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behind Reena, who would be first on stage. Reena shot her a quick smile, nervous.
    “How’s your stomach?” she whispered.
    “Where’s the bag?” Letitia asked, pretending to gag herself with a finger.
    “TB,” Reena accused lightly
    “RC,” Letitia replied. They shook hands firmly.
    The curtain went up. The auditorium was half filled with parents and friends and relatives. Letitia’ s parents were out there. The darkness beyond the stagelights seemed so profound it should have been filled with stars and nebulae. Would her small voice reach that far?
    The recorded music before the first act came to its quiet end. Reena made a move to go on stage, then stopped. Letitia nudged her. “Come on.”
    Reena pivoted to look at her, face cocked to one side, and Letitia saw a large tear dripping from her left eye. Fascinated, she watched the tear fall in slow motion down her cheek and spot the satin of her gown.
    “I’m sorry,” Reena whispered, lips twitching. “I can’t do it now. Tell. Tell.”
    Horrified, Letitia reached out, tried to stop her from falling, to lift her, paste and push her back into place, but Reena was too heavy and she could not stop her descent, only slow it. Reena’s feet kicked out like a horse’s, bruising Letitia’s legs, all in apparent silence, and her eyes were bright and empty and wet, fluttering, showing the whites.
    Letitia bent over her, hands raised, afraid to touch her, afraid not to, unaware she was shrieking.
    Fayette and Edna Corman stood behind her, equally helpless.
    Reena lay still like a twisted doll, face upturned, eyes moving slowly to Letitia, vibrating, becoming still.
    “Not you!” Letitia screamed, and barely heard the commotion in the audience. “Please, God, let it be me, not her!”
    Fayette backed away and Miss Darcy came into the light, grabbing Letitia’s shoulders. She shook free.
    “Not her,” Letitia sobbed. The medicals arrived and surrounded Reena, blocking her from the eyes of all around. Miss Darcy firmly, almost brutally, pushed her students from the stage and herded them into the green room. Her face was stiff as a mask, eyes stark in the paleness.
    “We have to do something!” Letitia said, holding up her hands, beseeching.
    “Get control of yourself,” Miss Darcy said sharply. “Everything’s being done that can be done.”
    Fayette said, “What about the play?”
    Everyone stared at him.
    “Sorry,” he said, lip quivering. “I’m an idiot.”
    Jane, Donald, and Roald came to the green room and Letitia hugged her mother fiercely, eyes shut tight, burying her face in Jane’s shoulder. They escorted her outside, where a few students and parents still milled about in the early evening. “We should go home,” Jane said.
    “We have to stay here and find out if she’s all right.” Letitia pushed away from Jane’s arms and looked at the people. “They’re so frightened. I know they are. She’s frightened, too. 1 saw her. She told me—” Her voice hitched. “She told me—”
    “We’ll stay for a little while,” her father said. He walked off to talk to another man. They conversed for a while, the man shook his head, they parted. Roald stood away from them, hands stuffed into his pockets, dismayed, young, uncomfortable.
    “All right,” Donald said a few minutes later. “We’re not going to find out anything tonight. Let’s go home.”
    This time, she did not protest. Home, she locked herself in her bedroom. She did not need to know. She had seen it happen; anything else was self-delusion.
    Her father came to the door an hour later, rapped gently. Letitia came up from a troubled doze and got off the bed to let him in.
    “We’re very sorry,” he said.
    “Thanks,” she murmured, returning to the bed. He sat beside her. She might have been eight or nine again; she looked around the room, at toys and books, knickknacks.
    “Your teacher, Miss Darcy, called. She said to tell you, Reena Cathcart died. She was dead by the