"I don't know. It sounded like thunder."

"It's nothing, honey. Go back to sleep."

Miri padded down the hall to her bedroom, telling herself it was nothing. She was safe, Rusty and Irene and Uncle Henry were safe. Mason was safe. Safe from his crazy father, who'd chased him with an ax. At the sound of a car starting up, Miri pulled back the curtain of her front window in time to see Henry peeling out of the driveway, taking the corner so fast he skidded, the tires screeching. Something wasn't right. She felt it in her gut.

She picked up the kaleidoscope from the top of her dresser and got back into bed, holding it first to her right eye, then to her left. Was there a difference? Not really. It was beautiful and calming either way.

Mason Mason sat on his bed, facing the windows of the senior boys' dorm, thinking about Miri. He'd had an early supper with Jack. Burgers at Mother Hubbard's, then apple pie. Jack wanted to know about him and Miri. Wanted to make sure he wasn't moving too fast, that he knew the rules.

He more or less told him he'd never known anyone like her, so sweet, so trusting. He didn't say anything about their game of Trust. That was private, between him and Miri. He still couldn't believe he'd told her about his mother and about his father chasing him with an ax. Until now, only Jack knew. But it was his idea to play Trust, wasn't it? He must have known he'd tell her, must have wanted to tell her, to prove he trusted her, the way she trusted him. And now, as he sat at his window in the dorm at Janet, that was what was killing him. Because all the time he was living a lie. What if she found out about Polina? What was he supposed to do then?

Polina had volunteered to keep Fred overnight back in September, before he'd ever met Miri. She took him and Fred home with her to the two rooms on Williamson Street where she lived with her three-year-old kid, saying Fred could stay there. She unb.u.t.toned her dress, showed him her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. You like? she asked. You think I'm pretty?

Yeah, and yeah.

You like to touch?

Oh, yeah. Keep asking. Please don't stop.

But she stopped when the kid came in and Fred barked. And the kid, who hardly spoke English, laughed. Doggy?

No, that's a story he'd never tell. A story that has no end, because every week he'd gone to her place until the crash destroyed their house. Every week. And sometimes he was thinking of Miri when he did it. And sometimes he wasn't thinking at all-he was just pumping her and it felt so good. She didn't want anything from him, only that, only to say she was pretty and he liked her. Easy to say because it was true. He was careful. He got a package of rubbers. He wasn't taking any chances. She was his first and she was a good teacher. She didn't have to say much. Just took his hand and put it where she wanted it. Took his d.i.c.k and guided it where she wanted it, which was where he wanted it, too.

- AS HE STARTED getting ready for bed, he felt the house shake, then heard the earsplitting roar of a plane. A few of the other boys woke up and ran to the window. In the clear moonlit night, they saw it heading straight for them. He and the other boys fell to the floor, flattened and braced themselves. Mason made it partway under his bed. But instead of smashing into Janet, the plane must have hit something else and seconds later it crashed into their playing field, taking down the swings, the softball backboard. One explosion followed another. Mason didn't stop to think-he raced outside in an adrenaline rush and charged across the field to what was left of the plane, its fuselage ripped apart. Three of the other boys followed. He pulled out a young woman hanging upside down in her seat. "I'm the stewardess," she cried. "I have to help."

"Okay, sure," Mason told her, "but first we have to get you out of here." He carried her in his arms while she kept insisting, "I have to help..." He got her out just before another explosion, handed her over to one of the other boys, then rushed back to the plane. He freed a girl trapped under her seat, and threw her over his shoulder. "My husband," she cried. "I'm not leaving without my husband. We just got married." Mason handed her down to another of the boys, then went back to find the husband buried under debris, and barely alive, if that. They were working as a team now. The boys from Janet and the other rescuers, police, firemen, nurses. He pulled out another victim, and another. An arm came off a corpse. A baby was charred and dead.

Then he was being restrained, held so tight he had to fight to free himself. "Let go!" he shouted.

"No, no more," Jack told him.

