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had black hair and dark eyes too. I always felt sort of pallid and washed out next to him."
     
    "Rosie?" Ted called from the hall. "Brian's ready for bed. Do you want to come tell him good night?"
     
    "I'll be right there," Rosemary called back. "Good night, Sarah, honey. You'd better get started on that ice cream. It's already melting."
     
    Sarah dutifully ate the ice cream, letting Yowler lick the bowl clean afterward, and then, overcome by fatigue, crawled into bed, almost too tired to make the effort to turn off the light. She fell asleep immediately, but despite her exhaustion it was a restless, dream-haunted sleep. When she awoke in the morning, she could not remember much about the dreams, but was conscious of a rancid mental aftertaste, as if her head had been filled with an unpleasant substance.
     
    The house was so quiet that she knew nobody else was up yet. The thought occurred to her that this would be a good chance to peruse the classifieds in the Sunday paper. There was no getting around it, she had to find a job; she couldn't go through a whole year here without any spending money, and she was determined not to lower herself to accepting a handout from Ted.
     
    She got dressed and let herself out of the house into a crisp autumn morning that should, under normal circumstances, have been invigorating. Instead she was struck by the same odd sense of foreboding she had experienced when she and Rosemary had crossed the peak of Garrett Hill and gazed for the first time at the tiny town of Pine Crest nestled in a hollow at its base. "What a sweet little town!" Rosemary had exclaimed in delight, and Sarah had been forced to agree that the neat little tree-lined streets and pitched-roof houses had the charm of a picture postcard designed by Grandma Moses. There had been no valid reason for the words that had leaped into her mind, as sudden and stark as if somebody else were dictating them: This is a frightening place, and I don't want to live here.
     
    Now she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she had put on a jacket, as she glanced around the yard for the paper. As if on cue, an elderly-looking station wagon pulled up in front of the house and a middle-aged woman with short brown hair turned awkwardly in the driver's seat to dump a newspaper out the window. It didn't make it as far as the yard, and landed with a slapping sound on the sidewalk
     
    Sarah moved to retrieve it, and the woman called, "Sorry about that! I'll never make it to the majors!"
     
    "Don't worry about it," Sarah responded. The woman's round, pleasant face looked familiar, and she knew immediately who she must be. "Are you Charlie's mother?"
     
    "Yes, I'm Lola Gorman," the woman said. "I'm filling in for Charlie today, but he's going to have to find himself a substitute pretty quickly, because I work on the weekdays and don't have time for this. The doctor said it will be at least three months before he can throw papers again."
     
    "What happened?" Sarah asked in surprise. "I just saw him last night!"
     
    "He was leaving the carnival and tripped coming down the steps in front of the school," Mrs. Gorman told her. "In trying to break his fall, he broke his right wrist."
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    At school on Monday Sarah found herself the object of more attention than she had received since her arrival at Pine Crest. Instead of the sensation that she was invisible, she felt as if there were a neon sign on her forehead that caused all eyes automatically to turn in her direction. It wasn't exactly as if she were engulfed in friendliness. Students whose fortunes she had told greeted her cautiously (except for Bucky Greeves, who averted his eyes and charged past her as if she were Typhoid Mary). But at least there was an obvious awareness of her existence, which was more than she had encountered before. And, better than that, when she stopped at her locker to do a book exchange midway through the morning, she found Eric Garrett