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stiff? Like plaster? Or soft like a bedroll? But Emlyn felt too awful to ask.
    “Anyway, the guard followed us,” said Jack. “It was a kick. I never had anybody suspect me of doing something bad before.”
    “What would you have done if an alarm had gone off?” Emlyn asked Maris.
    Maris shrugged. “Nothing. I’d have said, ‘Oops, bumped into it, didn’t I?’”
    Maris had no fear, because Maris did not consider any of this wrong. You aren’t afraid of using the stairs or drinking from the water fountain. So why would you be afraid of touching a mummy? Just because it was in a museum behind Plexiglas and had guards?
    So why am I full of fear? thought Emlyn.
    “Aw, Em. You just took it way too seriously,” said Jack. “It’s a joke, and it’ll work or it won’t.”
    Maris put in, “Donovan says another group of seniors wants to hang a pair of kayaks up there, stuffed with dummies of the vice principal and the principal as rowers.”
    “That’s not funny,” said Jack scornfully. “That’s not even difficult. Kayaks don’t weigh a thing.”
    “Neither do mummies,” pointed out Maris.
    “Yeah, but the mummy is so cool. It’ll look so weird, swaying up there in the wind. We want lots of publicity for our class prank. A mummy is definitely the way to go. We get the mummy up there and call the TV station.”
    Amaral-Re. Princess.
    Hanging on a cord, TV stations mocking her, students pointing and hooting, her dignity destroyed.
    “Listen, Emlyn,” said Maris. “We’ve made our plans. We’ve decided to meet tomorrow after practice. I’m in the play, and rehearsal ends around four thirty. Lovell has a soccer game, but it’s home, she’ll be done by five. Jack has soccer practice, he’ll be done at quarter of five, and Donovan’s out of work usually at six, but he’s going to leave at five. We have to figure out a strategy. Now. What about you?”
    The other four equaled “we.”
    Emlyn was “what about you?”
    It might mean simply that Emlyn had not committed herself and the others had. But it might mean Emlyn would remain an outsider. If they or she were caught, the four who were “we” would stick together, and the one who was “what about you?” would be left to hang. As it were.
    Jack ticked his fingers to make a list. “We have to figure out how to get into the museum. How to get the mummy out. Where to keep it till we hang it. How to get it into the high school and up into the bell tower.”
    Is Amaral-Re it or her? thought Emlyn. If the mummy is an it , then it’s nothing but dried-up old history held together with bandages. But if Amaral-Re is her , then she is a girl, a beautiful girl whose family loved her enough to try to give her eternity.
    “There are magic spells written on her linens,” said Emlyn.
    Maris shouted with laughter. “Emlyn, of all people! I would never have suspected you of worrying about ancient curses! I thought you were the most sophisticated of us, and here you’re the most babyish.”
    They had stung her so many times now she felt as if she had walked into a wasps’ nest. Pretty soon she would go into respiratory failure. “You guys are way ahead of me,” she said. Her voice shook. She pretended to clear her throat, as if she were coming down with something.
    Jack patted her kindly.
    Maris looked amused. “Tomorrow, then, Emlyn?” Maris had not asked whether Emlyn was busy or when she would wrap up her sport or activity or job. “Under the two maples if the weather’s good,” said Maris crisply, “McDonald’s if it’s not.”
    Theirs was a city school, every inch of ground used for playing fields. There were few corners of free grass and only two trees. The maples were glorious, especially now that it was October. There might be other kids sitting beneath them, watching a practice or talking, but probably not. It was getting cold for sitting on the ground. The maples were a good choice.
    McDonald’s, however, a half block away, had been