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her straining bladder. She could hear footsteps behind her, and although it was too dark for shadows, she almost thought she could feel a shadow in front of her, cupping her like a cool hand—and she knew that such shadows didn’t stay silent and passive for long, the way shadows were supposed to. She knew that some shadows gathered and grew, becoming a whole coven of shadows, an unkindness of them—a mob.
    Hey, Vera, where are you going? Are you going to cast some more witchy spells? Are you going to wish for some more people to die? Death is just a part of life, right, Vera? You weird fucking bitch. You
wanted
that to happen to Heidi, didn’t you?
    This shadow had footfalls. This shadow was a certainty now. She tried to gauge its distance or nearness without turning around—no, she couldn’t turn around, for if she turned around she might freeze on the spot, just as one always did in nightmares. And the last time that had happened . . . well, the last time that had happened, all those years ago, it had ended very badly for Vera.
    Keep going,
she told herself sternly.
Don’t panic.
She sped up her steps, clutching the strap of the purse she had slung,
bandolero
style, across her body in the manner she’d learned from living in New York City. She withdrew her apartment keys from the zippered sleeve of her purse, holding them so that the point jutted out between her fingers—a makeshift weapon suitable for stabbing an assailant in the eye, if it came to that. And then she was on the steps of her apartment, practically tripping in her haste to get up them and into the safety of indoors. She let herself in and turned around just long enough to see a man tramping down the street, away from her and toward whatever destination he’d had in mind all along.
    She closed the front door behind her.
You’re a paranoid fool,
Vera thought, now doubled over in front of the door to her studio, tears smarting in her eyes as she turned the key in the lock. In the battle between terror and her bladder, the urgency of her bladder now took precedence.
    After hobbling to the bathroom to relieve herself, she chucked herself onto her mattress, fully clothed, and fell asleep within minutes—a dreamless, stagnant sleep.
     • • • 
    Next morning came early—even earlier than planned, due to the last-minute decision to photocopy the handout—and Vera felt weak and bleary as she prepared for her first class. She had a horrible suspicion that she still stank of gin, though she had given her teeth and tongue a thorough brushing before she left for work. She waited as the girls from her first section began to turn up, in pairs and sometimes in trios; she smiled wanly at each and wondered if she should make small talk, but doing so seemed too forced and pitiful. Better to sit and look busy with paperwork. She adjusted what few notes she’d written on the day’s assigned reading and stacked and restacked her pile of handouts as though the success of the class depended on their alignment.
    When the last girl had come in—Jensen Willard, loping a little from the weight of her giant army knapsack—Vera said, “All right, let’s get started. You all have
Catcher
with you, I hope. I ended yesterday’s class by reading a short excerpt from the first chapter. To put us in the mood of the novel, and because I think it bears hearing one more time, I would like to read the novel’s introductory paragraph again.”
    Vera knew she should probably ask a volunteer to read aloud, but she wasn’t sure she could stand to hear Salinger’s narrative butchered by a faltering amateur reader. Vera knew that she read well. Her voice was one of her strong suits, capable of producing many tones and emphasizing nuances of meaning through its inflections. And indeed, the girls all seemed to pay attention when she read, even though they had heard the exact same excerpt the day before. When she was finished reading, Vera stuck her bookmark in her copy of