I looked around for a place to sit. Keri's black-and-blond hair made her easy to spot in a crowd. She raised her head, saw Tomas and me, then leaned close to Mike, whispering something. He glanced up, then looked away. Just then Shawna held up a fork with a napkin stuck on its end and waved it like a flag.
"Come on, Tomas," I said.
"You sure?"
"About what?" I asked, though I knew what he meant and wasn't sure.
"That I'm invited, too."
"Of course you are."
"It's all girls," he observed.
"Lucky you!"
Tomas got an earful at dinner. The girls were annoyed because Maggie had announced that those of us who lived in Drama House would read together in the common room that evening.
"She says she wants to build camaraderie," Shawna said.
"Yeah, right. She wants to make sure we do our homework," Denise observed.
Several girls had already made plans to sneak over to the frats-not that we were supposed to visit unchaperoned.
"You guys, we've got to speed-read," one of them said.
Back at Drama House we tried, but Maggie wouldn't let us. Every time we rushed, she told us to slow down, explaining why this or that line was particularly meaningful. We lost more time than we gained. Two and a half hours later, just thirty minutes before curfew, we finished.
Keri and a new girl went immediately to Lynne's room, which had a first floor window, an easier exit than the fire escape. Shawna waited for me outside Lynne's door.
"Want to go with us?" she asked.
"Not tonight, thanks."
I returned to my room, turned on the bedside lamp, and carried a sketchpad belonging to Tomas to the window seat. Sitting down, I pulled my legs up on the bench and opened the spiral-bound book. Tomas had said that most of the drawings were done in New York. On the first page I discovered the carousel in Central Park, which Liza and I had ridden about a million times. I continued to turn the pages, feeling a twinge of home-sickness-a park bench and street lamp, a greengrocer's striped awning and boxes of fruit, St. Bartholomew's Church. Then I found myself in Wisteria.
All three drawings were of the bridge over Oyster Creek. I studied one, tracing with my finger the dark lines of its pilings. I began to feel light-headed.
The moonlit paper turned a cool silvery blue. The image of the bridge swam before my eyes like a watery reflection.
It was happening again, the same strange experience that I'd had last night and in the theater. Frightened, I tried to pull back, tried to pull out of it. My muscles jumped, my head jerked. I felt wide awake and relieved that I could focus again. But when I looked around, I wasn't in my room.
Oyster Creek Bridge stretched above me. I heard a car drive over it, its wheels whining on the metal grating, the pitch rising, then dropping away.
Silence followed, a long, ominous silence.
"Liza," I whispered, "are you there? Liza, are you making this happen? Help me-I'm scared."
The image of the bridge dissolved. I could see nothing now, nothing but darkness with an aura of blue, but I could sense things moving around me. The air was teeming with words I couldn't discern-angry words and feelings worming in the blackness.
I felt something being fastened around my wrist. I didn't know who was doing it or why and tried to pull my hand away. My arms and legs wouldn't respond.
"Help me! Help me, please."
The words stayed locked inside me. I tried to move my lips, but I had no voice.
Then a pinpoint of light broke through the darkness. I moved toward the light, and it grew larger and radiant as the sun. But something stirred in the darkness behind me and I quickly turned back. I saw another light, a smaller, dimmer image, like the reflected light of the moon. Suddenly there was the sound of breaking glass. The moon shattered.
I blinked and looked around. I was back in my room at Drama House, and the moon was in one piece high in the sky, shining down on a mere sketch of the bridge.
I clutched the art pad till its spiral bit into my fingers. What was happening to me?
When I had the blue dreams as a child, I was always asleep, but these visions were invading my waking hours. If I was awake, they had to be daydreams, imaginings about the place where Liza had died. And yet they came unsummoned like nightmares-dreams I couldn't control.
Now, more than ever, I needed Liza here to comfort me. And yet, it was the memory of her that gave these visions their terrifying life.
Fear of slipping into another nightmarish vision made it" difficult for me to fall asleep that night, but once I did, I slept solidly and could not remember any dreams when I awoke Wednesday morning. I walked to the meal hall with Shawna and Lynne, who reported that last night's adventure had been pretty dull. The girls had simply stood at a window of one of the frats and talked for a while to the guys.
In the middle of her analysis of this year's selection of guys, Shawna suddenly stopped and pointed to a group of kids clustered around the back door of Stoddard. "They posted the cast. Come on!"
She and Lynne rushed down the path. Tomas, who had been standing at the back of the crowd of campers, hurried toward me, grinning.
"You did it, Jenny. You did it! Congratulations! I knew you would get the part."
"Part-what part?"
"Puck," he said.
"As understudy, you mean." Please let that be what he means, I thought.
"No, no, you're it," he announced happily. "Isn't that great?"
"Yeah, real great… if you like a fairy that looks nauseated, sweats profusely, and speaks in a squeaky voice. I have to talk to Walker."
"Jenny," Lynne called to me, "you're Puck."
"Way to go, Reds!" Shawna hollered.
"I'm Hermia," Lynne called. "Shawna is Peter Quince, the director of the rustics."
"Congrats!" I turned to Tomas. "Did you get a part?"
"Not even understudy," he said with relief. "I'm head of scenery and props. This is going to be great. Want to eat? I sure do."
"You go ahead. There's something I have to take care of. Tell Shawna and Lynne I'll catch up with you at the theater."
Tomas walked on happily and I retreated to the porch of Drama House. From there I watched the four houses empty out. When it looked as if everyone had seen the posting and gone on to breakfast, I headed back to Stoddard. At the door I stopped to check the list. Mike had gotten the role of the lover Demetrius, Paul was Oberon, the jealous king of the fairies, and Keri, his queen, Titania. I-under my new "stage name," Jenny Baird-was listed next to Puck. Liza would have been astonished.
When I entered the building I heard voices coming from a distance down the hall. One of them, Walker's, bristled with irritation.
"You've always got an excuse."
"I asked for a ladder," came the quiet reply. "Asked for it last Friday. When I get it, I'll do the job."
"I want it done now, Arthur."
I followed the voices past a series of doors marked Women's Dressing Room, Wardrobe, and Props, and reached the corner of the building, where the hall made a right-angle turn. Rounding the bend, I came upon Walker standing in an office doorway, his hands on his hips, a scowl on his face. He was talking to a man whose streaky hair was either blond turning gray or gray turning yellowy white. His veined hands had a slight tremor. Suddenly aware of me, he glanced back nervously.
"You don't need a ladder to get to the catwalk," Walker continued. "I told you before, there are rungs on the wall."
I tried to imagine this fragile man climbing the rungs to a narrow walkway hanging thirty feet above the stage. I had seen custodians like him before: tired, emotionally worn men just trying to get to the end of each day.