Denise"-she pointed them out-"were here last year. And camp is camp, no matter how grown-up you get. Those of you who are new, don't be conned by the tales and pranks of the veterans."

"My sister wasn't making up tales," Shawna insisted. "The room is haunted." "I'll take it."

The other girls and Maggie turned around. I thought Maggie was going to remind me that she had prohibited the switching of rooms, but perhaps she reasoned that Shawna's room was next to her own and seven weeks was a long time to live next to someone convinced she was sharing her bed with a ghost. "Fine," she agreed. "And you are?" "Jenny Baird. I was assigned to the third floor." She made a neat correction on her own copy of the floor plan, then glanced at her watch. "We have a camp meeting and cookout at the college pavilion scheduled for five o'clock. I would like you all to deposit your luggage in your rooms and be ready to go in five minutes. Wear your key and lock your door when you leave."

There was general confusion as the eight of us pulled our luggage out of the heap and rushed toward the front door. "Don't dawdle in the bathroom," Maggie called after us.

"She means it," Shawna whispered. "She'll come in and pull you off the toilet."

One of the new girls looked back at Shawna, horrified.

"Just kidding," Shawna said, laughing in a loud, bright way that made me laugh.

The front door opened into a large, square foyer with varnished wood trim and a worn tile floor. The stairs rose against the back wall of the foyer, turned and climbed, then turned and climbed again. A hall ran from the foot of the stairway straight to the back of the house. The common room, where we could all hang out, was to the right of the foyer. Proceeding down the hall, there was a room on either side, Maggie's and Lynne's, then continuing on, my bedroom on one side and the multi-bath on the other.

I knew from Liza's e-mails that she had liked this room, and when I opened the door I remembered why. Its back wall had a deep double window with a built-in bench. I pictured Liza practicing every possible pose a heroine could adopt in the romantic window seat, but there was no time for me to "dawdle" and try it out.

I met up with Lynne in the bathroom, then we headed out to the front porch. When everyone had reported back, Maggie led us down Goose Lane, which ran past the backyard of the fraternity next door toward Oyster Creek.

"How do you like your room?" Keri asked as she strolled beside me, her short black-and-white hair ruffling in the breeze. It 's nice."

"Yes," she said, lowering her voice, "if you like being next to Boots."

I shrugged. I hadn't come here to see how many rules I could break.

"Hey, guy alert," Denise called from behind us.

Everyone turned around but Maggie, who marched on like a mother goose assuming her goslings were right behind. Our group of eight slowed down, or perhaps the guys picked up their pace. However it happened, the two groups soon merged and we did what guys and girls always do, say things too loudly, make comments that seem terribly clever until they come out really dumb, while checking each other out. I saw the heavy-set guy from the Bronx hanging toward the back. Far ahead Maggie stopped and gazed back at us, counting her flock, I guessed.

"So where's Paul? I thought Paul was supposed to be here," Shawna said with a sly look at Keri.

"He's here. Somewhere," a guy replied. "Mike and Brian are looking for him."

Mike? Liza's Michael? I wondered. Would a guy in love with a girl return to the place where she was murdered? No way… and yet I had come here and I loved Liza.

"Paul's probably back torching Drama House," another guy teased. "Hope you girls didn't leave anything important there."

"I still think it was unfair for everyone to blame last year's fire on Paul," Shawna replied. "There was no evidence."

"Oh, come on. He did it," Lynne said, "probably with the help of Liza."

"Probably to get Liza," a guy observed.

"No way," argued another. "Paul wouldn't have hurt her. He was totally obsessed with her."

I saw Keri bite her lip.

"That's what obsessed people do when they don't get what they want," the boy continued. "They get the person's attention one way or another."

I didn't like this conversation.

"I thought Paul was weird before Liza was murdered," Denise said, rubbing her long, thin arms, "but he was even weirder afterward, wanting all the details."

"Most people do want the details," Keri said crisply. "He's just more honest than the rest of you."

"Anyway, it's not strange for him," observed another guy. "You ever seen the video games Paul plays? The more violent they are the better he likes them."

"Movies, too," someone else added. "I bet he watched slasher movies in his playpen."

Sounds like a terrific guy, I thought.

"Paul's great-looking-in a dangerous kind of way," Lynne said, picking up her dark hair and waving it around to cool herself. "But once he gets hooked on someone or something, he's scary."

"At least scary is interesting," Keri remarked, "which is more than I can say for the rest of you guys."

The boys hooted. The girls laughed. The conversation turned to other people who had attended camp last year.

Had Liza been aware of Paul's feelings? I wondered as we walked on. Did my sister realize that someone like that could turn on you? Call it a huge ego or simple naiveté, but Liza always believed that everyone liked her-"they like me deep down," she'd insist when people acted otherwise.

Goose Lane ended at the college boathouse. Beyond the cinder-block building were racks of sculls-those long, thin boats for rowing races-and a pier with floating docks attached. Oyster Creek, wide as a river, flowed peacefully between us and a distant bank of trees. To the left of the docks was the pavilion, an open wooden structure with a shingled roof and deck. Built on pilings over the edge of the creek, it seemed to float on a tide of tall, grasslike vegetation.

Two other groups of eight had caught up with us. Maggie conferred with a guy and girl whom I guessed were RA.s, and the rest of us climbed a ramp to the pavilion. Inside it was furnished with wood tables and benches. I headed for its sun-washed deck, which provided a view of the creek. Leaning on the railing, I finally allowed myself to look to the left, past a small green park to a bridge, the bridge where Liza had been killed. I studied it for several minutes, then turned away.

"Are you all right?"

I hadn't realized Shawna was standing next to me. "Me? Yeah."

"You're pale," she said. "Even your freckles are pale.

"Too bad they don't fade all together," I joked. "Really, I'm all right. I, uh, look like this when I haven't eaten for a while."

She believed the excuse. "They're putting out munchies. You stay here, Reds. I'll get you some."

"Thanks."

I turned back to the water. When Liza came to this place the first day, when she saw the creek sparkling in the late-afternoon sun and heard the breeze rustling in the long grass, did she have any idea that her life would end here?

No. Impossible.

She had had so much ahead of her-a scholarship to study acting in London, a film role scheduled for spring. She had had beauty, brains, and incredible talent, and the world was about to get its first real glimpse of her. It was no time to die.

Besides, even if Liza had been a more ordinary girl, no teen believes death is waiting for her. Certainly, standing by the creek that sunny afternoon, I didn't.

Our director arrived by motorcycle. The guys thought it was cool. I think a middle-aged man with a big paunch straddling a motorcycle looks like a jackin-the-box before it springs-all rolled up in himself. In any case, it was a dramatic entrance, especially since he rode the cycle across the park grass and partway up a pavilion ramp, stopped only by Maggie running down it, waving her arms frantically, screaming that the machine was too heavy.

Walker backed up his vehicle and climbed off. He was greeted like a hero, the guys swarming down the walkway to see the cycle, the girls lining up on the deck of the pavilion, like ladies watching from the top of a castle wall. When Walker removed his helmet, I saw that he was bald. A few reddish strands of hair had been recruited from a low part and combed over his dome; the remaining hair grew long enough to curl over his shirt collar.

"This is a merry troupe," he said, striding up the ramp.

Inside the pavilion we sat in a circle with Walker at the center. He asked us to introduce ourselves, say where we lived, and tell something about our interests.

My parents had known Walker Burke years ago in New York, but I couldn't remember meeting him, and if I had, I would have been too young for him to recognize me now. The autobiography submitted with my application was mostly true. Realizing that whoppers would make it too easy to slip up, I had changed only what was necessary to conceal my identity, like making myself the child of a magazine editor and his wife. I had showed the bio to the two people who had agreed to recommend me under the name of Jenny Baird so there would be no inconsistencies. When called on, I was brief.

Other kids went on and on. It took at least forty minutes to get all the way around the circle of introductions. At last the final person spoke, the heavyset guy who had admired the architecture of Drama House.

"Tomas Alvarez," he said, using the Spanish pronunciation of his first name.

"My set designer," Walker replied.

"I am?"

Applicants had been invited to submit a design for the set of the play; apparently his had been chosen. Tomas's face lit up like a Halloween pumpkin's.

"It needs revision, of course," Walker said, then rose to his feet. He wiped his neck, cricked it left and right, and rolled his shoulders. He seemed to be winding up for a speech.

"Now, people," he said, "let me tell you what I expect from you. The absolute best. A hundred percent and more. Nothing less than your heart, soul, and mind."

He began to pace.

"From eight-thirty A.M. to four-thirty p.m. you will be mine. I will work you hard, so hard that at dinnertime your faces will drop onto your plates. And after dinner I will expect more of you."

He took a pair of glasses from his pocket, a nice prop with which to gesture.

"That means I expect each of you to keep yourselves in top physical shape. I expect you to eat right, to sleep eight hours a night, and to avoid risky behavior. You are old enough to know what I mean by risky behavior."

We glanced at one another.

"You will have studying to do, lines to memorize, films to watch. Your life here will be utterly devoted to drama. You will eat, breathe, and sleep drama.

You will feel as if the theater owns you. If you had something less than this in mind, you should transfer to one of those cushy New York moneymakers."

I wondered how many people were considering it.

"Other directors coddle their young actors. They treat their tender egos with kid gloves and teach them to think better of themselves than they should.

What I am going to teach you is to act. Come hell or high water, you'll learn."

Welcome to drama boot camp, I thought.

"In the long run," Walker said, "you'll find the skills I teach you more useful than a New York attitude."

Clearly, he didn't like the Big Apple.

Walker then asked Maggie to go over the rules-procedures at mealtime, curfew, and special instructions for campers who opted to stay through the weekend. Brian arrived while she was talking. Curious about Mike, I glanced around, but the faces were too unfamiliar for me to notice if someone new had arrived. Brian was introduced to us as the stage manager and gave us the schedule for the coming week: auditions tomorrow, a read-through on Wednesday morning, and blocking beginning that afternoon.

"Everyone will audition and everyone will do crew work," Walker told us. "There are thirty-two of you. I'm casting twice the number of fairies, which gives us twenty-six roles. But everyone, including my six techs, will be involved at least in understudy work. Got it? Any questions?"

Tomas raised his hand and waited for Walker to acknowledge him. "About trying out," the boy said, "I'd rather not."

Walker gazed at him for a long moment. "Tomas, do you have a hearing problem?"

"No, sir."

"Do you have attention deficit disorder?"

"Uh, no."

"Do you have any excuse at all for not hearing what I just said?" No, sir.

"Are you fat?"

Kids snickered.

"Yes," Tomas said quietly.

"Obviously, but that's no excuse for not trying out."

It's no excuse for embarrassing him, either, I thought, though I had hung around enough shows to know there were directors who made an art form of bullying others. Not wanting to offer up myself as the next public victim, I decided to talk to Walker later about my problem with stage fright. I hoped Brian would keep his promise and ease the way for me.

Maggie ended the meeting, telling us to get to know one another and reminding us to stay in the area between the bridge and the school docks. The grills had arrived by truck, and burgers would be ready in about forty minutes.

I followed a group of kids down the pavilion ramp and into the small park, where there were swings and a gazebo.

"Hey, Jenny," Brian called, "wait a sec." He caught up and started walking with me. "I haven't had a chance to talk to Walker about your stage fright, but I didn't want you to worry. I'll do it before tomorrow, okay?'' "Thanks. He comes on strong."

Brian laughed. "Don't be snowed by him. Walker puts on a great act, but really, he's just a frustrated director who didn't make it in New York. Thanks to my mother-she knew him when she was a grad student at NYU-he can still live out his dream, creating magic moments of theater in the midst of cornfields. If there are empty seats at a show, we fill them with scarecrows."

"That's too bad," I said.

Brian cocked his head.

"I mean, I don't like him very much, but I feel bad for anyone who isn't where he wants to be."

"Oh, don't worry about Walker. Here he is king of drama, just as he always thought he should be."

I didn't respond.

"Maybe I'm being too harsh," Brian added quickly. "Try to understand. I've spent most of my life hanging around theater, and sometimes I get a little cynical about the people who do it."

I smiled at him. I knew how that was.

"I wish I could hang out with you, Jenny," he said, returning my smile, "but I'm staff and right now I'm head burger flipper."

He turned back toward the grills, which had been set up along the walkway between the pavilion and the park. I continued past the gazebo, where some of the campers had gathered, crossed the grass toward the creek, then followed a path along its bank. Plumed grasses six feet tall, like those that grew around the pavilion, gave way to a timber bulwark that lined the creek almost as far as the bridge.

After Liza died, my mother thought we should come to Wisteria and toss flowers in the water beneath the bridge, but my father said he couldn't bear it.

So we huddled together in our New York apartment while Sid and a family friend accompanied Liza's body home. Now I had to see for myself the place where she had died.

I guess one expects the location of a life-changing event to be remarkable in some way, but as I approached the bridge, I saw that it was quite ordinary, supported by round pilings, its undergirding painted a grayish blue, its old concrete stained with iron rust and crumbling at the edges. Stepping into the bridge's shadow I studied the mud and stones by the water's edge, where they had found Liza, then quickly pulled back.

The guy in the black clothes was there. I leaned forward again, just far enough to see him. He was sitting on the bank beneath the bridge, staring out at the water, his wrists resting on his knees, his hands loose and still.

He suddenly turned in my direction. His eyes had changed mood, their brilliant blue darkened like the water in the bridge's twilight.

I waited for him to speak, then finally said, "I saw you inside the theater."

He didn't reply.

"You were in the balcony."

Still he was silent.

"You acted as if you didn't want to be seen."

The way he listened and focused on me, as if picking up something I wasn't aware of, made me uncomfortable.

"What were you doing?" I persisted.

"Tell me your name," he said softly.

"Jenny. Jenny Baird. You didn't answer my question. What were you doing?"

He stood up. He was a big guy, over six feet, with broad shoulders. When he walked toward me, I instinctively took a step back. He noticed and stopped.

"I'm Mike Wilcox."

My heart gave a little jerk. Liza's guy.

"Where are you from, Jenny Baird?"

"New York."

"City or state?"

"The city."

"You don't talk like it," he observed.

It was true. Mom and Dad's trained voices and their constant coaching of Liza and me had ironed out any trace of a New York accent.

"We traveled a lot," I told him. "My father kept getting different jobs. But Manhattan is home now."

"At camp last year we had a girl from Manhattan who had a schooled voice like yours. Her name was Liza Montgomery. Did you know her?"

I met his eyes steadily. "No. But I've heard about her. She's a hot topic among campers."

"I bet," he replied with a grimace. "In answer to your question: I was thinking about Liza."

"Were you close to her?"

"No. Just friends."

"But I thought-" I broke off.

He observed my face shrewdly. "You thought what?"

"I heard you and Liza Montgomery were in love."

Check the actor's hands, my father always told us. Mike's face was composed, but his hands tense, his fingers curled. "You're confusing me with Paul."

"No, Paul was obsessed with her-that's what they said. You were in love." That's what Liza said, I added silently.

"I think I should know better than they," he replied shortly.

"Today in the theater, did you hear"-l hesitated, remembering at the last minute that I wasn't supposed to know what Liza's voice sounded like-"voices?"

"I heard you reciting the lines from Twelfth Night."

"Anything else?"

He gazed at me thoughtfully. "Well, Brian came in then."

"Before that-how long had you been there?"

"I arrived just before you began to speak."

Maybe, I thought, but I had heard a rustling noise well before that.

"Why?" he asked.

"Just curious."

We stared at each other, both of us defiant, each aware that the other person wasn't being candid.

"Well, I'm headed back to the party."

"Enjoy it," he said. "I'm going to stay here a little longer."

"To think about Liza?"

He nodded. "She was a very talented girl. And a friend," he added.

Liar, I thought, and strode away.

We arrived back at Drama House about eight-thirty that evening. Some of the girls got sodas from a vending machine and holed up in the common room to talk, but I was tired of being someone other than myself, always thinking about how to respond as Jenny Baird, and was glad to escape to my room.

While I unpacked, I thought about the things that the kids from last year had said about Liza. I didn't like the idea that a creepy guy was obsessed with her. And it bothered me that the guy she had fallen in love with now claimed they were no more than friends. Maybe I remembered Liza's e-mails incorrectly, I thought, then retrieved from my suitcase a folder of notes I had saved. Sitting sideways in the window seat, I pulled my feet up, and began to read.

Jen-Hi!

I finally made it here and it's great. I had no idea so many cute guys hung around a nothing-happening place. Lucky for me, there aren't many cute girls.

But our curfew is unbelievable. I0 P.M.!!! And lights out at II!!! I'm just waking up then. I've got a cool room on the first floor with a window seat (a real window seat! Where's Jane Austen?) and another big window to climb out of. I'll be in at I0:00 and out at I0:05.

