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was lurking there waiting to pounce on her. Her legs felt watery, so she sat on a large, squat pumpkin to wait. The cold wind brushed her cheek; corn tassels hissed like ocean waves. She looked warily about. She was seeing, she realized, through lenses streaked and spattered by raindrops blowing from sunflowers and corn, so she took off her spectacles, felt under the poncho for her kilt, and wiped them. Better, though the world was still a little wavery, as though seen under water.
    She listened; listened. In the orchard she heard the soft plomp of falling apples; wind shaking the trees;
branches rustling. She peered through the darkness. Something was moving, coming closer—
    Snakes never come out in the cold and dark, she knew that. Nevertheless—
    Louise—
    Yes, it was the big snake. She emerged from the rocks of the stone wall, slowly, warily, watchfully. Meg’s heart was thumping, although Louise was not threatening. At least, Louise was not threatening her . But Louise was waiting, and this time there was no welcome in the waiting. Meg looked in fascination as the head of the snake slowly weaved back and forth, then quivered in recognition.
    Behind Meg a voice came. “Margaret.”
    She whirled around.
    It was Mr. Jenkins. She looked at him in complete bewilderment.
    He said, “Your little brother thought I might find you here, Margaret.”
    Yes, Charles would guess, would know where she was. But why would Mr. Jenkins have been speaking to Charles Wallace? The principal had never been to the Murrys’ house, or any parents’, for that matter. All confrontations were in the safe anonymity of his office. Why would he come through the wet grass and the still-dripping garden to look for her instead of sending one of the twins?

    He said, “I wanted to come find you myself, Margaret, because I feel that I owe you an apology for my sharpness with you last week when you came to see me.” He held out a hand, pale in the moonlight wavering behind the clouds.
    In utter confusion she reached out to take his hand, and as she did so, Louise rose up on the wall behind her, hissing and making a strange, warning clacking. Meg turned to see the snake, looking as large and hooded as a cobra, hissing angrily at Mr. Jenkins, raising her large dark coils to strike.
    Mr. Jenkins screamed, in a way that she had never known a man could scream, a high, piercing screech.
    Then he rose up into the night like a great, flapping bird, flew, screaming across the sky, became a rent, an emptiness, a slash of nothingness—
    Meg found that she, too, was screaming.
    It could not have happened.
    There was no one, no thing there.
    She thought she saw Louise slithering back through a dark recess in the stone wall, disappearing—
    It was impossible.
    Her mind had snapped. It was some kind of hallucination caused by the weather, by her anxiety, by the state of the world—
    A thick, ugly smell, like spoiled cabbage, like flower
stalks left too long in water, rose like a miasma from the place where Mr. Jenkins had been—
    But he could not have been there—
    She screamed again, in uncontrollable panic, as a tall shape hurtled towards her.
    Calvin. Calvin O’Keefe.
    She burst into hysterical tears of relief.
    He vaulted over the wall to her, his strong, thin arms tight around her, holding her. “Meg. Meg, what is it?”
    She could not control her terrified sobbing.
    “Meg, what’s the matter? What’s happened?” He shook her, urgently.
    Gasping, she tried to tell him. “I know it sounds incredible—” she finished. She was still trembling violently, her heart racing. When he did not speak, but continued soothingly to pat her back, she said, through a few final, hiccuping sobs, “Oh, Calvin, I wish I had imagined it. Do you think—do you think maybe I did?”
    “I don’t know,” Calvin said flatly. He continued to hold her strongly, comfortingly.
    Now that Calvin was here, would take over, she was able to manage a slightly hysterical