He looked up and flushed. 'Hi.'
'May I sit with you?'
'Oh, uh, sure,' he stammered and tried to clear a space quickly, knocking his backpack on the floor. It landed with a heavy thud. 'Oh, nooo!' His head disappeared beneath the table, there was a lot of rustling around, then he popped up again. 'Sorry.'
'Everything okay?'
'I hope so.'
'What do you have in your pack?' I asked curiously.
'Stuff. Sketch pads. Pencils. Pens. Chalks. A camera-two of them-color film and black and white. Lenses. They're in padded cases, they're okay.'
'That's an awful lot to carry around.'
'I like to be ready,' Tomas explained. 'You never know what kinds of interesting things you're going to see.
'I guess not.' I leaned closer, trying to see his sketchpad, but he was practiced at covering his work with his arms. 'May I look at what you're sketching?'
He glanced down at his drawing, then passed it over.
It was a street scene showing the buildings across from the cafe, an old movie theater, a Victorian-looking hotel, a restaurant, and a large brick home.
'Wow, you're really good!'
'When I sketch buildings,' he agreed. 'I've always been better with things than people.'
'May I look at the rest of the sketches?' I asked.
He nodded. 'It's a new book. There's just a couple.'
Two of them were of Drama House, one of a tree and patch of brick walk, another of Stoddard Theater from the outside. I admired the way Tomas used lighting to create drama and emotion.
'You know how to give buildings and objects feeling,' I said. 'I guess that's what makes you a good set designer.'
'I love doing art,' he replied happily. 'People look at what you produce, rather than at you.'
I imagined that both acting and athletics were miserable activities for him.
'Thanks for earlier this afternoon,' he went on. 'I know why you interrupted the scene.'
'It was fun,' I said, taking a sip of cappuccino. 'Walker is lucky to have a real artist in his troupe. I hope he figures that out.'
Tomas flushed again and studied his pastry. I began to talk about New York and gradually he relaxed with me. We compared notes on schools and friends and art exhibits we had seen in the city. Finishing our snacks, we walked up and down Wisteria's streets, poking around in shops. Time slipped away and we had to rush back to the meal hall. When we carried our food trays to the table area, everyone else was already seated.
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.