Miss you. Miss you a lot. Love, L P.S. Would you look for my silver barrette and mail it to me? It should be in my top drawer, or my jewelry box, or on the bathroom shelf, maybe the kitchen, check Sid's car. Thanx.

I continued reading through the batch of notes-her description of Stoddard Theater, her account of the funny things that had happened during auditions, and her reaction to Walker.

He's always criticizing me, Jen, me more than anybody else. I make him mad because I don't cringe like the others at his stupid remarks. I just stare at him. One of these days I'm going to give it back. He's a nobody acting like he's directing Broadway. Somebody's got to put Walker in his place. Looks like it'll have to be me.

There were frequent references to "Boots." Of course, given Liza's difficulty in following rules, she and Maggie had had a few run-ins. Liza thought Brian was nice. I found only two mentions of Paul. She was aware of his interest in her, but seemed to consider him just another of her fans. Maybe she had seen too many weirdos in New York to be alarmed, I thought. She didn't get along with Keri.

Talk about a snob! She finds the whole world boring, which, if you ask me, is the ultimate in snobbery. Her parents have given her so much that the only thing left to want is something she can't have-like Paul. In front of everybody she announced that she couldn't stand my jasmine perfume. Fine, I told her, stay away from me so you don't have to smell it-make us both happy!

I remembered correctly the romantic way Liza had described her relationship with Mike-Michael as she called him.

"It's Mike," he keeps saying, but I like the sound of Michael better-Mikes are guys who work at Kmart. He is so gorgeous-dark hair, blue eyes to die for, tall but not one of those skinny Hamlet types-a real guy. We're like so in love, but we both fake a little. I don't discourage the other guys who are interested in me because it's always good to keep each other wondering. But really, Jen, this is true love!!! You've got to come down and meet my incredible guy.

Please come soon.

The descriptions of Michael and Liza's shared moments filled the rest of her e-mails. I remembered thinking when I first read them that Liza had finally figured out what counted, for the things she was talking about so romantically were small acts of kindness, little bits of gentleness, not wild kisses. Usually, Liza went for cool, star types like herself, and after she and the guy grew tired of showering each other with flattery, the fighting got ugly. Maybe Liza had finally fallen for a guy who was terrific on the inside, too.

And maybe I should have been gentler, I thought, not trying to force Mike to admit his feelings for my sister.

I read all the way through the correspondence and came to the last e-mail, the one that had been sent after lunch the day Liza died.

Jenny, Don't tell Mom and Dad, but I'm thinking about coming home. I know they won't want me to pull out of the production, but I think I have to. I've hurt someone very badly, and I don't know how to make it up. I had no idea-l didn't mean it-it's terrible. I need to talk to you. l:20-rehearsal's started. Talk later. L Whom Liza had hurt, I never found out. I showed the note to the police, but they dismissed it as normal high-school stuff. The pattern of the serial murderer had been established, and his victims appeared to be random. They weren't looking for suspects who knew Liza and would have had some kind of personal motive.

I wondered again what had happened that day. Had Liza suddenly realized she was hurting Paul? Had something occurred between her and Mike?

Maybe that's why he denied their relationship now. Or, had she let Walker have it between the eyes? My sister had a better command of language than she had realized and could sometimes be cruel in what she said.

It wasn't until I got her phone message that night that I checked my e-mail. If I had checked earlier, I might have reached her before she slipped out the window. If I had gone to Wisteria when Liza invited me, I might have helped her get out of whatever mess she was in. I could have been with her and kept her from venturing out the same night as the murderer.

Closing the folder, I carried it to the bureau and placed it in a drawer under a pile of shirts. Then I turned out the lamp by my bed and climbed back in the window seat. I listened to the sounds of the summer night and the mix of music and laughter that floated down from open windows. A moth flicked its wings against my screen. Though I wasn't tired, my eyelids felt as fluttery as a moth. There was a cool breeze and my head grew light, so light it could have floated off my shoulders. Closing my eyes, I leaned against the soft wire screen. My mind slipped into a strange, textureless darkness. Its edges glimmered with pale blue light.

Then my body jerked and I was alert, aware of the sound of my own breathing, quick and hoarse. I felt as if I had been running fast. I held my side, massaging it. I opened my mouth, trying to catch my breath silently, afraid to make the slightest noise.

It was swampy where I was-I could smell the creek and feel the ground ooze beneath my feet. A rooflike structure supported by pilings stretched over the dark area. I listened to the lap of water against the pilings, then footsteps sounded above. Fear flashed through me like light off a knife blade.

I made my way forward into the shallow water-slowly, so as not to make a ripple of sound. I heard the light thump of feet on wet ground, then mud sucking back from shoes. My pursuer was close-whether male or female, I couldn't tell-the night was cloudy and the person's face and body covered. I hid behind one of the pilings.

I heard the person walking slowly, prowling and listening, prowling and listening. I guessed that only ten feet remained between us. If I moved, the person would know immediately where I was. But if I waited any longer, I might get trapped.

I bolted. The pursuer was after me fast as a cat. I tripped and fell facedown, splashing into the muddy ebb of the creek. I scrambled to my feet and rushed forward again.

The tumble had jolted me, and I realized that my knees, though sore from falling, were dry. I had fallen out of the window seat and rushed toward a door, my bedroom door in Drama House. There was no muddy creek here. I was safe.

Still, I shook so badly I knocked into my bedside lamp trying to turn it on. I crept into bed and pulled the sheets up to my chin, shivering despite the July heat. I reached for the lamp a second time. The darkness retreated from the glow of the dim bulb, but I didn't dare look in the corners of the room, lest the shadows turn blue-blue like the lighting in the theater this afternoon, blue like the edges of the nightmare vision I'd just had.

It was only a dream, I told myself, a natural one to have after seeing the place where Liza had died. But the blue light… Please, not again, I thought.

When I was a child I had horrible nightmares, dreams as strange as they were frightening, about people and things I couldn't remember seeing in real life. All of the dreams had a strange blue cast. Waking up from them terrified, I would tell Liza, and she would put her arms around me, holding me tight.

Sometimes she would tell me she had had the same dream. As I grew older I didn't believe her; still it had helped me not to feel alone. "Sweet dreams," Liza would always say, soothing me, tucking me back in bed, "sweet dreams only for you and me." Eventually the nightmares stopped.

Now I scrunched down under the sheet, sweating and shivering, missing Liza more than ever, and wondering why the dreams had come back.

We gathered in the seats of Stoddard Theater at eight-thirty the next morning. Walker came up the back steps, strode across the stage, then stopped, scanning us slowly, like a shopper carefully eyeing apples before reaching into the pile. Our nervous chatter died.

"Oh, don't be bashful," he said.

Maggie called roll. Next to Mike, two rows in front of me, sat a guy who answered to Paul McCrae, but all I could see of him was brown hair hanging thick and wavy down the back of his neck. Maggie handed out adhesive name tags, which we were to stick below our left shoulder. Anyone who put it on his or her right was corrected. Brian gave out the books.

"Put your names in them immediately/' Maggie instructed. "Katie, no more free replacements of lost scripts.'' "She doesn't forget anything," the girl named Katie hissed to Shawna.

Walker continued to study us. "Okay, people," he said, putting on his half-moon glasses. "I am assuming you are all intimately familiar with A Midsummer Night's Dream and are fully prepared and eager to impress me with your auditions. Let's begin."

"Excuse me, Walker."

His eyes rolled up over his glasses. "Maggie."

"I think we should review the plot."

His smile was a tiny bow. "You have my permission to think whatever you like. Meanwhile, I'm starting the auditions."

"And is that because you prefer to review the story halfway through, once it becomes obvious that everyone is confused-as we did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that?"

"I told you she doesn't forget," Katie whispered.

Walker sighed, then eyed us. "I believe in learning from my mistakes," he said, "but I keep making Maggie assistant director."

There were muffled laughs. I glanced at Maggie, but she didn't seem to care, perhaps because she knew what he would do next-exactly what she had suggested.

"As you all no doubt already know," Walker boomed, "there are four lovers in this play. The two guys, Lysander and Demetrius, are both in love with Hermia. Hermia is in love with Lysander, but Hermia's father has chosen Demetrius to be her husband. Meanwhile, we have poor Helena, Hermia's friend, who is hopelessly in love with Demetrius. Got it?"

We nodded.

"Like all good star-crossed lovers, Hermia and Lysander plan to run away. Helena thinks she can score some points with Demetrius by telling him of Hermia and Lysander's departure. So, what do we have? Hermia and Lysander running off to the forest, Demetrius running after Hermia, and Helena after Demetrius. We have four lovers wandering around the Athenian woods on Midsummer Night."

Walker strode back and forth across the stage as he spoke, gesturing with the script. He held our attention as if he were Shakespeare himself.

"Enter the fairies: Oberon the fairy king and Titania, the queen. They're married and they're quarreling. Oberon has a jealous, vengeful streak in him. He also has a very mischievous fairy working for him, Puck, and, with Puck's help, he plans to spread a magic flower ointment on his wife's eyes while she is sleeping. The first person, beast, or thing Titania sees when she awakens, she'll fall madly in love with."

A couple kids giggled, as if just now figuring out what would happen, which told me they hadn't read the play, at least not too well. Maggie knew what she was doing.

"Now, there are some interesting candidates for Titania to fall in love with that night," Walker continued. "A group whom we refer to as 'the rustics,' six bumbling guys, are rehearsing a play in the woods to present to the Duke of Athens at his wedding. The Duke's wedding frames the entire play. Puck has some fun and transforms one of the rustics so that he has an ass's head instead of a human one, and it is he whom Titania sees first when she awakens.

"As for the lovers, Oberon gives Puck instructions to use the flower ointment to work out their problem, that is, to make Demetrius fall in love with Helena, so the four are neatly paired up. Unfortunately, Puck gets the guys confused, and we end up with a wonderful reversal, with Demetrius and Lysander now in love with Helena and chasing her, while Hermia is left out in the cold. Got it?"

We all nodded again and Walker hopped down from the stage steps, surprisingly light on his feet.

"Now, Maggie, may we begin?"

"I'm waiting," she said with a smile.

Walker started by assigning the parts of the lovers, trying different combinations for the two guys and two girls. Watching Mike read, I was amazed at his skill. I had imagined that he had just enough talent, or more accurately, the good looks to earn a small high school part. I was wrong-or perhaps the part of a lover came quite naturally to him. I glanced around: I wasn't the only girl who had trouble taking her eyes off him.

"Jenny Baird."

I didn't respond; it wasn't the name for which I was used to snapping to.

"Miss Baird." Walker's voice could roll low like thunder. Shawna nudged me.

"Walker," Brian said in a quiet voice, "I spoke to you about Jenny, remember?"

Walker turned to Brian very slowly, demonstrating for all of us how an actor can make an audience wait for a line. "I remember. Get up there, Miss Baird."

I walked to the stage steps carrying my book.

"I can try out," I told Walker, "but I get terrible stage fright when it comes time for performance."

"Act Two, Scene Two, after Puck has exited," Walker replied, as if he hadn't heard a word I'd said.

Brian stared at him and shook his head.

"Helena," Walker said to me when I was on stage, "you've just come upon Lysander, who is sleeping. What you don't know is that Puck has put the magic ointment on his eyelids, and the first person Lysander sees-you, not his beloved Hermia-he will now be madly in love with. Not knowing what has happened, you think he's making fun of you. Pick it up on 'But who is here?'" We positioned ourselves, Mike on the stage floor and me bending over him. I began: "But who is here? Lysander! on the ground?

Dead or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.

Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake."

Mike opened his eyes, then pulled himself up quickly, responding fervently: " 'And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake.' " I blinked and drew back. The incredible blue of his eyes and the intensity with which he zeroed in on me made my heart jolt, made me feel as if I were on an elevator that had suddenly dropped from beneath me. All I could do was stare at him, surprised. Of course, the character of Helena would have reacted the same way. I wasn't acting, but I looked like I was.

" 'Transparent Helena,' " Mike began softly, kneeling now, his eyes, his whole person focused on me, the way a lover's would be. My heart did strange flip-floppy things. I struggled to make sense of the instinctive way I responded to Mike; in the play, Helena struggled to make sense of Lysander.

I dutifully told Lysander why he should be happy with his Hermia.

" 'Content with Hermia?' " Mike responded. " 'No, I do repent the tedious minutes I have with her spent.' " He reached out and touched my face. I tingled at the brush of his fingers and could feel my cheeks getting pink. Of course, Helena's cheeks would have reddened as she got increasingly angry at Lysander.

" 'Not Hermia, but Helena I love,'" Mike said. " 'Who will not change a raven for a dove?' " But I was the raven and Liza his dove, I wanted to say. I stood up quickly, feeling mixed up, caught between the play world and the real one. He gazed at me as if his eyes would hold and cherish what his hands could not. I reminded myself that this was acting.

At last he got to the end of his lines, and I pulled myself together. I was mad-mad at him for using his eyes and voice that way, madder at myself for being caught in their spell. Hadn't I seen a million actors deliver lines like that? Hadn't I fallen for not one, but two guys who were pretending to like me because they wanted to know Liza?

Just as anger was boiling up in me, it was bursting from poor Helena: " 'Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?' " I exclaimed-ironically, totally in character.

Finishing my speech, I exited quickly, exactly as Helena should have. In fact, I wanted to run back to my seat, but I figured that Walker, upon observing my flight, would make me stay and read some more. I stopped onstage about twenty feet from Mike, waiting to be dismissed by Walker.

He looked from Mike to me, then turned to Brian. "Your new best friend doesn't seem all that shy," he observed. "I believe she has some talent." "I never said she didn't," Brian replied coolly. "You two are done," Walker said to us. "For now." Mike headed for the steps stage left, I went stage right.

Lynne was called on to read as Hermia. She was so strong in the role she made the guy who played opposite her look good. Shawna tried out as Helena and Queen Titania, then Keri read for the queen's role opposite Paul as Oberon.

"No accents, Keri," Walker told her halfway through. "Save that lovely Jersey British for New York, where they can't tell the difference."

Paul was destined to be Oberon, I thought. His face was handsome, a model's face, and yet there was something wasted about it. His green eyes had circles under them-right for a jealous and somewhat vengeful king of the fairies. His body was hard-wiry, like a rock star's, his hands strong and expressive, but too thin, a thinness that could suggest cruelty.

By lunch everyone had read but Tomas, the heavyset guy who had said he'd "rather not." I thought Walker was showing some heart, or perhaps knew better than to torture the guy who had provided the winning set design for the play. I was wrong.

"All right, Tomas," Walker said as soon as we had gathered again, "this is your big chance."

Tomas was jolted out of what appeared to be the beginning of an afternoon nap.

"Get up there. You're Oberon."

There was a snicker from the vets. If Tomas played any role, it would have to be one of the rustics; there was no way he was going to prance around the stage as if there were magic in his feet.

"Paul, you're Puck," Walker said.

The contrast between the two guys was striking, and I wondered if Walker was pairing them up for his own amusement.

"Kimberly, you're Hermia." A blond girl giggled and made her way to the stage.

"Mike, Demetrius again. Act Three, Scene Two," Walker said, when the cast had assembled. "Puck is reporting back to Oberon about how he fared with the magic ointment. Demetrius and Hermia enter, and it is discovered by Oberon and Puck that Puck got the wrong guy when he tried to fix things for the lovers. Got it? Take it from the top, Oberon. Oberon?"

Tomas was paging frantically through the book; the more quickly he tried to find the scene, the harder it became. Kimberly giggled annoyingly. Paul finally snatched the script and found the page. When he shoved the book back in Tomas's face, Mike walked over to the embarrassed boy, leaned close, and ran his finger down the page. "You start here," I heard him say quietly. "Then Hermia and I enter-see? — and you don't say anything more until I lie down to sleep. Okay?"

Tomas nodded. Without waiting for Mike to get back in position, he began what had to be the most painful reading I'd ever witnessed. " 'I wo-wonder if Titan be-' " "Titania!" Walker called out. "She's a fairy, not a football team." Kids laughed.

" '-if Titania be awak'd.' " He didn't know how to pronounce the k'd and stumbled over it as if it were a piece of broken concrete. Kimberly, waiting for her entrance, rolled her eyes and made faces at her friends in the audience.

Fortunately, a long speech by Puck followed. Unfortunately, while Paul read, Tomas practiced his next few lines so intently, his lips moved and little whispery sounds came out. Paul paused halfway through his piece.

"Which one of us is talking here?" he asked, provoking more laughter.

Tomas continued to work on his lines, though silently now, with such focus that he missed his cue. "Oberon!" Walker hollered.

Tomas looked up and promptly lost his place. When he found it again, his voice shook badly. He got through the last line before Mike and Kimberly's entrance, but he didn't look as if he were going to make it through the entire scene. As the dialogue ran back and forth between Mike and Kimberly, Tomas's face grew redder. He looked as if he was going to cry. Given his size and his bristly eyebrows, I knew it would be a terrible sight. He began blinking his eyes. He was never going to live this down.

