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dressed quickly, putting on a pair of old jeans and a
short-sleeved blouse. Before I went downstairs, I
looked up at the attic. I half expected she would be
peering out.
I started toward it, thinking I would just open
the door and tell her quickly not to worry, but the
moment my foot touched the first step, it creaked so
loudly I was sure I had alerted my mother below. I
froze, listened, then turned quickly and hurried down
the stairs, thinking there was no sense in taking any
risk when I would be free to move about in a short
while.
"I'm glad you wanted to stay home today," my
mother told me when we both sat at the table. "I was
worried about not having time to spend with you after
all this. It's good for you to catch your breath before
going back into the fish bowl. That's what it's going to
feel like for a while. Once your classmates realize you
don't know all that much more about it than they do,
they'll stop talking to you about it. The one thing you
don't want to do, however, is be so closed-mouth and secretive that they think you do know more. Un
derstand?"
"Yes."
"Daddy told me the questions you were asked
and how you answered them. Was there anything else,
something you didn't tell them that might shed some
light on all this?"
How ironic, I thought. My mother, who was a
nurse and not a police detective, got right to the heart
of it. How would I squirm out of it without telling a
