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kill herself.”
    God, that felt good! Telling her! Getting it off my back and onto hers. Now I’d done my duty, and I could go home and stop worrying about her. Now it was her family’s worry. They could lock her up or send her away or do whatever you have to do to stop a nutty, fat girl from committing suicide.
    “Oh!” said her mother.
    “I feel bad about telling you this, Mrs. De Luca. She made me promise I wouldn’t tell you, but I knew you had to know. Maybe you don’t have to tell her I told you. And if there’s anything I can do . . .”
    “Yes, you can, Jeff,” said her mother. “Just don’t tell anybody.”
    “No, of course not,” I said, “but I knew I should tell you.”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “I was afraid she . . .”
    Her mother laughed. “She won’t. You don’t have to be afraid. She’s always saying she’s going to kill herself. It doesn’t mean anything.”
    “But . . .”
    “At least once a day,” said her mother, “she says she’s going to kill herself. Usually before dinner. But once she gets some food in her, she feels better. And tonight I’m making stuffed breast of veal, one of her favorites, so she should really cheer up.”
    “She said she was going to do it today, Mrs. De Luca. I was really worried. I’m still worried.”
    “No, it’s fine, Jeff. Believe me. I’m her mother. She doesn’t mean it. But it was nice of you to call, and I won’t tell her you told me. Goodbye.”
    I called Norma and told her.
    “But there’s nothing to worry about, Jeff. You heard what her mother said.”
    “I know. But you didn’t see her when she said she was going to do it. You didn’t see how her face turned purple and the words came out between her teeth.” The panic began twisting up inside me again. “Suppose she really does it, Norma, suppose she . . . I don’t know . . . but suppose she does.”
    “Jeff! Jeff! Stop worrying. You did what you could. You went over to her house. You spent the afternoon there, and you made her feel good. Then you told her mother. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
    “Do you really think so, Norma?”
    “I really do. And from now on, just be nice to her. I’ll try too.”
    “But don’t tell her I told you. I promised I wouldn’t tell you. She thinks we laugh at her.”
    “Of course I won’t tell her. And maybe I can get some of the other kids to treat her better.”
    “I wonder why she said she was going to kill herself if she wasn’t going to do it?”
    “Maybe she does it to get attention.”
    “But how can she even say it?”
    “She doesn’t mean it, Jeff, so it doesn’t count.”
    “No, I guess it doesn’t—if she really doesn’t mean it.”
    “And isn’t it funny how her mother said she was making breast of veal tonight for dinner and that would cheer her up?”
    Norma began laughing and so did I, just as the fat girl said we would.
    That night, I woke up so frightened, it was like being five years old all over again. Things crouched there in the darkness around my bed, and I leaped up and ran down the hall to my mother’s room. Her door was closed.
    The small night-light from the bathroom calmed me down. I leaned, still trembling, against my mother’s door and felt the terrors begin to leave. I moved on into the kitchen, snapped on the light and looked at the clock. Only two thirty. It felt much later.
    What would she have said, my mother? I grinned foolishly. She would have reasoned with me. She would have spoken slowly, logically, with just an edge of impatience in her voice.
    “There is nothing to be afraid of, Jeff.”
    “But I’m afraid, Mom.”
    “What are you afraid of, Jeff?”
    “I don’t know, but I’m afraid.”
    “You can’t be afraid of nothing, Jeff.”
    “There’s something there, Mom. It’s going to get me. It’s going to kill me.”
    “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
    “But I’m afraid.”
    It was always a draw until she put the lock on the door. And it worked. Up