"Excuse me." I stood up. "Excuse me."

Mike, who had just finished a line, turned with surprise, as did everyone else.

"I'd like to play Puck if you don't mind."

It was a strange request for a person with stage fright. Brian looked baffled. Maggie frowned at the interruption. But Walker studied me with a shrewd look on his face; he knew I was trying to distract people while Tomas regained his composure.

"Would you now, Miss Baird," Walker said. "That old menacing stage fright seems to be waning, does it?"

I glanced at Tomas out of the comer of my eye. "Seems to be."

"All right. Paul, sit down."

Paul stared at Walker a moment, caught off guard by the abrupt change, then slowly left the stage, pressing his lips together, giving me a smile that was meant to chill. I ignored him, glad he was walking slowly and giving Tomas time to pull himself together. Giving me time as well-l quickly bent over and stretched before climbing the steps to the stage. Onstage I worked my back, my wrists, and my ankles, knowing I looked silly to everyone in the audience and buying Tomas even more time.

"We'll start from the top," Walker said.

Of course, I thought, let's drag him through it all again. But Tomas's eyes were clear now. If I could give the scene some lightness, play with him a little, I might get him through it and he'd have a chance of surviving camp. He looked at me curiously when I placed my script next to his feet and told him not to move an inch. I withdrew to the wings and removed my sandals. Walker sat back in his seat, arms folded over his chest, waiting.

Tomas delivered his first three lines with one less stutter. I listened, measuring with my eyes the distance between him and me. When the cue came, I raced forward and sprang, executing a handspring and round-off, landing five inches from his face. He laughed.

" 'Here comes my messenger,' " he read, still laughing some. It worked well for his character. " 'How now, mad spirit?'" I had done gymnastic routines to music, but never to Shakespeare's iambic pentameter. The report to Oberon ran twenty-nine lines. I performed only easy stunts and thoroughly mashed my script, but I kept everyone entertained-most important, Tomas. I made sure to finish up close to him so I could give him a nudge if he missed his cue, but he was ready for me. We ran through a bit of dialogue, and Mike and Kimberly entered to read their parts. Then it was our turn again with lines Tomas hadn't yet read, but he did okay, I guessed because he felt more relaxed.

When we finished, some of the kids broke into applause. Walker didn't say a word, just went on to the next group. I had probably ticked him off. I wondered what Mike was thinking. I was careful not to look at him; hoping for his approval seemed too much like competing with Liza.

The audition went on with Walker trying different combinations of actors. He dismissed us at four o'clock, a half hour early, instructing us to read the play once again for tomorrow. The cast would be posted in the morning.

Brian showed the group the way down to the back exit and we filed out quietly. As I reached the grass outside, someone yanked on me from behind, pulling my arm so hard it hurt, forcing me to turn around.

"That role was mine," Paul said.

I could have insisted that I didn't want to play Puck, but he wouldn't have believed me, and if I explained why I had interrupted the scene, I'd embarrass Tomas.

"My name is Jenny," I told him. "If you want me, call my name, okay?"

"There's only one girl I ever wanted."

I could guess who.

"Since you're new around here, Jenny, I'm going to give you some advice." He gazed at my mouth, the only feature of mine that was like Liza's. "Watch your step. Don't play too many games with people. Don't cross Walker. Last summer there was a talented actress who did, and she ended up dead."

For a moment I could say nothing. "If you mean Liza Montgomery, I believe she was the victim of a serial killer."

"That's what people say," Paul replied, walking past me. "That's what people say."

Keri and Mike hurried after Paul and a stream of campers followed. Realizing that I had better straighten things out with Brian and that this would be a good time to catch him alone, I ducked back inside Stoddard. I found him walking down the ground floor hall, deep in thought, jangling a ring of keys.

"Can I talk to you?"

Brian turned around. "Sure. What's up, Jenny?"

"I want to apologize. I shouldn't have gotten you involved with my stage fright stuff."

"No problem," he assured me.

"And I want to explain about playing Puck."

Brian grinned. "I have to admit you had me very confused for a moment, then I figured you were rescuing the fat guy."

"Tomas," I said, wanting Brian to use his name.

"Tomas. Really, there's no need to apologize. It was worth it to see someone stand up to Walker. Most people don't."

"Why does Walker act the way he does?" I asked. "One moment he's nice, the next moment, obnoxious and insulting."

"It's how he keeps control," Brian replied. "Walker would say it's how he gets the best from us. Since we never know what's coming next, we stay on our toes."

"Why do you put up with him?"

"Good question." Brian leaned against the stairway railing and smiled that slow-breaking smile of his. "Basically, for the money and experience. I can't go to L.A. broke. I can't go there with nothing on my resume."

"You mean to do film?"

He nodded. "Of course, it annoys Walker that I'd choose film over stage. It shouldn't matter to him, since he's always telling me I can't act. But Walker has this loyalty thing. The way he sees it, everyone is either for him or against him, there's no in-between. He takes everything personally."

I could imagine how personally he took Liza's response to him. "That's a narrow way of looking at the world."

"It's a very egotistical way," Brian replied. "And stupid. I mean, in the end, everybody is out there for himself. Sometimes it makes a person seem for you. Sometimes it makes a person seem against you."

"That's a very cynical view!"

"Probably." He smiled at me, then continued down the hall.

I'd had enough of theater types, and when I exited the building, I turned away from Drama House, heading left on Ink Street, the road that separated the quad from the houses, then taking another left on Scarborough, walking toward the main street of town. I remembered from Liza's e-mails that there was a cafe called Tea Leaves with terrific pastries and cappuccino.

Wisteria had to be the most peaceful town I'd ever strolled through. You could almost hear the flowering vines climbing their trellises. Every house had a sitting porch, every shop a tinkling bell on its door. Pedestrians moved much more slowly than in New York, adding to the sense of a town not subject to time. At the end of the long street of sycamores, sun glittered off the river. I walked all the way down to the harbor, then retraced my steps back to Tea Leaves.

The cafe was like a great-aunt's kitchen, with painted wood furniture and a linoleum tile floor, everything scrubbed clean. I had just settled down at a table with a chocolate doughnut and a cappuccino when I saw Tomas across the room from me, sitting by the big window. He gave me a small, selfconscious wave. I smiled back at him but stayed where I was.

When I looked up again, he was gazing intently out the window. His hand was moving quickly, sketching on an open pad. For fifteen minutes he managed to ignore the decadent pastry on his plate, drawing like a person possessed. I finished my doughnut and carried my cappuccino over to his table, wondering what he was working on.

"Hi."

He looked up and flushed. "Hi."

"May I sit with you?"

"Oh, uh, sure," he stammered and tried to clear a space quickly, knocking his backpack on the floor. It landed with a heavy thud. "Oh, nooo!" His head disappeared beneath the table, there was a lot of rustling around, then he popped up again. "Sorry."

"Everything okay?"

"I hope so."

"What do you have in your pack?" I asked curiously.

"Stuff. Sketch pads. Pencils. Pens. Chalks. A camera-two of them-color film and black and white. Lenses. They're in padded cases, they're okay."

"That's an awful lot to carry around."

"I like to be ready," Tomas explained. "You never know what kinds of interesting things you're going to see.

"I guess not." I leaned closer, trying to see his sketchpad, but he was practiced at covering his work with his arms. "May I look at what you're sketching?"

He glanced down at his drawing, then passed it over.

It was a street scene showing the buildings across from the cafe, an old movie theater, a Victorian-looking hotel, a restaurant, and a large brick home.

"Wow, you're really good!"

"When I sketch buildings," he agreed. "I've always been better with things than people."

"May I look at the rest of the sketches?" I asked.

He nodded. "It's a new book. There's just a couple."

Two of them were of Drama House, one of a tree and patch of brick walk, another of Stoddard Theater from the outside. I admired the way Tomas used lighting to create drama and emotion.

"You know how to give buildings and objects feeling," I said. "I guess that's what makes you a good set designer."

"I love doing art," he replied happily. "People look at what you produce, rather than at you."

I imagined that both acting and athletics were miserable activities for him.

"Thanks for earlier this afternoon," he went on. "I know why you interrupted the scene."

"It was fun," I said, taking a sip of cappuccino. "Walker is lucky to have a real artist in his troupe. I hope he figures that out."

Tomas flushed again and studied his pastry. I began to talk about New York and gradually he relaxed with me. We compared notes on schools and friends and art exhibits we had seen in the city. Finishing our snacks, we walked up and down Wisteria's streets, poking around in shops. Time slipped away and we had to rush back to the meal hall. When we carried our food trays to the table area, everyone else was already seated.

I looked around for a place to sit. Keri's black-and-blond hair made her easy to spot in a crowd. She raised her head, saw Tomas and me, then leaned close to Mike, whispering something. He glanced up, then looked away. Just then Shawna held up a fork with a napkin stuck on its end and waved it like a flag.

"Come on, Tomas," I said.

"You sure?"

"About what?" I asked, though I knew what he meant and wasn't sure.

"That I'm invited, too."

"Of course you are."

"It's all girls," he observed.

"Lucky you!"

Tomas got an earful at dinner. The girls were annoyed because Maggie had announced that those of us who lived in Drama House would read together in the common room that evening.

"She says she wants to build camaraderie," Shawna said.

"Yeah, right. She wants to make sure we do our homework," Denise observed.

Several girls had already made plans to sneak over to the frats-not that we were supposed to visit unchaperoned.

"You guys, we've got to speed-read," one of them said.

Back at Drama House we tried, but Maggie wouldn't let us. Every time we rushed, she told us to slow down, explaining why this or that line was particularly meaningful. We lost more time than we gained. Two and a half hours later, just thirty minutes before curfew, we finished.

Keri and a new girl went immediately to Lynne's room, which had a first floor window, an easier exit than the fire escape. Shawna waited for me outside Lynne's door.

"Want to go with us?" she asked.

"Not tonight, thanks."

I returned to my room, turned on the bedside lamp, and carried a sketchpad belonging to Tomas to the window seat. Sitting down, I pulled my legs up on the bench and opened the spiral-bound book. Tomas had said that most of the drawings were done in New York. On the first page I discovered the carousel in Central Park, which Liza and I had ridden about a million times. I continued to turn the pages, feeling a twinge of home-sickness-a park bench and street lamp, a greengrocer's striped awning and boxes of fruit, St. Bartholomew's Church. Then I found myself in Wisteria.

All three drawings were of the bridge over Oyster Creek. I studied one, tracing with my finger the dark lines of its pilings. I began to feel light-headed.

The moonlit paper turned a cool silvery blue. The image of the bridge swam before my eyes like a watery reflection.

It was happening again, the same strange experience that I'd had last night and in the theater. Frightened, I tried to pull back, tried to pull out of it. My muscles jumped, my head jerked. I felt wide awake and relieved that I could focus again. But when I looked around, I wasn't in my room.

Oyster Creek Bridge stretched above me. I heard a car drive over it, its wheels whining on the metal grating, the pitch rising, then dropping away.

Silence followed, a long, ominous silence.

"Liza," I whispered, "are you there? Liza, are you making this happen? Help me-I'm scared."

The image of the bridge dissolved. I could see nothing now, nothing but darkness with an aura of blue, but I could sense things moving around me. The air was teeming with words I couldn't discern-angry words and feelings worming in the blackness.

I felt something being fastened around my wrist. I didn't know who was doing it or why and tried to pull my hand away. My arms and legs wouldn't respond.

"Help me! Help me, please."

The words stayed locked inside me. I tried to move my lips, but I had no voice.

Then a pinpoint of light broke through the darkness. I moved toward the light, and it grew larger and radiant as the sun. But something stirred in the darkness behind me and I quickly turned back. I saw another light, a smaller, dimmer image, like the reflected light of the moon. Suddenly there was the sound of breaking glass. The moon shattered.

I blinked and looked around. I was back in my room at Drama House, and the moon was in one piece high in the sky, shining down on a mere sketch of the bridge.

I clutched the art pad till its spiral bit into my fingers. What was happening to me?

When I had the blue dreams as a child, I was always asleep, but these visions were invading my waking hours. If I was awake, they had to be daydreams, imaginings about the place where Liza had died. And yet they came unsummoned like nightmares-dreams I couldn't control.

Now, more than ever, I needed Liza here to comfort me. And yet, it was the memory of her that gave these visions their terrifying life.

Fear of slipping into another nightmarish vision made it" difficult for me to fall asleep that night, but once I did, I slept solidly and could not remember any dreams when I awoke Wednesday morning. I walked to the meal hall with Shawna and Lynne, who reported that last night's adventure had been pretty dull. The girls had simply stood at a window of one of the frats and talked for a while to the guys.

In the middle of her analysis of this year's selection of guys, Shawna suddenly stopped and pointed to a group of kids clustered around the back door of Stoddard. "They posted the cast. Come on!"

She and Lynne rushed down the path. Tomas, who had been standing at the back of the crowd of campers, hurried toward me, grinning.

"You did it, Jenny. You did it! Congratulations! I knew you would get the part."

"Part-what part?"

"Puck," he said.

"As understudy, you mean." Please let that be what he means, I thought.

"No, no, you're it," he announced happily. "Isn't that great?"

"Yeah, real great… if you like a fairy that looks nauseated, sweats profusely, and speaks in a squeaky voice. I have to talk to Walker."

"Jenny," Lynne called to me, "you're Puck."

"Way to go, Reds!" Shawna hollered.

"I'm Hermia," Lynne called. "Shawna is Peter Quince, the director of the rustics."

"Congrats!" I turned to Tomas. "Did you get a part?"

"Not even understudy," he said with relief. "I'm head of scenery and props. This is going to be great. Want to eat? I sure do."

"You go ahead. There's something I have to take care of. Tell Shawna and Lynne I'll catch up with you at the theater."

Tomas walked on happily and I retreated to the porch of Drama House. From there I watched the four houses empty out. When it looked as if everyone had seen the posting and gone on to breakfast, I headed back to Stoddard. At the door I stopped to check the list. Mike had gotten the role of the lover Demetrius, Paul was Oberon, the jealous king of the fairies, and Keri, his queen, Titania. I-under my new "stage name," Jenny Baird-was listed next to Puck. Liza would have been astonished.

When I entered the building I heard voices coming from a distance down the hall. One of them, Walker's, bristled with irritation.

"You've always got an excuse."

"I asked for a ladder," came the quiet reply. "Asked for it last Friday. When I get it, I'll do the job."

"I want it done now, Arthur."

I followed the voices past a series of doors marked Women's Dressing Room, Wardrobe, and Props, and reached the corner of the building, where the hall made a right-angle turn. Rounding the bend, I came upon Walker standing in an office doorway, his hands on his hips, a scowl on his face. He was talking to a man whose streaky hair was either blond turning gray or gray turning yellowy white. His veined hands had a slight tremor. Suddenly aware of me, he glanced back nervously.

"You don't need a ladder to get to the catwalk," Walker continued. "I told you before, there are rungs on the wall."

I tried to imagine this fragile man climbing the rungs to a narrow walkway hanging thirty feet above the stage. I had seen custodians like him before: tired, emotionally worn men just trying to get to the end of each day.

"Tell your boss I want to speak with him," Walker went on. "I'm tired of the crap they're sending me for custodians. You're worse than the last guy."

The custodian took a step back. "Yes, sir, I'll tell 'im. And maybe he'll climb up those rungs," he added. "You and him together."

I fought a smile. Arthur was tougher than he looked.

He walked away, his pale blue eyes glancing at me as he passed.

"Miss Baird," Walker said, "we don't meet till eight-thirty."

"I wanted to talk to you about the casting. I can't play Puck-you know I can't and you know why."

He cocked his head. "I'm afraid I don't. You do gymnastics."

"Yes, but-" "Don't you ever compete?"

I shifted my weight from foot to foot. "Well, yes, I'm on the school team, but-" "Performance is performance," he said. "If you can do one, you can do the other." He turned to go back in his office. "Now, if you don't mind, I-" "I do mind," I said, following him in. "I need you to listen."

He sat in his chair and checked notes on his desk. He didn't look too interested in listening.

"We are talking about two different things," I explained. "When I compete in gymnastics, the performance is on a gym floor, not up on a stage. I don't see a sea of strange faces looking up at me. I'm not in a spotlight-the gym is fully lit. And any butterflies I get are over as soon as I start, because I can shut everyone out.

Now he was attentive.

"I don't have to interact with other actors. I'm not supposed to respond to the audience. I seal them out and concentrate on my routine."

"Concentration is essential in theater as well," Walker said. "You already have tremendous energy and instinctive stage presence. I am going to teach you to transfer your ability from gymnasium to theater. You'll be doing your gymnastics as Puck, giving Puck quickness and strength, making him lighter than air. Oh, yes, you'll do well."

