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time they got her to the hospital. Your mother and I have been watching the vids. A lot of children are very sick now. A lot have died.” He touched her head, patted the crown gently. “I think you know now why we wanted a natural child. There were risks.”
    “That’s not fair,” she said. “You didn’t have us…” She hiccupped. “The way you did, because you thought there would be risks. You talk as if there’s something wrong with these…people.”
    “Isn’t there?” Donald asked, eyes suddenly flinty. “They’re defective.”
    “They’re my friends!” Letitia shouted.
    “Please,” Donald said, flinching.
    She got to her knees on the bed, tears coming again. “There’s nothing wrong with them! They’re people! They’re just sick, that’s all.”
    “You’re not making sense,” Donald said.
    “I talked to her,” Letitia said. “She must have known. You can’t just say there’s something wrong with them. That isn’t enough.”
    “Their parents should have known,” Donald pursued, voice rising. “Letitia…”
    “Leave me alone,” she demanded. He stood up hastily, confused, and walked out, closing the door behind him. She lay back on the bed, wondering what Reena had wanted her to say, and to whom.
    “I’ll do it,” she whispered.
    In the morning, breakfast was silent. Roald ate his cereal with caution, glancing at the others with wide, concerned eyes. Letitia ate little, pushed away from the table, said, “I’m going to her funeral.”
    “We don’t know—” Jane said.
    “I’m going.”
     
    Letitia went to only one funeral: Reena’s. With a puzzled expression, she watched Reena’s parents from across the grave, wondering about them, comparing them to Jane and Donald. She did not cry. She came home and wrote down the things she had thought.
    That school year was the worst. One hundred and twelve students from the school died. Another two hundred became very ill.
    John Fayette died.
    The drama class continued, but no plays were presented. The school was quiet. Many students had been withdrawn from classes; Letitia watched the hysteria mount, listened to rumors that it was a plague, not a PPC error.
    It was not a plague.
    Across the nation, two million children became ill. one million died.
    Letitia read, without really absorbing the truth all at once, that it was the worst disaster in the history of the United States. Riots destroyed PPC centers. Women carrying PPC babies demanded abortions. The Rifkin Society became a political force of considerable influence.
    Each day, after school, listening to the news, everything about her existence seemed trivial. Their family was healthy. They were growing up normally.
    Edna Corman approached her in school at the end of one day, two weeks before graduation. “Can we talk?” she asked. “Someplace quiet.”
    “Sure,” Letitia said. They had not become close friends, but she found Edna Corman tolerable. Letitia took her into the old bathroom and they stood surrounded by the echoing white tiles.
    “You know, everybody, I mean the older people, they stare at me, at us,” Edna said. “Like we’re going to fall over any minute. It’s really bad. I don’t think I’m going to get sick, but…It’s like people are afraid to touch me.”
    “I know,” Letitia said.
    “Why is that?” Edna said, voice trembling.
    “I don’t know,” Letitia said. Edna just stood before her, hands limp.
    “Was it our fault?” she asked.
    “No. You know that.”
    “Please tell me.”
    “Tell you what?”
    “What we can do to make it right.”
    Letitia looked at her for a moment, and then extended her arms, took her by the shoulders, drew her closer, and hugged her. “Remember,” she said.
    Five days before graduation, Letitia asked Rutger if she could give a speech at the ceremonies. Rutger sat behind his desk, folded his hands, and said, “Why?”
    “Because there are some things nobody’s saying,” Letitia told him. “And they