when-and that over the next few days Maggie and I would work on the gymnastic details. She had also volunteered to help with my stage fright, teaching me relaxation exercises and pacing me through extra rehearsals in which she'd expose me to increments of stage lighting in a gradually darkened theater.
Rehearsal ran late that day and was followed quickly by dinner, then a showing of The Tempest. Each Wednesday evening was Movie Night during which we'd watch and discuss a film of a Shakespearean production.
After the movie I hung out with Shawna and two other new girls in her cozy room beneath the eaves. Everything was fine until ten o'clock, when I returned to my room.
For the first time since early in the day I was alone and had the opportunity to think about the strange visions I'd had the last two nights. I found myself glancing around anxiously and turning on lights, not just the bedside one, but the overhead and the desk lamp as well. I didn't want any blue shadows tonight.
I pulled down the shades, then drew the curtains over them. It made the room stuffy, but I felt less vulnerable with the windows covered, as if I could seal the opening through which thoughts of Liza entered my mind. It was eerie the way the visions occurred when I sat in the window where she would have sat and stood on the stage where she would have stood.
I walked restlessly about my room, then tried to read. At ten-twenty I knocked on Maggie's door.
'Jenny. Hello,' Maggie said, quickly checking me over the way my own mother would have, making sure there was no physical emergency. 'Is anything wrong?'
'No, but I'm feeling kind of jumpy. May I go out for a walk? I know it's past curfew, but I'll stay close.'
'Come in a moment,' Maggie said, stepping aside.
I was reluctant. Come on.
I entered the room. It was extremely neat, her bedspread turned down just so, the curtains pulled back the exact same width at each window, all the pencils on her desk sharpened and lined up. But Maggie's pink robe was a bit ratty, the way my mother's always was, making me feel more comfortable with her. She gestured to a desk chair, then seated herself on the bed a few feet away.
'Are you worried about your role in the play?' she asked.
What could I say? No, I'm worried about my dead sister haunting me. 'Sort of.'
'Well get you over the stage fright, Jenny, truly we will. Tell me, do you remember how it started?'
'How?' I repeated.
'Or maybe when,' she suggested.
'I don't know-l just always had it, at least as far back as kindergarten. I was supposed to recite a nursery rhyme for graduation, 'Little Bo Peep.' We have a video of me standing silently on stage, my mortarboard crooked, the tassel hanging in my face, my eyes like those of a deer caught in headlights.'
She laughed. 'Oh, my!'
'Why do you ask?'
'I was looking for a clue as to why stage fright happens to you. Psychologists say that performance anxiety is often rooted in unhappy childhood experiences, such as rejection by one's parents, or perhaps physical or verbal abuse by those who are close to the child.'
'I wasn't rejected or abused,' I said quickly. 'Nothing terrible has ever happened to me.' Till last summer, I added silently.
She smoothed the bedcover with her hand. 'Sometimes memories of traumatic events can be repressed, so that the individual doesn't consciously remember those events, and therefore doesn't know why she is reacting to a situation that is similar in some way.'
'I don't think that's it,' I said politely.
'Let me give you an example,' Maggie continued. 'A child is wearing a certain kind of suntan lotion. That day she watches someone drown at the beach. Years later she happens to buy the same brand of lotion. She puts it on and finds herself paralyzed with fear. She doesn't know why, but she can't go on with whatever she planned to do at that moment. The smell has triggered the feelings of the traumatic event she has long since repressed. Only by remembering the event, understanding what has triggered such an extreme response, can she overcome it.'
I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable with the psychological talk. 'Repressed memory isn't my problem,' I told her. 'But I will try the relaxation exercises you mentioned.'
'And the incremental exposure.'
'That, too.'
She smiled agreeably. 'Still need a walk?'
'Yeah.'
'Stay on this block within the area of the four houses we're occupying. It's perfectly safe, but I'm an old worrywart. Check in with me in twenty minutes, all right?'
I nodded. 'Thanks.'
For the first few minutes I sat on the front steps of Drama House and gazed at the night sky. Across the road the tall tower on Stoddard cut a dark pattern out of the glittering sky, its clock glowing like a second moon.
I walked up and down the block, then circled Drama House, curious to see my room from the outside. Just as I reached the back of the house, I heard a noise from the fraternity next door, a grunt, then a thud, like a fall that had been muffled by grass. A guy swore softly. I peered around the lumpy trunk of an old cherry tree at the same time that Mike, standing by a window of the frat, turned to look over his shoulder. He grimaced when he saw me.
Maybe he thought I'd mind my own business and walk on, for a moment later he checked to see if I was still there and grimaced again. I wasn't moving; I wanted to know what was going on.
He threw a stone against a second-floor window and someone raised the shade. 'I need your help,' Mike called quietly.
He waited-I guessed for his helper to come down-stairs-and looked back over his shoulder a third time.
'Still here,' I said.
The light in the first-floor room went on. The shade rolled up-it was the guys' bathroom. Maybe I shouldn't be looking, I thought, but of course I did. A stubborn window screen was yanked up.
'Ready?' I heard Mike ask the guy inside, then he leaned over, grunting and pulling. I stepped to the right of the tree to get a better view and saw a heap of a person on the ground, then a head come up above a set of shoulders as Mike heaved him onto the windowsill.
'Got a good hold?' Mike asked. 'On the count of three. One, two-' In the bathroom light I saw Paul's head, then torso go over the window frame.
'Glad he's not any heavier,' the guy inside said, tugging on the screen.
'Splash some cold water on his face,' Mike instructed, 'and let him stay in the bathroom for a while.'
The shade was yanked down from the inside, and Mike turned away from the window. He seemed to be debating what to do, then strolled over to me.
'Out for a walk?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'I guess you know it's past curfew.'
'I have permission,' I said. 'What about you?'
He grinned. 'I don't.'
'What happened to Paul?'
'Oh, nothing too bad.'
'Nothing too bad like what?' I asked.
Mike gestured toward the tree. 'Want to sit down?'
Under a tree, alone with him in the moonlight? I wasn't sure.
'You climb trees, don't you?' he persisted. 'You must if you're a gymnast.'
The first strong limb was about four feet off the ground. I hoisted myself onto it-Mike was going to help me but thought better of it. Then I climbed up to a limb that grew in the opposite direction, about seven feet high. Mike