"Maybe in rehearsal," I argued. "But I told you-" "You mystify me, Miss Baird," he interrupted. "I checked your application last night. Unlike my friend Tomas, you listed no specific skills in set design, costume, makeup, lighting, or sound. What on earth did you plan to do here?"

I felt caught. "I, uh, I guess I thought I could overcome my stage fright, but when I saw how good everyone was, I figured this wasn't the place to do it. I don't want to sink the production."

"But you're not going to. You're going to pull this off."

"You're taking a big risk," I warned him.

"I've always been a director who takes risks. That's why I didn't make it in New York, where bottom-line mentality rules."

It was the usual artistic gripe, but I was surprised by the bitterness in his voice.

"You will discover, Jenny, that my shows, cast with a bunch of kids and produced in the boonies, are better theater, more imaginative and compelling fare than Broadway shows in which people pay to see Lee Montgomery play himself over and over again."

"Really."

"You're not a fan of his, I hope."

I wondered if my face had given me away. "I've seen him perform," I replied, "in Hamlet."

"Ah, yes, he played that role a good fifteen years longer than he should have. I began to think it was a play about a man in midlife crisis."

Tell that to the people who flocked to see him, I thought, but I couldn't defend my father aloud.

"So, Puck, we understand each other," Walker said, his eyes dropping down again to the notes in front of him.

Hardly, I mused, and left.

We spent Wednesday morning reading the play aloud as a cast. A few kids sulked about not getting the parts they wanted, but most were pretty excited. Brian worked with Tomas and two other tech directors-heads of lighting and sound-putting down colored tape on the stage, mapping the set we would soon be building. In the afternoon we began blocking the play.

My part was blocked sketchily. It was decided that I'd be given certain parameters-where I had to be, by when-and that over the next few days Maggie and I would work on the gymnastic details. She had also volunteered to help with my stage fright, teaching me relaxation exercises and pacing me through extra rehearsals in which she'd expose me to increments of stage lighting in a gradually darkened theater.

Rehearsal ran late that day and was followed quickly by dinner, then a showing of The Tempest. Each Wednesday evening was Movie Night during which we'd watch and discuss a film of a Shakespearean production.

After the movie I hung out with Shawna and two other new girls in her cozy room beneath the eaves. Everything was fine until ten o'clock, when I returned to my room.

For the first time since early in the day I was alone and had the opportunity to think about the strange visions I'd had the last two nights. I found myself glancing around anxiously and turning on lights, not just the bedside one, but the overhead and the desk lamp as well. I didn't want any blue shadows tonight.

I pulled down the shades, then drew the curtains over them. It made the room stuffy, but I felt less vulnerable with the windows covered, as if I could seal the opening through which thoughts of Liza entered my mind. It was eerie the way the visions occurred when I sat in the window where she would have sat and stood on the stage where she would have stood.

I walked restlessly about my room, then tried to read. At ten-twenty I knocked on Maggie's door.

"Jenny. Hello," Maggie said, quickly checking me over the way my own mother would have, making sure there was no physical emergency. "Is anything wrong?"

"No, but I'm feeling kind of jumpy. May I go out for a walk? I know it's past curfew, but I'll stay close."

"Come in a moment," Maggie said, stepping aside.

I was reluctant. Come on.

I entered the room. It was extremely neat, her bedspread turned down just so, the curtains pulled back the exact same width at each window, all the pencils on her desk sharpened and lined up. But Maggie's pink robe was a bit ratty, the way my mother's always was, making me feel more comfortable with her. She gestured to a desk chair, then seated herself on the bed a few feet away.

"Are you worried about your role in the play?" she asked.

What could I say? No, I'm worried about my dead sister haunting me. "Sort of."

"Well get you over the stage fright, Jenny, truly we will. Tell me, do you remember how it started?"

"How?" I repeated.

"Or maybe when," she suggested.

"I don't know-l just always had it, at least as far back as kindergarten. I was supposed to recite a nursery rhyme for graduation, 'Little Bo Peep.' We have a video of me standing silently on stage, my mortarboard crooked, the tassel hanging in my face, my eyes like those of a deer caught in headlights."

She laughed. "Oh, my!"

"Why do you ask?"

"I was looking for a clue as to why stage fright happens to you. Psychologists say that performance anxiety is often rooted in unhappy childhood experiences, such as rejection by one's parents, or perhaps physical or verbal abuse by those who are close to the child."

"I wasn't rejected or abused," I said quickly. "Nothing terrible has ever happened to me." Till last summer, I added silently.

She smoothed the bedcover with her hand. "Sometimes memories of traumatic events can be repressed, so that the individual doesn't consciously remember those events, and therefore doesn't know why she is reacting to a situation that is similar in some way."

"I don't think that's it," I said politely.

"Let me give you an example," Maggie continued. "A child is wearing a certain kind of suntan lotion. That day she watches someone drown at the beach. Years later she happens to buy the same brand of lotion. She puts it on and finds herself paralyzed with fear. She doesn't know why, but she can't go on with whatever she planned to do at that moment. The smell has triggered the feelings of the traumatic event she has long since repressed. Only by remembering the event, understanding what has triggered such an extreme response, can she overcome it."

I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable with the psychological talk. "Repressed memory isn't my problem," I told her. "But I will try the relaxation exercises you mentioned."

"And the incremental exposure."

"That, too."

She smiled agreeably. "Still need a walk?"

"Yeah."

"Stay on this block within the area of the four houses we're occupying. It's perfectly safe, but I'm an old worrywart. Check in with me in twenty minutes, all right?"

I nodded. "Thanks."

For the first few minutes I sat on the front steps of Drama House and gazed at the night sky. Across the road the tall tower on Stoddard cut a dark pattern out of the glittering sky, its clock glowing like a second moon.

I walked up and down the block, then circled Drama House, curious to see my room from the outside. Just as I reached the back of the house, I heard a noise from the fraternity next door, a grunt, then a thud, like a fall that had been muffled by grass. A guy swore softly. I peered around the lumpy trunk of an old cherry tree at the same time that Mike, standing by a window of the frat, turned to look over his shoulder. He grimaced when he saw me.

Maybe he thought I'd mind my own business and walk on, for a moment later he checked to see if I was still there and grimaced again. I wasn't moving; I wanted to know what was going on.

He threw a stone against a second-floor window and someone raised the shade. "I need your help," Mike called quietly.

He waited-I guessed for his helper to come down-stairs-and looked back over his shoulder a third time.

"Still here," I said.

The light in the first-floor room went on. The shade rolled up-it was the guys' bathroom. Maybe I shouldn't be looking, I thought, but of course I did. A stubborn window screen was yanked up.

"Ready?" I heard Mike ask the guy inside, then he leaned over, grunting and pulling. I stepped to the right of the tree to get a better view and saw a heap of a person on the ground, then a head come up above a set of shoulders as Mike heaved him onto the windowsill.

"Got a good hold?" Mike asked. "On the count of three. One, two-" In the bathroom light I saw Paul's head, then torso go over the window frame.

"Glad he's not any heavier," the guy inside said, tugging on the screen.

"Splash some cold water on his face," Mike instructed, "and let him stay in the bathroom for a while."

The shade was yanked down from the inside, and Mike turned away from the window. He seemed to be debating what to do, then strolled over to me.

"Out for a walk?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I guess you know it's past curfew."

"I have permission," I said. "What about you?"

He grinned. "I don't."

"What happened to Paul?"

"Oh, nothing too bad."

"Nothing too bad like what?" I asked.

Mike gestured toward the tree. "Want to sit down?"

Under a tree, alone with him in the moonlight? I wasn't sure.

"You climb trees, don't you?" he persisted. "You must if you're a gymnast."

The first strong limb was about four feet off the ground. I hoisted myself onto it-Mike was going to help me but thought better of it. Then I climbed up to a limb that grew in the opposite direction, about seven feet high. Mike made himself comfortable on the long lower limb. I wondered if he and Liza used to sit there together.

"Paul hangs around town and gets himself in trouble with the locals," Mike said. "I should have let him get his head split open by the giant he took on tonight. It's the only way he' ll get any sense knocked into it."

"You rescued him?"

"Are you kidding? I'm not an idiot. I grabbed him and ran like a good coward."

I smiled.

"Listen," Mike said, "you've got to keep this quiet, okay?"

"Give me a reason why."

"We need Paul for the production. But more important, Paul needs us," he added, his blue eyes intense, persuasive. "Theater is the only thing that has kept Paul in school. It's what has kept him from getting into the really bad stuff. We can't get him bounced out of here."

"He makes me very uncomfortable."

"He aims to," Mike replied. "It's just an act."

"Brian said the same thing about Walker."

Mike smiled. "Don't be fooled by Walker. At heart, he's a good guy."

I must have made a face, for Mike laughed up at me. "Yeah, I can see he's got a fan in you. But really, I don't know what I'd do without him. He found grant money for me so I could attend last year and this. He has taught me more than the books I've read or any of my other teachers. I'm really grateful to him."

"I'm glad he has helped you," I said, "but I still think he's an egotistical tyrant with a nasty streak in him."

"A lot of creative people are that way."

I prickled. I'd heard that justification one too many times. "Creativity is no excuse for obnoxious behavior."

"Are you worried about performing?" Mike asked quietly.

"That's not my reason for disliking him."

"I didn't think it was. I just wanted to tell you that there is nothing to be afraid of. The audience is rooting for you, Jenny. They see you on stage and want you to do well. Everyone out there wants to love you."

Speaking of ego, I thought to myself, what an assumption!

"Trust me," Mike said, his face animated, "it's a blast."

"For you, maybe."

"There's nothing like it. I've been putting on shows since I was five."

"Are you part of a theater group?"

He grinned. "No, the kid of a minister. I spent a lot of growing-up years hanging around the church next to our house in Trenton. It had a stage-the altar; a balcony-the choir loft; sort of an orchestra-the organ; even costumes-my father often wondered why his vestments were wrinkled on Sundays. I put on a lot of performances for my friends, all of them unauthorized."

I laughed out loud. Mike laughed with me, gazing up at my face. His smile, the brightness in his eyes made my heart feel incredibly light. Then I remembered Liza and looked away. I could imagine her slipping out to meet him here in the moonlight.

"Anyway, my parents aren't thrilled about my dream of being an actor. My oldest brother is doing mission work in Appalachia. The second one is studying at Union Theological. And then there's me. Since I don't seem to have a religious calling, they would like me to pursue something practical, you know, something that guarantees a good salary."

"But you have to follow your heart," I said.

"Yes… Yes, you do."

He waited for me to meet his eyes, but I didn't. I couldn't.

"You know, some of the guys have been talking about you, Jenny."

"They have? Saying what?"

"They're disappointed that you paired off so quickly with Tomas."

"Why should it matter to them that we're friends?"

He looked at me curiously. "You really don't know, do you?" he said." 'Her hair gives dawn its fire, her eyes give dusk its soul.' " He knew how to use his voice to melt a girl's heart, to make a girl want to believe. I steeled myself against the seductive words. "Excuse me?"

"It's a line of poetry describing a beautiful girl, one who doesn't seem to know it."

I dug my fingernails into the bark of the tree. "Well, there's your answer, the reason I like Tomas. He's real. He's not an actor."

"What's wrong with actors?"

"They quote poetry. A girl has to be crazy to believe one," I told him. "It's far too easy for an actor to give you a good line."

"You're quick to judge."

"No," I argued. "I've had experience with theater types. After a while they can't tell real from unreal.

They believe their own creation of themselves and can't understand why everyone else isn't convinced they're wonderful."

He jumped down from the limb, then stared up at me, his eyes sparking with anger. "It's efficient, I guess, judging an individual by a group. You don't waste any time trying to know somebody."

But I don't want to know you! I thought as I watched Mike walk away. I can't risk knowing you.

Experience had taught me not to get close to guys who fell in love with Liza. I had been burned twice and knew I couldn't compete. It didn't matter that I could no longer give a guy access to my sister; if Mike knew who I was, I'd be access to his romantic memories of her. He'd start looking for traits and signs of her in me. And I wasn't setting myself up for that kind of heartache.

How are you doing, Jenny?" Maggie asked me Thursday morning.

"Good. Ready to go."

"Glad to hear it," she said. "We're going to work at the gym later today to block your movements. Walker thought it would be good if Tomas went with us.

Knowing the set and being as visual as he is, he might see some possibilities we don't."

"Sounds like fun."

"Also, I'm photocopying a set of relaxation exercises and organizing tapes for you to listen to."

"Sorry to be so much trouble," I said.

"Nonsense," Maggie replied, putting an arm around me, giving me a hug. "I love a good challenge."

"Maggie," Walker called. "I need you to get maintenance. Arthur still hasn't replaced those lights."

She winked and moved on. From across the stage, Brian smiled at me.

"I know who the camp pet is," a girl said.

I turned my head to see who had spoken, then wished I hadn't. Ken was standing next to Paul and Mike, hoping for a reaction. I ignored her and called to Shawna, who had just come in.

"Jenny didn't hear you," Paul said.

"Oh, I think she did," Keri replied. "Hey, Shawna. Don't you think Jenny is the camp pet?"

"She's the camp redhead, that's for sure," Shawna answered.

"Obviously, I'm not Walker's pet," I pointed out.

Keri flicked her long, dark-lined eyelids. Perhaps conflict kept her from being totally bored. "Walker gave you a hard time at first," she said, "something he does with all his favorites. Usually, he doesn't share favorites with Maggie. She likes girls who aren't sure of themselves, girls she can mother. But then, there is that little problem of yours."

"Ease up, Keri," Shawna said.

"So she's adopted you," Keri continued, "made you her project for camp. And Brian is close to sending kisses from across the stage."

I glanced at Mike, who stood silently, his face providing no hint of what he was thinking. I knew my cheeks were red.

Paul laughed. Standing close behind Keri, as if he would hug her from behind, he leaned his head over her shoulder and pressed his face against hers.

I saw Keri's shoulders relax, her body rest back against him.

But the glimmer in Paul's green eyes told me he didn't feel any real affection for her; he was just yanking her chain.

"I don't like Jenny," he said, his mouth against Keri's cheek. "She's not my pet."

Keri turned her face toward his, letting her mouth brush his mouth.

Paul's hands cupped her shoulders and he pushed her away. "You try too hard."

Keri spun around to look at him.

"The girls who are worth it don't try," Paul told her. "They are helpless to stop a guy from wanting them."

Keri's eyes flashed. "Liza was never helpless," she spat. "Only you were."

They walked off in opposite directions. Shawna, Mike, and I stood silently for a moment.

"Walker sure is good at casting people," Shawna observed. "It won't be hard for anyone to believe they're a quarreling couple."

"I don't know why he can't let go of Liza," Mike said.

As much as I didn't like Paul, I knew how Liza could haunt a person's thoughts. "It's not easy when you love someone," I said. "A year is not enough time to get over anything."

Mike's eyes met mine.

"Unless you're acting, of course."

"Of course," he replied stiffly.

"Did I just miss something?" Shawna asked as Mike strode away.

"Like what?"

"Well, you can begin by explaining to me why you just defended Paul, who's being ignorant and creepy. You know, he has pictures of Liza hanging in his room, hanging all around it, that's what Andrew told me."

I wriggled my shoulders at the thought of it-a museum for the dead.

"Paul needs to get on with his life. It's not like he and Liza were the love story of the century. The guy Liza was hot for was Mike."

"So I heard."

"Not that she was alone in that," Shawna added. "How 'bout you, girlfriend?"

"How 'bout me what?"

"What do you think of Mike?"

I shrugged. "He's okay."

Shawna grinned. "This place is just full of actors."

The acting began in earnest shortly after that. Walker required that we all be attentive to the blocking that was going on whether we were in the scene or not. It was slow work as we highlighted our lines and noted Walker's directions in our books-the cues on which we were to enter, or rise, or cross over, that kind of thing.

We dragged through Act 2 with the fairies. Having doubled them in number, Walker had created more parts and a lot of confusion. But the pace picked up when Oberon and Titania-Paul and Ken-began to quarrel. I watched them from the wings, waiting for my cue. Walker folded his arms over his chest, looking very satisfied when Titania finally exited with her fairies.

I waited in the wings.

" 'Well go thy way,' " the angry Oberon said to Titania's back. " 'Thou shalt not from this grove till I torment thee for this injury.' " I began to move.

"Wait! What are you doing, Puck?" Walker barked.

I stood still. "Entering?"

"Has Oberon summoned you yet?" Walker asked. "Has he? He's king. You don't emerge till he tells you to."

I backed up.

"I want you in at the end of 'My gentle Puck,'" Walker added in a milder voice, "and I want you to move close to him. You're conspirators. That line again," Walker said to Paul.

" 'Well go thy way. Thou shalt not from this grove till l-' " The lights flickered, — torment thee.

The lights blinked off. We were swallowed by darkness. Someone screamed, then muffled it.

