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have been with her and kept her from venturing out the same night as the murderer.
    Closing the folder, I carried it to the bureau and placed it in a drawer under a pile of shirts. Then I turned out the lamp by my bed and climbed back in the window seat. I listened to the sounds of the summer night and the mix of music and laughter that floated down from open windows. A moth flicked its wings against my screen. Though I wasn't tired, my eyelids felt as fluttery as a moth. There was a cool breeze and my head grew light, so light it could have floated off my shoulders. Closing my eyes, I leaned against the soft wire screen. My mind slipped into a strange, textureless darkness. Its edges glimmered with pale blue light.
    Then my body jerked and I was alert, aware of the sound of my own breathing, quick and hoarse. I felt as if I had been running fast. I held my side, massaging it. I opened my mouth, trying to catch my breath silently, afraid to make the slightest noise.
    It was swampy where I was—I could smell the creek and feel the ground ooze beneath my feet. A rooflike structure supported by pilings stretched over the dark area. I listened to the lap of water against the pilings, then footsteps sounded above. Fear flashed through me like light off a knife blade.
    I made my way forward into the shallow water—slowly, so as not to make a ripple of sound. I heard the light thump of feet on wet ground, then mud sucking back from shoes. My pursuer was close—whether male or female, I couldn't tell—the night was cloudy and the person's face and body covered. I hid behind one of the pilings.
    I heard the person walking slowly, prowling and listening, prowling and listening. I guessed that only ten feet remained between us. If I moved, the person would know immediately where I was. But if I waited any longer, I might get trapped.
    I bolted. The pursuer was after me fast as a cat. I tripped and fel facedown, splashing into the muddy ebb of the creek. I scrambled to my feet and rushed forward again.
    The tumble had jolted me, and I realized that my knees, though sore from falling, were dry. I had fallen out of the window seat and rushed toward a door, my bedroom door in Drama House. There was no muddy creek here. I was safe.
    Still, I shook so badly I knocked into my bedside lamp trying to turn it on. I crept into bed and pulled the sheets up to my chin, shivering despite the July heat. I reached for the lamp a second time. The darkness retreated from the glow of the dim bulb, but I didn't dare look in the corners of the room, lest the shadows turn blue—blue like the lighting in the theater this afternoon, blue like the edges of the nightmare vision I'd just had.
    It was only a dream, I told myself, a natural one to have after seeing the place where Liza had died. But the blue light… Please, not again, I thought.
    When I was a child I had horrible nightmares, dreams as strange as they were frightening, about people and things I couldn't remember seeing in real life. All of the dreams had a strange blue cast. Waking up from them terrified, I would tell Liza, and she would put her arms around me, holding me tight.
    Sometimes she would tell me she had had the same dream. As I grew older I didn't believe her; still it had helped me not to feel alone. "Sweet dreams,"
    Liza would always say, soothing me, tucking me back in bed, "sweet dreams only for you and me." Eventually the nightmares stopped.
    Now I scrunched down under the sheet, sweating and shivering, missing Liza more than ever, and wondering why the dreams had come back.

Chapter 6
    We gathered in the seats of Stoddard Theater at eight-thirty the next morning. Walker came up the back steps, strode across the stage, then stopped, scanning us slowly, like a shopper carefully eyeing apples before reaching into the pile. Our nervous chatter died.
    "Oh, don't be bashful," he said.
    Maggie called roll. Next to Mike, two rows in front of me, sat a guy who answered to Paul McCrae,