glistening with sweat.
'It's a fire alarm,' Maggie said, raising her voice above the shrill pulsing of the bell. Sirens sounded in the distance. 'We have to get out.'
Shawna dragged me to my feet.
'Where's the fire?'
'Don't know,' said Shawna.
'May be a false alarm,' said Maggie. 'But go out the window. Go, girls!'
We climbed through in our bare feet and landed softly on the grass below. Maggie followed us and pushed us away from the house, toward the fraternity, where others were gathering. I saw her mouth moving silently: she kept counting heads.
'That's everyone from our place,' Lynne assured her.
Guys had come out of the fraternity and kids from the other two houses were arriving, awakened by the sirens. As the first fire engine pulled up in front of the house, Brian joined his mother and us.
'In the kitchen again?' he asked, and I remembered that there had been a small fire at Drama House last year.
'I didn't smell any smoke,' Maggie replied.
They headed toward the firefighters to talk to them. Our crowd was growing larger, not just with students but also curious neighbors who had heard the sirens. Ken stood next to Paul, her face flushed slightly. Paul's eyes roved the crowd. Mike stood apart, watching the firefighters who were circling the house. His eyes flicked over to me, studied me for a moment, then shifted away. Brian was at my elbow.
'Everyone okay here?' Brian asked, addressing me and the other girls who were clustered together, but his eyes lingered on me.
We all spoke at the same time, asking him what was going on.
'It's probably a false alarm,' Brian told us. 'Did you notice anything odd? Did you hear anyone moving around inside the house or creeping around the perimeter?'
I shook my head with the others, and Shawna burst out laughing.
'Didn't hear anything, Jenny?' she teased. 'Talk about waking the dead! From now on I'm keeping a trumpet handy to blow in your ear.'
'Did you have trouble waking up?' Brian asked.
'I heard the alarm bell, but it became part of a dream, a dream I couldn't shake off.'
He frowned. 'What do you mean?'
'I just couldn't wake up.'
'Don't worry,' Shawna told him. 'If it happens again, I won't mess around. Shell be up.'
Brian rejoined his mother. Tomas came over and Shawna filled him in on the situation. I sat on the grass next to them, thinking about my dream. I found it scary that a dream could take hold of my mind so powerfully, I could barely break free of it. Even when bells were ringing and someone was shaking me, I had struggled to find my way back to waking life. I felt as if Liza had grasped my mind the way she had clutched my hand in the dream, and she wouldn't let go-not until I found her murderer.
While the firefighters continued to search the building, making sure this was a false alarm, Maggie came over and called all of the students together.
'This is unbelievable,' she said, her gray eyes dark with anger. 'It is senseless, stupid, and, most of all, dangerous. False alarms make people reluctant to respond quickly the next time they hear an alarm. And when a real fire occurs, thirty seconds can make the difference between life and death.
'It is the policy of Chase College to expel any student found guilty of this kind of dorm prank and to press criminal charges. We know the alarm on the outside of Drama House was pulled. If we find out who did it, you know the consequences. I don't expect it to happen again.'
She strode away and everyone exchanged glances.
'Has anyone seen Walker?' Denise asked after a moment of silence.
'No, he lets Maggie take care of this kind of stuff,' Katie replied. 'She's a natural at lecturing.'
'Look, there's that strange custodian guy.'
I saw Arthur standing at the edge of the yard, half hidden by a bush, his eyes darting nervously here and there.
'He gives me the creeps,' said Lynne.
'Me, too,' agreed another girl. 'You ever seen how his face twitches? It makes my own skin crawl.'
'He's been nice to me,' Tomas told them. 'He's helped me a lot with setting up scenery.'
'Why is he here? He doesn't live on campus, does he?' asked Shawna.
'I bet he pulled the alarm,' said Denise. 'I bet next time he'll set a fire.'
'I bet he's a psychotic murderer,' Katie added.
'Maybe he just heard the sirens like everyone else,' I suggested.
'Hey, don't ruin our fun, girlfriend,' Shawna chided me. 'Every camp needs a murderous maniac.'
'This camp already had one.' As soon as I spoke, I regretted it.
Shawna raised an eyebrow at me, puzzled by the sharpness in my voice. 'Okay,' she replied with a shrug.
We were finally allowed back in the building. Brian and his mother continued to talk, while the other R.A.s shepherded their campers back to the dorms. As those of us from Drama House started toward the porch, Arthur cut across the lawn. We reached the steps at the same time, and some of the girls shied to the other side. Shawna and I turned to him.
'Don't trust anyone,' Arthur said softly. 'Not anyone.'
Walker must have been told what happened before rehearsal the next morning, but he didn't bring it up. Katie was right: Maggie got stuck with the disciplinary stuff. Given that everyone was short on sleep, rehearsal went amazingly well. The play had been blocked in its entirety, and Walker was talking about our getting off book-getting our lines down-by next week.
During our midmorning break I went downstairs to return a relaxation tape to Maggie and get the next one in the series. Finding her office door closed, I raised my hand to knock, then heard someone speaking.
'You're blowing this way out of proportion,' Brian said.
'I don't think so,' Maggie replied coolly. 'I think it's rather important that a mother be able to trust her son.
'But there was no point in telling you until-' 'It was too late?' she suggested.
'Don't put words in my mouth!'
'Brian, how can I trust that you're not-' 'You just have to,' he told her. 'I'm better at these things than you are. Let me handle the situation, Mom, okay? Okay?'
'She won't,' a hushed voice interjected.
I jumped at its closeness. Arthur seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.
'Those two are always fighting,' he said, his jaw quickly thrusting out and retracting like a turtle's.
'Parents and kids do,' I replied quietly.
'They make me jittery,' he went on. 'People like that, you don't know what they're going to do.'
'What do you mean?'
'People like that just go off suddenly,' he said. 'I've seen it happen.'
I wondered if Arthur knew of some real trouble between Maggie and Brian or if he was projecting on them his own uneasy state of mind.
'Arthur, last night, when we were returning to Drama House, why did you tell us not to trust anyone?'
He didn't answer, just chewed a square yellow fingernail. His clothes smelled smoky. Farther down the hall was the door to the tower. I reasoned that he had slipped in there to have a cigarette, then emerged and surprised me. He probably knew all the nooks and crannies of the theater. According to my mother, it isn't the CIA who knows the secrets of the world, but building custodians and hairdressers.
'Have you worked at Stoddard long?' I asked.