"What the…?" growled Walker. "Arthur!"

Our only light was the glow of the emergency Exit signs and the strings of tiny floor lights that marked the way to them.

"Everyone stay where you are," Maggie said. "We don't want an accident."

"Brian, find Arthur!" Walker ordered.

"Does anyone have a flashlight?" Brian asked. "Even a small one on a key chain would help."

Two girls seated in the audience volunteered theirs.

"Pass the flashlights toward the center aisle," Maggie instructed.

There was whispering and nervous laughter as Brian retrieved the flashlights, then crossed the stage to the steps that led to the ground floor hall.

Suddenly the whispering stopped.

"What's that?" someone asked, her voice thin with apprehension. "What do I smell?"

"Perfume," a guy answered.

I sniffed and my skin prickled. I knew the scent.

"Smells like jasmine," said another girl.

Liza's perfume. I remembered the weeks after she'd died, packing her sweaters in a Goodwill bag, smelling the jasmine. I had felt as if she would walk into our bedroom at any moment. It was a scent that haunted.

The lights suddenly came back on.

"Nobody move," Maggie commanded. "I'm doing a head count."

The vets exchanged glances-perhaps they recognized my sister's trademark scent.

"Look at Paul," someone whispered.

His eyes were shut, his lips closed and smiling. He was inhaling deeply, as if he loved breathing in Liza's scent, as if he couldn't get enough.

I felt sick to my stomach. Turning away from him, I discovered Mike watching me.

Walker paced up and down the stage, obviously irritated.

"What was the problem?" he asked when Brian emerged from behind the stage.

"I don't know. The power came back on before I reached the electrical room."

"Did you see Arthur?"

"No, but I came right back."

"All of us are accounted for," Maggie reported to Walker.

Placing his hands on his hips, Walker eyed Paul and me, then Keri in the wings with her fairies, then the kids in the rows of seats below.

"It was a nice bit of theater," he said. "We might even incorporate it in our production, releasing a certain scent through the air duct system when Puck does his magic or Titania sweeps through. That said, I don't wish to be entertained by further improvisation. Got it?"

Kids nodded and looked suspiciously at one another.

I wanted to believe it was a piece of theater, but I couldn't shake the eerie feeling I'd had the day I arrived here, the strong sense of Liza's presence. I had thought I came out of my own need for closure; now I wondered if Liza had summoned me.

What do you want, Liza?

To find things for her, it was always to find things. Had someone at the camp heard something, seen something? If I probed, would I find clues that could solve her murder?

"Miss Baird," Walker was saying, "please join us on this planet."

No way, Liza, I answered my sister silently, don't ask me to do it.

I'd hunt for barrettes, socks, homework, and phone numbers, but not for serial killers.

The best moments of Thursday and Friday were spent in the gym with Maggie and Tomas, the three of us working on how to make Puck "lighter than air." Tomas, seeing what I could do, was full of ideas on how to rework the set to accommodate vaults and tumbles. Maggie acted different than she did at the theater. She still worried, and still was unrelenting about getting things right, but sometimes, when we'd clown around, she'd laugh. We even "played hooky" for an hour, going to a nearby store to buy leotards for me. When Maggie heard that Tomas and I would be staying through the weekend, she invited us for dinner at her home Saturday night.

I learned from Shawna that Mike, Paul, and Keri were also staying over the weekend. I avoided the three of them as much as possible Friday and saw them only from a distance walking down High Street on Saturday.

I also avoided the window seat and the bridge and kept the lights on in my room. I slept badly Thursday and Friday night, wanting to close my eyes, but fighting sleep each time I'd feel myself slipping away. Still, I got a few hours each night with no haunting images. By the time Tomas and I were walking to Maggie's house Saturday night, I had convinced myself that the strange events of the first week were simply my initial reaction to facing the place where Liza had died. My second week here would certainly be easier.

Maggie lived in a pretty wooden house on Cannon Street, one block over from High. Its front porch was welcoming with wicker chairs and pots of pink and white flowers. Brian answered the door smiling. "Any trouble with my directions?"

"No," I said, "the only trouble was keeping Tomas moving. He has to stop and look at everything." I turned to my friend. "Next time we go somewhere, I'm leading you blindfolded."

"Okay," he replied, half-listening, more interested now in peering beyond Brian to see what was in the living room.

It was a homey room, though a little too flowery for me, with prints of cabbage-size roses on the slipcovers and curtains. Brian led us through a small dining room and into a square kitchen, where Maggie was stuffing potato skins.

"What can we do to help?" I asked.

"Just enjoy yourselves," she replied. "I've got everything under control here."

Brian placed a tall kitchen stool next to Maggie for Tomas to sit on.

I thought he'd get one for me, too, but when Maggie started talking with Tomas about the dinner she was preparing, I felt a tug on my arm. Brian winked, then pulled me toward the door. I followed him to the living room, though I felt a little rude leaving Tomas and Maggie in the kitchen. I glanced back over my shoulder.

"I never get a chance to hang out with you," Brian said. "Tomas always does."

"Yes, but I'm your mom's guest, too."

"She understands my situation. I think that may be why she invited you tonight. I'm only two years older than you, but you're a student and I'm staff, so I'm not supposed to ask you for a date."

"Otherwise you would?"

He laughed in response. "Sometimes I can't believe you, Jenny! You're as naive as Tomas. You make quite a pair."

"Guess we do."

His brown eyes swept over my face, the dusty lashes making his long gaze soft. His lips parted for a moment as if he was going to say something more, but he simply smiled. I glanced around the room for something to talk about.

"Is that you?" I asked, pointing to a photograph. "Or did Superman get a lot shorter?"

"That's me, Halloween, our first year in Wisteria."

I walked over and picked up the framed picture. "You were awfully cute!"

"Do you have to use the past tense?" he asked.

I laughed. "How old were you?"

"Six, I think." He crossed the room, stood beside me for a moment studying the photo, then sat on the love seat next to the table of pictures, leaving space for me.

I remained standing and picked up another photo. "Your mom. How pretty!"

"That's her college picture. You can sit down and look at them, Jenny."

I did, and he pulled his arm up, resting it along the back of the love seat, conveniently close to my shoulders. I wondered what to do when I ran out of pictures. I wasn't ready to get romantic with him, but I didn't want him to think I never would.

"Who's this?" I asked, pointing to another photo. Maggie and Brian were sitting on a picnic blanket with a child who looked two or three years younger than Brian. There were several pictures of the child, a beautiful little girl with brown hair and blue eyes. I picked up the closest one.

"That's my sister, Melanie."

"Where is she now?" I asked, then wished I hadn't. As I gazed at her face, a strange feeling came over me. I knew she was dead.

"She died about six months after that picture was taken."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"Don't worry about it," Brian said. "It was a long time ago. I was only five at the time."

I kept looking at the picture. With her dark hair and puffy party dress, Melanie reminded me of a young Liza.

"What is it?" Brian asked gently. "You look so-so sad."

"It is sad," I replied, tempted to tell him what we shared. I thought about the way Maggie watched us campers like a worried mother hen. Since Liza's death, I had caught my own mother watching me that way.

I placed the picture back on the table, and Brian reached over and picked up another. "This is my favorite photo of Melanie," he said, laying it in my lap.

"This is how I remember her."

I held the picture gently. His sister was wearing little green overalls with a bunny on the front. She had a wonderful, merry smile and eyes full of mischief, as if she were keeping a delicious secret.

The image grew blurry and I felt tears in my eyes, helpless tears for Brian's family and mine. I blinked them back, but the image still wavered before me, its edges softening and shifting, another image rising up through it, like an object at the bottom of a pond that suddenly clears. The little girl was in a long, narrow box and she was scared. A soft black blanket dropped down over her. I felt horribly afraid. Then Liza stood next to me. I couldn't see her, but I knew it was she. "Don't be scared, Jenny," she said. "I'll help you."

"Jen," Brian said, "Jenny!" He pulled me close to him. "I didn't bring you over here to make you sad."

My eyes cleared; the little girl was smiling up at me again. "How did Melanie die?"

"In a fire. She became frightened and hid in a closet."

My throat tightened. "In a closet?"

"The baby-sitter couldn't find her. She died from smoke inhalation."

I swallowed hard. What in the sunny picture before me had allowed me to see her in a long box-a closet-with a blanket of black smoke descending upon her?

"Have you ever been in a fire?" Brian asked.

"No. No, it must be very frightening."

"You feel so powerless," he said.

Powerless was how I felt now, unable to stop the images that invaded my mind. I had been careful the last two days, but as soon as I let down my guard, Liza crept back into my head.

Was there something real about these images, I wondered, something true about them?

Liza and I used to watch Mom's old films and laugh ourselves silly at one called Teen Psychic. There were a lot of close-ups of Mom's green eyes widening with terror as she gazed at photos of murder sites and touched things that belonged to dead people. In a singsongy voice she would describe the visions she was seeing, images that would help solve mysteries. I wished I could laugh about it now, but I was scared and desperate to believe there was nothing psychic about me and my visions.

I glanced up at Brian.

"Good move, guy," he said to himself. "A girl comes over, you get time alone, and you depress the heck out of her."

I forced a smile. "I like knowing about your family-family is what makes a person who he is. And I like seeing your house," I said, seizing the excuse to get up and walk around again. "Houses are full of clues about people."

"You know a lot more about me than I know about you," Brian pointed out.

"Well, I don't have much to tell. My family's boring."

Another picture of Melanie sat on a desk, and another on a bookcase.

It would be easy to guess that the child was dead, I reasoned, since there were no pictures of her growing older. And knowing she had died, it would be natural to imagine her in a long box-a casket, not a closet-with a symbolic black blanket drawn over her. These images had been triggered simply by my empathy with Brian as someone who lost a sister. And that, of course, was why I had thought of Liza. Liza was not sending me messages from the dead, and I was not "Teen Psychic."

I pulled a worn book off the shelf, Handbook to Acting, and started paging through it as if I were interested.

"How do you think it's going between you and Walker?" Brian asked.

"A lot better than I thought it would."

"He likes your feistiness," Brian said. "And it doesn't hurt that you're new to theater. I know you won't believe it, but Walker is easily threatened by people with talent and experience."

"You're right, I don't believe it."

Brian laughed and swung his feet up on the love seat, sitting sideways, watching me as I closed the book and chose another.

"To understand Walker," he said, "you've got to understand his history. When he bombed in New York, he really bombed. The last show he directed, his big chance, the one he thought would bring him fame and fortune, starred Lee Montgomery."

I turned toward Brian-a little too quickly, I realized. I knew my father had worked with Walker, but I had been too young to remember anything about the situation, "It didn't do well?" I asked aloud.

"Montgomery pulled out. He saw the ship going down and jumped fast. The show sank immediately, closing three days after he left the cast."

I turned back to the bookcase so Brian couldn't see my face. "Are you sure? Did Walker tell you this himself?"

"Walker would never tell me anything he'd consider so humiliating. My mother did, last summer, when Liza Montgomery came here. I had seen Walker go after actresses he thought were prima donnas but never with such passion as he did with Liza. Of course, Liza could defend herself. She dished it back, right in front of the other kids, and wasn't shy about reminding him that he had failed in New York, that he was just some drama teacher in the middle of nowhere."

I winced inwardly. I knew how sharp Liza's tongue could be.

"I don't think she realized what a tender point it was with him. Anyway, my mother, who knew Walker from her grad school days in New York, explained the situation to me. Don't repeat it, Jenny, I wasn't supposed to.

"I won' t."

There was a clinking of silverware in the next room.

"Sounds like it's almost time to eat," Brian observed.

I returned my book to its place, and he rose from the sofa. Just before I reached the dining room door, he pulled me back. "Jenny, I realize I'm blowing my chance with you," he said softly. "I promise we'll talk about all happy things during dinner and after."

We did, and there was a lot of laughter as we discussed high school life from math class to prom dates, even Maggie chiming in with a funny account of her first date. But I felt like a person split in two, one part of me chattering away and putting on a good show, the other plagued by a growing uneasiness.

What had happened between Walker and my father? What exactly had happened when Liza was here? How deep did the bitterness run?

When the evening was over, Brian insisted on escorting us back to campus, even though he was off for the weekend while other Chase students covered the dorms. It took a while for Tomas to figure out that Brian was waiting for him to go inside and leave us alone. As soon as he disappeared, Brian walked me over to the porch steps of Drama House and pulled me down next to him.

"I'm not supposed to date you, Jenny."

"That's what you said before."

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "I didn't think this was going to be a problem. I mean, I'm pretty good at not letting someone become important to me. I have to be if I want to make it to L.A."

"I understand."

He laughed. "How nice of you to understand, since you're the one making it a struggle for me! It would be so easy to make you important."

"Then be careful," I told him.

"I don't think I want to be." He took my face in his hands.

"You know how important the rules are to your mother," I reminded him.

"I heard it's a rule that you have to kiss a girl when you walk her home beneath a full moon."

"The moon isn't full."

He smiled and glanced toward the tower on top of Stoddard. Its clock gleamed in the dark. "This is drama camp. The clock is shining. We'll make it a moon."

He kissed me on the lips. "Good night," he said softly, then rose and walked away whistling.

I leaned against the stair railing. Brian's kiss was nice-as nice as a handshake, I thought. How could I feel romantic when there was so much else going on in my life? I debated whether I should confide in Brian, so he would understand why I couldn't get interested. Not quite yet, I decided.

He was right, the tower clock did look like a full moon. I stood up quickly. The image I had seen Tuesday night, the shattering circle of light, flashed through my mind. Perhaps the image wasn't a moon, but a clock-a watch, for I had felt something being fastened around my wrist. I grasped my wrist as I had done then and thought of Liza's watch being smashed by the murderer.

But it was my left wrist that I grasped tonight, and the left wrist in my vision. As left-handers, Liza and I wore our watches on our right. I sat back down on the steps.

Was this detail a meaningless mistake in the way my mind re-created the events beneath the bridge, or was it true? I tried to remember what the police report said, but I had worked so hard at blocking out the facts, I couldn't recall.

Liza didn't always wear a watch. Maybe the serial killer supplied a watch if his victim wasn't wearing one and fastened it to the wrist on which a person usually wore her watch. Maybe the watch would be a clue to the killer's identity. Was this what Liza wanted me to discover?

Of course, anyone could have fastened a watch on her, then smashed it. What if someone had done so to make it look like a crime by the serial killer? I shuddered at the idea and dismissed it, for that kind of murder suggested a more personal motive. And no one could have hated my sister enough to kill her.

Sunday morning I went to church. I sat in the back and prayed my visions would go away. I knew it was a dangerous thing to do-God has a habit of answering prayers in ways different from what we have in mind.

When I returned to Drama House, I found a note from Tomas asking if I wanted to hang out in town. I changed into a sleeveless top and shorts, slipped some money and tissues in my pockets, then went next door. Tomas emerged carrying his stuffed backpack, like a snail hauling his shell.

"Would you like to put anything in here?" he asked as he adjusted the pack on his shoulders.

"Yeah, and never see it again," I teased.

We spent an hour visiting shops on side streets, then bought two iced cappuccinos and strolled down to the river. The town harbor had a public dock, a rectangular platform extending over the water and lined with benches-a perfect place to sit and sip.

Tomas pulled out his spiral pad and began to sketch. I lay my head back on the bench and sprawled in what my mother would call "an unladylike manner," happily soaking up the late-morning sun.

"Ahoy!" I heard Tomas call out.

I grinned to myself and kept my head back.

"Ahoy!" he called again.

"Are there pirates on the horizon, Tomas?"

"No, just Mike."

I sat up.

Mike waved. He was in a small boat, maybe fifteen feet long with an outboard, painted in the maroon and gold colors of Chase College. He guided the skiff toward the dock, nosing it in, then lassoing the piling next to us.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Just hanging out," Tomas said. "How about you?"

"The same, only on water. Hi, Jenny."

"Hi." I wished his eyes weren't so much like the water and sky. The anger I had seen in them the other night had disappeared, leaving them a friendly, easy blue. Like the river, they made me feel buoyant.

He turned back to Tomas. "What are you working on?"

"Just sketches-boats, docks, houses, trees, whatever I see."

"Want to see some things from the water?" Mike invited.

"Well-" I began.

"Yes," Tomas replied quickly.

But Mike had heard me hesitate. The light in his eyes dimmed. "Maybe another time," he said. "Your sketches could be ruined if they got wet."

"They won't," Tomas assured him. "My backpack is waterproof. I'll tear out a couple sheets and use my clipboard." He rummaged through his pack, pulling out an assortment of things, then putting them back in.

"What all do you have in there?" Mike asked curiously.

"Everything but a refrigerator," I told him. "I'd like to come, too, Mike."

He smiled and I felt that buoyancy again.

Tomas strung two cameras around his neck, then grasped a clipboard and pencils in one hand and his cappuccino in the other. "Ready."

"Why don't I hold your art supplies and drink while you get in?" I suggested.

Mike, looking as if he was trying not to laugh, guided the two of us down the four-foot drop into the boat. We settled onto its plank seats, Tomas in the middle, me at the bow.

"I'm glad I didn't sign out a canoe," Mike observed as we rocked back and forth.

"Next time," I replied.

"Next time I'll let you go by yourselves," he answered, smiling, then tossed us two life jackets. "When I'm chauffeur, I make people wear these."

"How about you?" I asked, when Mike didn't put one on.

"I can swim."

"So when the boat turns over and bonks you on the head and you're unconscious, you expect me and Tomas to save you?"

"Good point," he said. "After all, I am with two such graceful boaters." He put on the orange vest, grinning at me. Then he untied the rope and pushed off from the dock.

"Can anyone sign out a boat?" Tomas asked as Mike started the motor.

"You're supposed to have experience on the water and be connected to the college somehow," Mike replied. "My grandfather was from the Eastern Shore and used to take me crabbing. He lived down in Oxford, which is where the manager of the college boathouse grew up."

We puttered out of the tiny harbor. With each boat length we put between us and the shore I felt more at ease, free from the things that had been haunting me recently. The sun was warm on my skin and the breeze cool, ribboning my hair across my eyes. I drew an elastic from my shorts pocket, leaned forward to catch my blowing hair, then pulled it through the elastic in a loopy ponytail. When I looked up, Mike was watching me.

"She's beautiful!" Tomas breathed.

Mike glanced at him, startled.

"Yes, that yacht sure is pretty," I said, nodding toward the moored sailboat that we were passing.

Mike laughed and Tomas photographed the boat.

"Cool perspective! Jen, can you believe it? There are so many cool perspectives out here."

In the next forty minutes Tomas found heaven: a house with double-decker porches overlooking the river, an old bridge across Wist Creek, an abandoned mill. "I'm going to have enough stuff to draw for the next year and a half," he said, clicking away on his camera. We motored a distance up Wist Creek then turned around and headed back to the river.

"I'd like to stay out awhile longer," Mike said. "You can stay on or I can drop you back at the town dock."

"Stay on," Tomas replied immediately. "I mean, if Jen wants to." Sure.

We sailed past the town harbor again, then two marinas.

"That's the commercial harbor over there," Mike said, pointing toward shore. "They have all kinds of interesting boats, Tomas. See those long ones with low sides and little houses on one end? They're like my grandfather's. They're used for crabbing."

"Can we stay here a few minutes?" Tomas asked.

"I can drop anchor."

"Great! Then I can sketch."

"Is that okay with you, Jenny? You're not nodding off on us, are you?"

I was.

"I'd hate to see you fall asleep and fall overboard," Mike said, smiling. "It would be useless this time of day. The crabs don't bite when the sun's high."

"Lucky for you, I don't, either."

Mike smirked, shut off the motor, and dropped anchor. "Lift up your seat, Jenny, and slide the board beneath Tomas's, then you can hunker down safely."

I did and Mike tossed me two extra life vests, which I placed in the bow to cushion my back. He did the same thing on his side, then pulled his sunglasses and script from a boat bag.

With the motor off it was quiet enough to hear the light scratch of Tomas's pencil, the occasional turn of a page by Mike. I nestled down happily. The gentle rocking of the boat made me feel safe as a child in a cradle. I fell into a warm, luxurious sleep.

I don't know how long I napped, but I had slept so heavily that I couldn't open my eyes at first. I just lay there, too content to stir, and listened to their voices.

"Do you think we should wake her?" asked Tomas. "I sort of hate to. She told me she hasn't been getting much sleep."

"I'm afraid she's going to get burned," Mike replied.

"We could cover her with our shirts and let her rest a little more," Tomas suggested.

"That's an idea."

There was some movement and a bit of boat rocking, then I felt a soft cloth being laid over my legs and another one over my arms.

"Her ankles are sticking out," Tomas reported.

"I'm more worried about her face," Mike replied. "I think I have sunblock. Yeah, here it is. Put some on her face."

"On her face?"

"And her ankles."

"I can't do that."

"Why not?" Mike asked. I just can t.

"Tomas, it's no different from helping people put on their stage makeup."

"Then you do it."

"You're closer to her,* Mike pointed out.

"So switch seats."

"Why? It's no big deal," Mike said.

"You have experience," Tomas insisted. "Switch seats."

There was more movement. "Jeez! Careful."

I'd probably get us capsized, but there was no way I was going to open my eyes, not yet. This was too interesting.

"Okay," I heard Mike mutter, close to me now. "Okay."

He dabbed a bit of lotion on my left cheek, waited a moment, then rubbed it in. He added some more, then rounded a glob over my chin. He spread the lotion across my forehead and down my nose, the way my mother used to, but more slowly. He must have remembered my right cheek and added some there, working it in gently and even more slowly than before. His hand stopped, resting on my cheek. A tip of a finger touched. my mouth, lightly tracing the shape of my lips.

This was how he put on stage makeup? I opened my eyes.

"Oh, hello," he said.

"Hi."

I thought he'd draw back, but he simply pushed up his sunglasses. His face was ten inches from mine and in its own shadow, his eyes bright with reflections off the water. I couldn't stop looking at him.

"I guess you're wondering what I'm doing," he said.

"Urn…" I tried not to look in his eyes and ended up staring at his mouth. "Sort of."

What a mouth! I thought. If he had fallen asleep, I would have been tempted to touch it.

Why wasn't he wearing his shirt? Because you are, stupid, I reminded myself.

I tried not to stare at his muscular shoulders and found myself gazing at the bare expanse of chest between the flaps of his life jacket. I quickly lifted my eyes to focus on his ear. Cripe, even his ear was good-looking! I didn't need this-I didn't need to notice these things about Liza's old boyfriend.

"I have some fairy ointment here," he said.

"You do?"

"Magic stuff, just like Puck's. I spread it on your eyelids."

"You did?"

"As you know, you must fall in love with the first person you see upon opening your eyes."

I stared at him, speechless.

"Oops!" He pulled back. "Wrong stuff. This is sunblock."

I sat up and managed to laugh.

"We were worried about you," Tomas said.

"Redheads shouldn't go out without their sunscreen," Mike added, then handed the tube to me. "You need it from the neck down."

"Thanks."

He changed places with Tomas, and I began spreading the stuff on my neck and arms. "How are the sketches going?" I asked. "I'd like to see them."

The truth was I'd liked to have seen anything that would distract me from Mike. Brian had held my face in his hands; he'd even kissed me. Why didn't I think his ears were cute?

"Tomas wants to stop by the Oyster Creek Bridge to take some photos," Mike said. "Is that okay with you, Jenny?"

Just what I needed, visiting Liza's bridge with Liza's guy-talk about a reality check!

"Why wouldn't it be?"

Tomas looked up, surprised by the snap in my voice.

"Because you have gotten so much sun," Mike answered patiently. "I thought you might be feeling it."

"I'm fine. Thanks for asking," I added lamely.

Surprisingly, I didn't feel much of anything when we anchored by the bridge or slipped beneath its shadow. We passed the pavilion, ringed by the tall, plumed grass, then turned in to the floating docks that belonged to the college and tied up silently.

"I'm going to stay down here and hose off the boat," Mike told us.

"Do you need some help?" Tomas asked.

"No, it's a one-person job."

"Well, then, thanks'. It was cool," Tomas said. "I mean really, really cool."

"Glad you enjoyed it," Mike replied.

"It was nice. See you," I said quietly, anxious to escape up Goose Lane.

Did Mike have any idea how he affected me? I wasn't as good an actor as he, but I doubted he could see through my rocky performance. I probably just confused him, running hot and cold as I did. In the future I'd be more careful around him. As long as I kept my distance and he didn't leam my identity, I was safe-safe from being compared to Liza and getting my heart broken again.

Monday morning Tomas, several strong guys, and Arthur moved the gymnastic equipment I needed. The athletic department had given us permission to keep it at the theater for the next six weeks.

Tomas explained to the cast and crew the changes to the set that Walker had authorized. Walker sat back looking a bit smug, as if the rough time he'd given Tomas at the beginning of camp was responsible for bringing him out of his cocoon.

As before, there would be a waterfall-shredded Mylar lit with stage lights-cascading down the back stage wall. But now a stream would run from its base, and the bridge over the stream would have a balance beam as its downstage side. The vaulting horse, disguised as a stone wall, would be placed near the right wing, its springboard offstage. For one entrance I would appear to fly forward and upward, launched from behind the curtain, then use the "wall" and my arms to propel myself even higher into a one-and-a-half twist.

"How about adding a rope?" Walker asked. "Jenny, can you shinny up and down a rope?" Sure.

"Brian, I want you to check out a sports store and acquire what is needed for decent climbing rope. Arthur-" Perhaps guessing where the rope would be hung, the custodian was slinking toward the exit.

"— we're going to hang the rope from the catwalk. Put it on your list."

"When the ladder comes," he replied, and continued on.

I had a feeling I'd be climbing the rungs to attach the rope, but I preferred that so I could make sure the rope was secure.

Walker wanted to see the blocking we had worked on for Act 2, Scene I.I was wearing a leotard beneath my shirt and shorts and began to remove my outer clothes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Paul watching me. Of course, guys do that at gym meets and swimming pools, but his gaze wasn't the usual curious or flirty one-more like that of a cat, still and silent, observing its prey.

Keri joined him onstage since she, too, was part of the scene. I turned my back on them.

"Show 'em your stuff, Jen," Tomas encouraged me.

I would. I wanted to do both of us proud.

The scene went better than I had hoped. Though we weren't yet expected to be off book, I had spent the rest of Sunday memorizing my lines for that scene. And, as chilling as Paul could be offstage, he did his work like a professional onstage. There was spontaneous applause at the end, which made Maggie smile. Walker frowned a bit and made a few changes that I noted in my script. I was careful not to look at Mike until I was in the audience and he onstage and in character.

Walker reviewed Friday's work on the end of Act 4, then began blocking Act 5. It came to a screeching halt at the play-within-the-play that is performed by the clownish rustics-Walker doing the screeching. Shawna was on top of things, but the other five actors couldn't get straight stage left and stage right, or anything else for that matter.

Walker erupted. "What the hell are you doing?" he shouted.

The kids on stage froze and glanced at one another.

"Don't any of you listen? Do I need to put up traffic signs? If I did, would you bother to read them?" He paced the stage. "Perhaps I should get an orange vest, white gloves, and a whistle," he suggested sarcastically. "Make a note, Brian-a vest, gloves, and whistle."

Brian glanced up and said nothing.

"Did you make a note?"

"A mental one," Brian replied calmly.

"Dumbbells!" Walker exclaimed, turning on his actors again. "You're supposed to play ignorant people, not be them. When I speak, you listen. When I say something, you do it. Is that a difficult concept for you to grasp?"

The kids onstage had drawn together like a herd of sheep.

"Following directions-is this something new to you? You speak English, don't you? Next to you, Shakespeare's ignorant rustics are rocket scientists!"

Well, I thought, with that kind of encouragement and confidence boosting, everyone should be nervous enough to make more mistakes. Feeling bad for the kids, I made a suggestion. My father always talked about understanding the whole pattern of a play's blocking, seeing it as a large piece of choreography. I pointed out the pattern Walker was creating so that the individual directions would become clearer to the actors. I could tell from their faces that they understood.

"I get it," Denise said.

"Yeah, that makes sense," added a guy named Tim.

Shawna gave me the thumbs-up sign.

Walker sent me a cool, thankless stare. To the rustics he said, "We'll work on this after lunch."

We all figured we'd been dismissed early and started gathering our things. Then Walker turned to me. "There are fifteen minutes remaining. Puck, fairy group, Oberon, Titania. Act Two, Scene One. Let's go."

I wondered why we were doing the scene for the second time that morning.

"Brian and Doug," Walker added, addressing one of the tech directors, "I want it run with lights."

I saw Brian's eyes narrow and I realized then what was going on.

"I think that's a bad idea, Walker," Maggie said.

"And I think you're not the director," he replied, then descended the stage steps. "I want house lights all the way down, stage lights up. Doug, who do you have working with you?"

"Samantha."

Walker nodded. "Good. Do it."

I walked up on the stage knowing it was useless for me to argue. Walker was in a bad mood, my suggestion had come unsolicited, and worse, it was a good one. Now he planned to put me in my place and erase the applause from earlier that morning.

I took off my shorts, but left on my T-shirt; it made me feel less vulnerable.

"Walker, we have already discussed the best program for Jenny," Maggie reminded him. "You agreed that incremental exposure was the remedy.

There is no point in doing this."

Oh, there's a point, all right, I thought.

"Places," Walker said, ignoring Maggie. "Lights."

I stood in the right wing, watching as the lighting shifted, then measured my steps back from the springboard.

"Enter Fairies and Puck," Walker directed.

I raced forward and sprang. Flying through the air, propelling myself off the horse, tucking for my rotation-I was focused totally on the gymnastics. Then my feet touched ground and I was in a flood of light, aware of a sea of dark faces below me. Fear clutched my heart. I fought it-it was stupid, irrational, senseless-but it was as strong as ever.

" 'How now, spirits, whither wander you?'" I asked the fairies, my voice thin as thread.

Katie and another girl, who split that particular fairy part, began their speech of fifteen lines: "Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire… "

I tried to concentrate on what they were saying, but my stomach felt queasy. My hands grew moist.

"We do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And we serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green."

My heart beat fast. I took deep breaths, trying to slow it down.

"The cowslips tall her pensioners be, In their gold coats spots you see: Those be rubies, fairy favors, In those freckles live their savors."

My knees shook. I was drenched with sweat. I needed chalk to grip the beam.

" 'Farewell, thou lob of spirits,' " the fairies concluded. " 'We'll be gone. Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.'" The next set of lines was mine.

" 'The King doth keep his revels here tonight,'" I said, pulling myself up on the beam as if I'd never mounted one before. " 'Take heed the Queen come not within his sight.'" I rose slowly from a crouch, my heart pounding.

" 'For Oberon is passing fell and wrath because that she as her attendant hath-' " It was unnerving the way the others watched me, as if waiting for me to slip.

" '-A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king.'" I struggled to keep my focus.

" 'She never had so sweet a changeling. And jealous Oberon-'" A wave of sickness washed over me.

" 'And jealous Oberon-' " I clutched my stomach. My mind went blank. I couldn't even think to call "line," as actors do when they forget one. I began to teeter. I caught my balance then heard a collective catching of breath.

"For heaven's sake, Walker!" Maggie chided.

"All right. House lights."

I dismounted the beam, then grasped it like a stair rail, trying to steady myself. The lights came on. Walker climbed up the steps and stood in the middle of the stage, pivoting slowly, looking us over.

"Take lunch," he said, then strode toward the back stairs. No one moved until the sound of his footsteps disappeared.

I returned to the seats to gather my things, but Shawna already had them for me. Brian spoke to his mother, and everyone else filed out quietly. I left with Shawna on one side and Tomas on the other, avoiding everyone's eyes. When we got outside, I found that Mike had positioned himself at the top of the concrete steps.

"Jenny? Jenny, look at me."

I glanced up, miserable and ashamed, knowing I could never explain my fear to someone who, like Liza, thought being onstage was "a blast."

"It takes a certain kind of person," I told him, "to believe that everyone wants to love you. And I'm not her."

Dear Uncle Louie,

I'm here at drama camp. (Thanks again for your recommendation.) I have a question, one I'd rather ask you than my father. Our director, Walker Burke, knew Dad years ago in New York. Here at camp Walker is quick to criticize New York theater and put down Dad. (Of course, he doesn't know I'm a Montgomery.) Someone here told me that Dad was in Walker's last show-that Dad pulled out of it and the show failed. Could you tell me what happened?

I'm not going to say anything to Walker-l just want to know what stands between them. Thanks.

Jen

I sent the e-mail to my godfather, then took a long shower. I was grateful to Maggie for allowing me to spend lunch alone at Drama House, and I returned to the theater feeling much better. Things seemed back to normal, except that Brian was watching me a lot.

"I'm fine," I whispered to him. "Don't stare. People will notice and I don't need any more attention than I've already gotten."

Walker had decided to spend the afternoon getting the rustics straight. Tomas was told to divide the crew work among the rest of us and proved that he was more savvy about people than he let on. He gave Ken, Paul, and two others flats to paint inside, where they could be supervised, and sent Lynne and three responsible types outside with the spray paint. Two neat, quiet girls were assigned leaf stencils. Maybe he thought Mike and I were friends after yesterday: he asked us to paint the canvas that would cover the vaulting horse.

We worked on the ground floor, underneath the theater, across the hall from the dressing rooms and wardrobe. Sawhorses, drafting tables, and workbenches were spread throughout the cavernous room. There were pegboard walls of tools, shelves of paint supplies, and large rolls of canvas and paper, along with flats and screens that looked as if they had been painted over a hundred times.

After getting the other kids started, Tomas explained the job he was giving Mike and me. He unrolled a piece of prepared canvas, ten feet by five, on which he had chalked outlines of stones to create a wall. He showed us the finished version of pieces that would cover the ends of the horse and how to use varying shades of gray and brown paint to make the stones look three-dimensional.

Mike and I poured our paint and set to work. We talked little and about nothing important, but both the small talk and the silences were comfortable between us, as they were on the boat. I enjoyed the rhythm of our work, dipping and brushing, dipping and brushing. Mike began to sing to himself, snatches of songs. I giggled when a rock song wavered into a religious hymn, then shifted back into hard rock.

The music stopped. "Is something funny?"

"No," I said, but couldn't keep from smiling.

"You're laughing at my voice."

"No, just at you," I told him. "Uh, that didn't come out right."

"No, it didn't," he agreed.

I glanced up and saw his eyes sparkling.

"It's just funny the way you sing, mixing up all your songs. My friend in kindergarten used to sing like that when he finger-painted."

"So am I your friend?"

The question caught me off guard. "Sure."

He must have heard the uncertainty in my voice. "Maybe you'd like to think about it some more."

I didn't want to think about him any more than I already was. I focused on my brush strokes. Mike was silent for a while, then started singing again.

Tomas stopped by to see how we were doing.

"Looks great!" he said. "When you're finished, take it to the drying room next door. You'll see clothesline there. Hang it up securely."

About three-thirty Mike and I carried our canvas to the next room. We lined it up along a rope, each of us attaching an end with a clothespin. Standing on opposite sides of our painted wall, we continued to work our way toward the middle of the ten-foot piece, clipping it every six inches. I made slower progress, having to climb up on a stool each time to reach the high clothesline. Mike waited for me at the center.

"Do you know how many freckles you got yesterday?" he asked when I had attached the last clothespin.

"One point six million."

He laughed.

Aware of being eye level with him, feeling self-conscious, I surveyed the painted rocks, which were on my side of the canvas. "We did a good job."

"Sometimes you look at me, Jenny, and sometimes you don't. Why?"

"You expect girls to look at you all the time?"

He smiled a lopsided smile. "No. But it's as if sometimes you're afraid to meet my eyes."

"I'm not," I assured him, and stared at his neck. It was strong with a little hollow at the base of his throat.

"Higher," he said.

I gazed at his mouth.

"Higher."

But when I found the courage to look up, he was looking down, gazing at my lips, his lashes long and dark, almost hiding the shimmer of his eyes. His face moved slowly closer to mine. He tilted his head. If I wanted to bail out, it had to be now. I held still. Feeling the nearness of him, I waited breathlessly.

His lips touched mine.

How could a touch so soft, so barely there, be so wonderful? He wasn't even holding me. It was just his mouth against mine, light as a whisper.

"Hey, you guys. What have you been working on?"

We both pulled back. Shawna entered the room.

"Walker's going to keep my group till five," she said, "but we're taking fifteen. Let's see what you've done."

"A wall," Mike said quietly.

"This side," I mumbled, stepping down from the stool. I fought the urge to touch my hand to my lips. Had his kiss felt as incredible to Liza? What had made it that magic?

Shawna ducked under the rope.

How had my kiss felt to him?

Shawna studied the canvas, then me. "You sure did get a lot of sun this weekend, Jenny," she said, smiling. "You white people ought to be more careful."

Mike flashed a sly smile over the top of the clothesline.

Shawna caught it.

"What?" she asked. "Did I miss something?"

"I didn't say anything," Mike replied.

Shawna got a knowing look on her face. "Come on, girl," she said to me. "Take a break. I need some air."

I knew I was going to be interrogated but decided I could handle that better than one more moment alone with Mike. I did not want to fall for him-fall farther than I already had.

Shawna and I took the back exit of the building, climbed to the top of the outside stairwell, and sprawled on the grass.

"Okay, Reds, what's going on between you two?"

"You two who?" I asked.

"Don't play dumb. You and Mike."

"Nothing."

"Un-hunh."

"Really, nothing!"

"That's the fastest fading sunburn I've ever seen," she remarked.

I plucked at the grass.

"Did he kiss you?" she persisted. "Is that what you were doing when I barged in?"

"Why would you even think something like that?" I replied.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, smiling. "Maybe it's those glances you keep stealing at each other during rehearsal, or maybe the way Mike murmured, 'A wall,' as if he was still feeling your kiss on his lips." She eyed me. "Whoa! There it is again, that mysterious recurring sunburn."

I bit my lip.

"Why are you fighting this?" she asked.

Because he was Liza's boyfriend and had lied about it. Because I knew I couldn't compete. Because it was scary, the spell he cast on me, the way I felt when he was near.

"He lives in Trenton," I told Shawna. "I live in New York."

"So what's that-an hour and a half by car, less by train? Ever heard of Greyhound? Amtrak? E-mail? I think you're making excuses."

I didn't deny it.

"But I'll play along," she said. "This afternoon, at least," she added with a grin, then mercifully changed the subject.

When she returned to rehearsal I went downstairs to see what Tomas wanted me to do next. Mike must have cleaned up our paints. He and Paul were in the corner of the room, Mike measuring a board, Paul standing a foot away, running his finger up and down the length of a saw. Keri sat nearby, chipping at her fingernails, looking bored.

Brian had come downstairs and was talking with Tomas. I watched them a moment, feeling proud of Tomas, the way he was managing everything and earning people's respect.

"Hey, Jen," Tomas called, "would you bring over a hammer? There's one in the toolbox right behind you."

I nodded and knelt down to unfasten the latches of the metal box. Lifting the lid, seeing that the hammer's handle was buried beneath other tools, I reached for its head, trying to extract it. I pulled back in surprise. The steel felt ice cold. Reaching down to grasp it again, I saw the metal glimmering blue. I touched it and cold traveled up my arm, as if my veins had been injected with ice. My shoulders and neck grew numb, my head light, so light I had to close my eyes.

Then I jerked and was free of the floating feeling, but I wasn't at Stoddard anymore. I stood breathless, as if I'd been running fast. Clutching my side, I opened my mouth trying to breathe silently, afraid to make the slightest noise. I could see little in the darkness that surrounded me, but I smelled the creek and heard its black water lapping against the pilings. I knew I was in terrible danger.

Soft footsteps hurried across the structure above me. I looked up and listened, trying to judge the direction the person was heading. My direction, I thought, panicking, no matter what, it would be my direction.

Step by step I moved forward in the darkness, hating the feel of the swampy ooze but knowing I had to keep on. About twenty feet behind me I heard the muffled thud of feet landing on wet ground.

I hid behind a piling and listened to my pursuer walking in the mud, moving steadily closer. My heart pounded so loudly I thought the person had to hear it. If he or she discovered me now, I'd be trapped.

I bolted, splashing through the shallow water. The person was after me in a flash. I tripped and fell facedown. Tasting mud, gasping for breath, I scrambled to my feet. A distance ahead I saw a wall of grass, tall as com, and beyond that, a lighter, open area. Bright lights shone from the tops of poles.

If I could make it as far as the lights, maybe someone would see me, maybe someone would help me.

Then I felt a powerful blow from behind. Pain exploded at the base of my skull. Every nerve in my body buzzed with it-every second of agony so excruciating, I could not stay conscious. I fell headfirst into darkness.

When I opened my eyes I was in Brian's arms. He knelt on the floor next to the toolbox, holding me, searching my face, his own face lined with worry.

"Jenny, Jenny, are you all right?"

I nodded, unable to speak. The crushing pain at the back of my skull had disappeared, but the memory of it was so intense it dulled my senses and made the present seem less real. Tomas and others working on scenery had gathered around me. Paul watched me with keen eyes. Keri stood next to him, looking as if she'd finally seen something of interest. I knew Mike was next to Keri, but I didn't allow myself to look at him, afraid he'd see how much I wished he was the one holding me.

"What happened?" Brian asked gently.

"I don't know."

"Why did you faint?"

I shook my head, unable to think of an answer that would make sense to him and the others.

"Did you get lunch, Jen?" Tomas asked. "When you went back to Drama House, did you get something to eat?"

"No. I'm sure that's it," I said, seizing upon the excuse.

Brian brushed my hair back from my cheek, his dark eyes doubtful.

"I'm okay," I told him, sitting up, pulling away from him.

He let go reluctantly. Tomas, who had been searching his pockets, leaned over and handed me a candy bar.

"Perfect," I said. "Thanks."

"Why don't I walk you back to Drama House?" Brian suggested.

"No, I'm fine and want to keep working. There's the hammer, Tomas."

He picked it up, then glanced at his watch. "Everybody, let's start cleaning up. It's going to take us a while."

I stood and followed some of the others to the corner of the room where they had been cutting out leaves. Brian, shaking his head at my stubbornness, returned to rehearsal.

For five minutes I picked up scraps of paper, then, when I thought no one was paying attention to me, I walked back to the toolbox. I sorted through it and grasped a hammer, first by the handle, then by its steel head, wrapping my fingers tightly around it. Nothing, I felt nothing, just a tool that was cool to the touch like the others in the box. It didn't turn icy cold, didn't make my head grow light; nothing glimmered blue.

I walked to the bench where Tomas had been working and laid my hand on the first hammer. Just cool, I told myself, but then the cold began to seep through the tips of my fingers. It flowed through my veins and up my arm. The bench's fluorescent fixture buzzed blue. My head grew light. I quickly thrust out my other hand, grasping the edge of the workbench to steady myself.

"You doing okay?"

I let go of the hammer. "Fine."

"Sorry," Mike said, "but I don't believe you."

"I've never been better."

"Better at what? Acting?" He waited, as if he thought I would change my answer. "So I guess there's nothing I can do to help," he concluded.

"No, but thanks."

He took a step closer, leaned down, and whispered, "Just so you know, you're supposed to swoon when I kiss you, not a half hour afterward."

"That's not why I fainted."

"Darn! And I was so sure."

"Our kiss-that was just an accident," I told him.

"An accident? You mean you were aiming for someone else's lips and ran into mine instead?"

"I–I mean the kiss didn't mean anything." "I see."

"Sometimes things just happen," I said. "They happen and don't mean anything at all."

"Really."

Paul called out to Mike then, asking for help in lifting a flat.

"Well, hope you're feeling better," Mike said, and went to help his friend.

I took a deep breath and glanced down at the hammer. I couldn't bring myself to touch it again. My blue visions were becoming like the frightening blue dreams I'd had as a child-bizarre and yet very, very real.

The real "Teen Psychic," I thought. What if I were? What if the images that had seemed so strange to me as a child had been retrieved from other people's minds? Maybe Liza wasn't simply comforting me after those dreams; maybe I really did share her mind and the minds and lives of others.

If so, I must have learned how to suppress the ability. But the visions I had now felt too powerful for me to control, triggered by things that formed a physical link to Liza: the window seat where she had sat, the place on stage where she had liked to stand, pictures of her murder site, and now, the hammer. I couldn't prove it, but I knew beyond a shadow of a psychic's doubt, this hammer was the weapon that had killed my sister.

Chase Library kept short hours during the summer, so I went there directly from the theater, needing a college computer to access newspaper archives.

In every account I read, the facts were the same. The murder weapon was determined to be something heavy, a metal tool with a small blunt surface. The police believed it was a hammer, but the weapon had never been found. None of the news articles noted whether it was Liza's left or right wrist that bore the smashed watch.

At first I was comforted by my vision of the watch on the wrong wrist, reasoning from that small detail that the murderer hadn't known Liza. But the truth was that anyone in a hurry to escape the crime scene could have easily overlooked such a small matter.

I knew what I needed to do-carry the hammer to the bridge tonight and see what images came to me-but I was afraid. I didn't want to feel the crushing blow. Knowing what it was, realizing that I was reliving my sister's death, I felt sickened by it long after the physical pain receded.

As I gathered my things at the library, I realized that I had left my script at the theater. It was five-thirty when I reached Stoddard, but the back door was unlocked as usual, as was the room where we had been working. I retrieved my book from a bench.

Emerging from the room, I thought I heard voices at the end of the hall, but they had a strange, echoing sound, as if the people and I were separated by a very long passage. Curious, I followed the hall, rounding the corner, passing Walker's office, then Maggie's. No one was in sight. The next three doors, all offices belonging to professors, were closed. Then I saw the last door in the hall ajar and strode toward it.

I thought I was peering into a dark closet, but when I heard the voices again, I opened the door wider and saw the outline of a metal stairway. It rose inside the small, square space, four or five steps up one wall, then met the corner and turned, rising several steps along the next wall, continuing to spire up into the darkness, a murky darkness, as if there was light at the top. The steps to the tower!

I was tempted to climb them. The platform above the clock must have been high enough to command a view of both the river and creek. But the voices above me were becoming louder and more distinct. A guy and a girl-Paul and Keri, I realized-were coming down. I didn't want to meet up with them, not when I was alone. I exited quickly and hurried along the hallway. Then curiosity won out. Were they simply enjoying a romantic moment in the tower, or were they up to something? I ducked inside the room from which I had fetched my book, extinguished the lights, and hid behind the open door.

"You're losing your edge," I heard Keri say, as she and Paul walked down the hall.

Paul laughed. "I'm not here to entertain you."

"But you do entertain me," she insisted. "That little mean thing that crawls around inside your brain fascinates me."

I pressed my head against the door, watching them through the vertical crack between the hinges.

"Did you ever think that it might be crawling around in your brain?" Paul asked. "You don't know who I am, Keri. You keep inventing me, trying to make me into the guy you want me to be."

"That's good," she answered sharply, "real good coming from a guy who turned a girl into a fantasy, who made her so perfect in his mind he can't give her up, not even when she's a corpse."

Paul turned away so I couldn't see his face.

"Do you know why Liza went out that night?" Keri asked.

"Why don't you tell me?" he replied. "I know you want to."

"She got a note from Mike asking her to meet him by the creek."

I felt as if someone had just punched me in the stomach.

"If you're trying to turn me against Mike-" Paul began.

"I saw the note," Keri went on. "Liza couldn't wait to show me what he had written. It was poetic. He was counting the minutes till he could meet her by the water."

"Maybe you should have shared that information with the police," Paul suggested coolly.

"I've told you before, I don't go running to teachers or police. It's us against them. I'm loyal-unless, of course, someone gives me a reason not to be."

Paul faced her.

"But I find it interesting," she went on, "that a note Liza would have saved for framing wasn't found on her body or in her room. Someone must have destroyed it before the police could get their hands on it. Was it you?" She stepped close to him. "Was it?"

"Do you want it to be?" he asked, placing his hands around Keri's neck and running his fingers lightly over her skin.

For a moment she didn't say anything. She closed her eyes as if she hoped the tease would become something more, then she pushed him away.

"I just want it over," she said, her voice low and angry. "Liza's dead. Why can't you bury her?"

She turned and stalked away. I heard the outside door swing open and closed. Paul left a moment later.

I emerged from the room, still reeling from my discovery. I had made up my mind: after curfew tonight I'd go down to the bridge. I'd find out what happened when Mike asked my sister to meet him.

At eleven-thirty I climbed out the same window Liza had and followed the lane down to Oyster Creek. I didn't have the hammer with me. After Ken and Paul had left the theater, I searched the scenery and drying rooms, and even the stage, in case someone carried the tool upstairs, but I couldn't find it. I tried the tower, too, but the door had been locked.

Now, having escaped Drama House, I rushed down Goose Lane, then turned left on Scull, which ran parallel to the water. I didn't stop walking till I reached the bridge, afraid I'd lose my nerve. As I had hoped, the waterfront was deserted. I sat down quickly on the bank of the creek, pulling my knees up to my chest, pressing my face against them.

"I'm here, Liza," I whispered.

Nothing happened. My mind felt rigid like my body, locked into a protective position. I took a deep breath, rose, and walked five feet down to the edge of the water. I lay on my back beside the water and ever so slowly let go, as I had learned to do in my relaxation exercises, allowing my shoulders, my elbows, the calves of my legs to sink down into the mud and stones. I cringed when I felt the trickle of creek at the back of my skull-it felt like blood-but I continued to work through Maggie's exercises till my body and mind relaxed.

The bridge above me was lost in darkness. I turned my head to the side and gazed at the creek, at the concrete pilings and the wavering reflections of the bridge's street lamps. The water shimmered blue. I closed my eyes and still I saw blue. I grew light-headed, so light I felt as if I were floating above myself. Suspended in the air, I looked down on a dark body and a glowing watch face. Someone in black bent over the body, drew back, then smashed the watch.

I sat up quickly and grabbed my wrist, but there was no pain, not like there had been in the hammer vision. I felt confused and frustrated. Why couldn't I see who was shattering the watch? In the chase visions my pursuer was cloaked in black and had struck from behind, so I couldn't see the face. But why couldn't I now, when the person was bent over Liza?

I had thought I was inside Liza's mind reliving the events-l knew I had felt the murderer's blow as she would have felt it. Then it occurred to me: when the watch was strapped to my sister's wrist she was already dead. People who have near-death experiences talk about the spirit leaving the body, hovering above it. That was why I hovered in this part of my vision, looking down on the body and the watch face just as Liza's spirit had.

I stood up, my skin feeling clammy and chill despite the warm night. Slowly I walked toward the gazebo, running my hands through my matted hair, brushing the gritty mud from my arms.

At the gazebo I sat on the steps to think. I wondered if this was the place by the creek where Mike had met Liza. Here or the pavilion, I thought. In the pale moonlight, the pavilion, sitting high on its pilings and surrounded by tall grass, seemed its own little romantic island.

I blinked. Tall grass, grass high as com. I had assumed the pilings of my visions were the supports beneath the bridge, but there were pilings beneath the pavilion, too, and the creek washed through the grass and under the wooden structure just as it did under the bridge. I jumped up and ran toward the pavilion, stopping at the grass jungle encircling it. It grew thick as bamboo. I thrust my arms into it, parted the long stalks, and stepped in, then continued to push aside swordlike leaves, gradually working my way through the dense vegetation. It stopped abruptly at the edge of the pavilion floor, where sunlight would end.

The moonlight ended there, too. Step by step I moved into the darkness beneath the pavilion. The ground turned soggy under my feet. I could hear the light lap of water against the pilings and small rustlings in the surrounding grass. As I moved farther beneath the structure, the water began to pool around my ankles. Mosquitoes whined in my ears. I thought I heard something and paused for a moment to listen, resting against a piling. My head buzzed and grew light. The darkness around me glinted blue.

Behind me, twenty feet back, there was a soft thud, a sound light as a cat landing on leaves, then quiet footsteps. The person had found me.

My heart pounded in my chest. I could hardly breathe, my throat raw, my side aching from running. I slipped behind a piling hoping to see something-if not the face, the size or gait of the person-some clue as to who it was, but I couldn't. I heard the person coming closer and closer. I debated what to do.

Instinct took over. I bolted, then felt the sudden movement, the rush from behind. I wanted to pull out of the vision. I wanted it to stop now. But I had to turn around, had to reach for the face of my pursuer, to feel the shape I couldn't see.

I tried to and tripped, falling facedown in the water. Scrambling to my feet, I was too terrified to stop now. I raced forward. A hand grasped me and clamped down hard on my shoulder, fingers biting into me. I screamed and screamed. Another hand clapped over my mouth. The person pulled me back against him so violently the breath was knocked out of me. The blue light faded. The person laughed close to my ear, his moist lips touching my cheek.

Paul.

"Going somewhere?"

I struggled against him, but he held me all the tighter. "Let me go!" I shouted, "Let me go!"

"Not yet."

I kicked backward, striking him in the shin.

"Don't make me get rough," he said.

"Let go, Paul. Now!"

"Not till you tell me what you were doing."

I continued to struggle.

"Tell me!" Paul jerked me around, lifting my whole body, making it clear who was in control.

"I was taking a walk."

"In a swamp?" he replied. "I don't think so."

I stopped struggling, deciding to save my energy for the instant he relaxed.

"I was walking through the park," Paul said, "and saw you duck under here. What a surprise"-his voice mocked me-"our best little camper, sneaking around after curfew! It's not like you, Jenny, being out late like this-it's not like the dear little Jenny we all know and love."

I didn't respond.

"Come on, talk! Are you making a pickup? Did someone leave something down here for you?"

"Nothing much," I said. "And I couldn't find it any-way.

He looked around, loosening his grip. I seized the chance to pull away from him, racing forward, then glimpsing lights through the grass, lights on poles as they were in an earlier vision-dock lights. I crashed through the grass and into a clear area, running toward the college boathouse. From a distance behind me I heard his laughter. Paul wasn't bothering with the chase. Still, I didn't stop until I reached the racks of sculls. Crouching in the shadows, I gazed back toward the pavilion.

Paul emerged from the grass surrounding it and walked toward the street. I didn't know whether he was leaving me alone or setting a trap. He knew the route I'd take back. But if he had wanted to hurt me, he would have done things differently, I reasoned; he would have kept himself hidden so I couldn't accuse him later. And if he had wanted to kill me, he would have done it under the pavilion. I could have lain there for days before anyone found me.

It was an ideal place to murder and dump a body. And I was sure from my visions that my sister had been struck down beneath the pavilion. But that wasn't where the serial murderer liked to do his killing. If the police had discovered her body beneath the pavilion, they would have searched for a different killer, someone from the town or campus. And if they had known about the hammer I found in the theater, they would have focused on the people connected to the camp. I could no longer deny the probability that Liza's killer had known her.

If that person wanted the police to think the serial killer was responsible, then Liza's body had to be transported to the bridge without leaving a trail.

Given that her death was bloody, the job seemed more than one person could handle. If so, there could be two people in Wisteria who knew the truth about Liza's death.

I intended to find them.

So what do you think, Jen?" Tomas asked me the next morning as we waited for rehearsal to begin. "You don't like it," he guessed, fingering a bolt of filmy blue fabric.

"Tell me again. I wasn't quite listening."

He patiently explained a second time how he was going to create a sky for the set by stretching his semi-transparent fabric between the thirty-foot-high catwalk that ran across the front of the stage and the eighteen-foot ridge and waterfall that formed the set's back wall.

I struggled to follow what he was saying, uneasily aware of Mike and Paul standing nearby, as if they were waiting to speak to me. I wondered if Paul had told Mike about last night's incident. It annoyed me that I had let Paul see how afraid I was, though I would have been an idiot not to have feared him in that situation. "So what do you think?" Tomas asked again. I glanced down at the fabric. "It's beautiful. When the lights shine through, it will shimmer like a summer sky. "

Tomas beamed.

"Just one question. Who's attaching it to the cat-walk-besides me?"

"Arthur's getting an extension ladder," he said. "Someone will volunteer. I don't think I'd better-you saw me on the boat."

Mike stepped forward. "I'll help."

"Terrific," Tomas replied. "Ill see if I can find one more person."

He headed off quickly, perhaps wanting to sidestep an offer from Paul.

Gazing upward, Paul surveyed the the length of the high, metal walkway. His face warped into a smile, as if something amusing had occurred to him.

Then he turned to me. "Need some coffee this morning, Jenny?"

"No."

"You look tired," Mike observed.

Paul grinned. "That's the price of climbing out your window after eleven P.M. Yes," he added, noting Mike's surprise, "our own little Jenny."

"Why did you go out that late?" Mike's tone was disapproving.

"Someone sent me a note," I replied, "asking me to meet him by the river."

The light in Mike's eyes darkened. The muscles in his jaw tensed, hardening his face. I gave up the scrap of hope to which I had been clinging-he knew what I was referring to. He had sent the note to Liza.

"You ought to be more careful," he said.

"Yeah, you never know who you're going to meet out there," Paul added.

From across the stage Maggie called out, "Jenny. May I see you a moment?"

"She's on to you, girl," Paul whispered.

I ignored him and crossed the stage.

"How are you doing today?" Maggie asked, resting a hand on my shoulder.

"Good. Ready to go."

"Then what do you think of rehearsing with the stage lights up twenty-five percent and the house lights down about the same? Think you can handle it?"

"I'd like to try."

"I want everyone who is not in your scene to be sitting in the audience. Is that pushing you too hard? We can cut the scene immediately if you start to feel ill."

"Let's cut the scene only if I give you a signal," I proposed. "I might turn a little green, but I want to try to get through it."

Maggie smiled. "I knew from the start you'd be a great kid to work with. I'll tell Walker."

Walker wanted to run the same scene as yesterday since he thought it best to "get back on the horse you were riding when you fell off." The lights were adjusted and kids settled into their seats in the audience. Paul and Keri, as Oberon and Titania, stood in opposite wings, waiting for their entrances.

Katie and her fellow fairy entered from stage left, I from stage right, vaulting, spinning, landing lightly on my feet. " 'How now, spirits, whither wander you?'" My voice came out strong-not with as much expression as I'd have liked, but I was in control. The fairies gave their speech about how they served Queen Titania and I began my account of Oberon and his feud with the queen-the speech that I had blown yesterday.

As I spoke my lines and worked on the balance beam, I became increasingly sensitive to the stage lights in my eyes. It was like watching a sunrise and suddenly having to look away from the brightness. I paused, took a deep breath, then continued on, " 'And jealous Oberon… And jealous Oberon'… Line."

" 'Would have the child,' * Brian said softly.

" 'Would have the child, Knight of his train to trace the forest wild.' " I knew where I was again and carried on, a little shaky, but determined.

The fairies spoke the next ten lines, leading up to my favorite speech, in which Puck tells of all the mischievous tricks he likes to play. We had woven lots of gymnastics into those lines. My first stunt was a cartwheel on the balance beam.

" 'Thou speakest aright,' " I began, " 'I am that merry wanderer of the-'" My right hand had just touched the beam. The stage lights flickered. A beat later my left hand touched. The lights went out. Total darkness. My left leg came around to find the beam but missed it. I slid off, banging my arm against the wood.

"Arthur!" Walker shouted.

"Jenny, are you okay?" It was Brian's voice.

"Fine. Fine." I was angry, not hurt. I should have been able to complete the wheel in darkness. It was a loss of concentration, my own fault.

"Be still. Everyone be still till we get the lights on," Maggie said.

"Arthur!" Walker hollered again. "Brian, get him."

Kids giggled.

"This is nothing to laugh about," Maggie said sternly. "These pranks are dangerous. Someone could get hurt."

The nervous laughter was stifled. Kids whispered. I heard Brian's footsteps crossing the stage.

"If I find out who is behind this. ." Walker's voice resonated in the darkness, deep and threatening. The whispers ceased.

In that moment of silence something dropped. It sounded small but heavy, like a metal object. It rolled across the stage and stopped close to me.

Kneeling, I groped with my hand along the edge of the gym mat and found it. A ring.

The lights blinked on and I inspected the piece of jewelry. It was large with a gaudy red stone, the kind of ring that would be used as a stage prop. I slipped it on my finger. Glancing up, I noticed that everyone was looking at me. Katie, Keri, and Paul. . Shawna and Lynne. . Denise and Mikeeveryone who had attended last year's camp was staring at the ring with troubled expressions. I pulled it off.

"It's from Twelfth Night," Shawna said. "Remember? It's the ring Viola received, the one that Liza wore. We couldn't find it after Liza died. We looked everywhere."

Brian walked toward me and held out his hand.

Knowing that Liza had worn the ring, I gave it up reluctantly.

"Who brought this in here?" Brian demanded.

Kids looked at one another suspiciously. Walker wiped the sweat off his brow, and Maggie bit her lip. Mike's face was grim. No one answered Brian's question.

"I want it," Paul said at last. "Give it to me."

"No," Walker said firmly, "it's theater property. Put it where it belongs, Brian."

Brian nodded, then headed for the backstage steps.

I rubbed my palm, thinking. I hadn't felt anything when I held the ring, and there had been no glimmer of blue during this incident. Nor had there been blue light when I smelled my sister's perfume or heard her voice. These incidents were different from my visions and the last two were witnessed by others besides me. I didn't know how to account for them. Was my sister haunting the theater? Or was there a living, breathing person behind these three events? If the latter, someone among us wanted to rattle nerves.

Perhaps someone suspected I was Jenny Montgomery and wanted to unmask me. Or maybe these pranks were aimed at torturing and unmasking another person, the murderer.

What would Liza's murderer do if it was discovered that I was her sister? Till now it hadn't occurred to me that my relationship to her might put me in danger. I would have to be more careful that no one found out.

Tuesday night I went to bed early. My room, where I had feared having more visions, was now my refuge.

Not that I sat in the window anymore. I stretched out in bed and listened to another of Maggie's relaxation tapes, then read until I fell asleep.

The sound of a bell startled me, pulling me out of a dreamless slumber. It was a repeated, echoey sound, like a bell in a school building-a fire alarm! I had to get up, I had to leave, but my arms and legs felt too heavy to lift. I lay there listening to the bell.

"Jenny, come on! Jenny, please!"

Liza reached for my hand. I couldn't see her, but I knew it was she.

"Don't be afraid," she told me, grasping my fingers.

"But I am afraid!"

"I'll help you," she said, her hand tightening around mine.

"Jenny, Jenny, wake up!"

I was shaken hard. Shawna was tugging on my hand, and Maggie was bending over me, her face pale and glistening with sweat.

"It's a fire alarm," Maggie said, raising her voice above the shrill pulsing of the bell. Sirens sounded in the distance. "We have to get out."

Shawna dragged me to my feet.

"Where's the fire?"

"Don't know," said Shawna.

"May be a false alarm," said Maggie. "But go out the window. Go, girls!"

We climbed through in our bare feet and landed softly on the grass below. Maggie followed us and pushed us away from the house, toward the fraternity, where others were gathering. I saw her mouth moving silently: she kept counting heads.

"That's everyone from our place," Lynne assured her.

Guys had come out of the fraternity and kids from the other two houses were arriving, awakened by the sirens. As the first fire engine pulled up in front of the house, Brian joined his mother and us.

"In the kitchen again?" he asked, and I remembered that there had been a small fire at Drama House last year.

"I didn't smell any smoke," Maggie replied.

They headed toward the firefighters to talk to them. Our crowd was growing larger, not just with students but also curious neighbors who had heard the sirens. Ken stood next to Paul, her face flushed slightly. Paul's eyes roved the crowd. Mike stood apart, watching the firefighters who were circling the house. His eyes flicked over to me, studied me for a moment, then shifted away. Brian was at my elbow.

"Everyone okay here?" Brian asked, addressing me and the other girls who were clustered together, but his eyes lingered on me.

We all spoke at the same time, asking him what was going on.

"It's probably a false alarm," Brian told us. "Did you notice anything odd? Did you hear anyone moving around inside the house or creeping around the perimeter?"

I shook my head with the others, and Shawna burst out laughing.

"Didn't hear anything, Jenny?" she teased. "Talk about waking the dead! From now on I'm keeping a trumpet handy to blow in your ear."

"Did you have trouble waking up?" Brian asked.

"I heard the alarm bell, but it became part of a dream, a dream I couldn't shake off."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I just couldn't wake up."

"Don't worry," Shawna told him. "If it happens again, I won't mess around. Shell be up."

Brian rejoined his mother. Tomas came over and Shawna filled him in on the situation. I sat on the grass next to them, thinking about my dream. I found it scary that a dream could take hold of my mind so powerfully, I could barely break free of it. Even when bells were ringing and someone was shaking me, I had struggled to find my way back to waking life. I felt as if Liza had grasped my mind the way she had clutched my hand in the dream, and she wouldn't let go-not until I found her murderer.

While the firefighters continued to search the building, making sure this was a false alarm, Maggie came over and called all of the students together.

"This is unbelievable," she said, her gray eyes dark with anger. "It is senseless, stupid, and, most of all, dangerous. False alarms make people reluctant to respond quickly the next time they hear an alarm. And when a real fire occurs, thirty seconds can make the difference between life and death.

"It is the policy of Chase College to expel any student found guilty of this kind of dorm prank and to press criminal charges. We know the alarm on the outside of Drama House was pulled. If we find out who did it, you know the consequences. I don't expect it to happen again."

She strode away and everyone exchanged glances.

"Has anyone seen Walker?" Denise asked after a moment of silence.

"No, he lets Maggie take care of this kind of stuff," Katie replied. "She's a natural at lecturing."

"Look, there's that strange custodian guy."

I saw Arthur standing at the edge of the yard, half hidden by a bush, his eyes darting nervously here and there.

"He gives me the creeps," said Lynne.

"Me, too," agreed another girl. "You ever seen how his face twitches? It makes my own skin crawl."

"He's been nice to me," Tomas told them. "He's helped me a lot with setting up scenery."

"Why is he here? He doesn't live on campus, does he?" asked Shawna.

"I bet he pulled the alarm," said Denise. "I bet next time he'll set a fire."

"I bet he's a psychotic murderer," Katie added.

"Maybe he just heard the sirens like everyone else," I suggested.

"Hey, don't ruin our fun, girlfriend," Shawna chided me. "Every camp needs a murderous maniac."

"This camp already had one." As soon as I spoke, I regretted it.

Shawna raised an eyebrow at me, puzzled by the sharpness in my voice. "Okay," she replied with a shrug.

We were finally allowed back in the building. Brian and his mother continued to talk, while the other R.A.s shepherded their campers back to the dorms. As those of us from Drama House started toward the porch, Arthur cut across the lawn. We reached the steps at the same time, and some of the girls shied to the other side. Shawna and I turned to him.