But Mason wouldn't listen. He broke away from Jack, with Jack following, in time to help Mason pull out a little girl, alive but in shock. "Mommy..." she cried again and again. Jack handed her over to a fireman, who carried her to an ambulance, then pa.s.sed her to a nurse, who rode with her to the hospital. Mason was on his way back to the plane when an explosion sent him flying. Jack dragged him away from the plane. When he looked up he saw bodies, still strapped into their seats, hanging from trees like puppets in some kind of sick show. By then the field had turned into a muddy, bloodstained junkyard.

Christina In the middle of the field Christina bent over a woman on the ground. "Please, girly, loosen my girdle. I can't breathe."

Christina knew exactly how to do it-the hooks up the side, the stays. "My mother runs a girdle shop on Broad Street," she told the woman. "Nia's Lingerie-maybe you know it?" Why was she making small talk while the woman moaned?

"My chest hurts. My legs are cold. Am I gonna die?"

"No." Christina tried to rea.s.sure her. She took off her coat and draped it over the woman, but when her eyes closed, when she lay so still Christina didn't know if she was unconscious or dead, she ran for help and led back a fireman, who checked the woman's pulse. "She's alive," he told Christina. "We'll get her to the hospital." He called for a stretcher and the woman was carried away, still draped in Christina's winter coat.

A small dog ran in circles, barking. "Fred?" Dear G.o.d, it was Fred, wearing the sweater she'd knitted for him! In all the horror, in all the chaos, Fred, the miracle dog, survived. She shivered in her clingy red top and held Fred tight to her chest, running with him to the Red Cross house across the street, slipping once, turning her ankle, getting wet and muddied. A miracle, too, that the Red Cross house wasn't hit. Christina had to call her mother, who would be worrying, who wouldn't know what was going on. Someone gave her a nickel for the phone booth. Someone else took Fred and handed her a blanket to drape over her shoulders.

"I've been worried sick," Mama said. "Where are you?"

"Another plane crashed."

"What?"

"On Westminster Avenue."

"Come home right now, Christina!"

"No, I'm not coming home. They need help here. It's terrible."

She heard whispering, then Baba got on the line. "We're coming," he told her.

At the sound of her father's voice, she choked up. "I'll meet you at the Red Cross house. Ask Mama to bring my winter jacket, dungarees, a sweater, socks and boots."

Baba came with meats and cheeses and loaves of bread, huge jars of mayo, mustard, pickles and sweets from Three Brothers. Mama came with him, carrying a bag from Nia's filled with Christina's warm clothes. Christina fell into their arms. "Baba...Mama!" There was no time to ask who Christina had been with or how she had wound up here, or what she was doing out so late on a Sunday night in the first place. She was safe. For now, that was all they cared about.

Christina helped them set up tables. "We'll make sandwiches," her mother said, more to herself than Christina. "Sandwiches for the rescue crews and the families who will come once they hear. But first, wash your hands," Mama ordered. "Use plenty of soap. Hot water."

Life is short, Christina told herself while scrubbing her hands. At least she wouldn't die a virgin.

Miri In the morning Miri snapped on her radio, but instead of jokey morning banter and pop tunes, she heard the news that a third plane had crashed in Elizabeth. She'd been right about last night, about the terrible feeling in her gut. When she learned it had crashed in the field behind Janet Memorial, she threw her coat over her flannel pajamas, pulled on boots and ran the mile to the site.

Breathing hard, rushing by the scene of devastation, she banged on the front door of Janet with both fists, and shouted for someone, anyone. When the door was flung open Miri nearly fell inside. "Look at you," a woman said, helping Miri regain her balance. "You're half frozen. Come in, child."

"My friend lives here."

"All the children are safe, dear. Which one is your friend?"

"Mason McKittrick."

"Well, now-Mason McKittrick is quite the hero. Rescued I don't know how many last night. The stewardess, too, I hear. Pulled them out of the burning plane. The lucky ones are alive because of him and three of our other boys."

Miri felt such relief she began to cry. The woman put her arms around her. "Now, now...it's all right. Come along, the children are at breakfast. Polina's in the kitchen making pancakes." She led Miri into the dining room, where the younger children were sitting around a table.

"Can I see Mason?"

"Not now, dear. He's asleep. Those boys worked all night, fell into bed at dawn." Her voice went quiet, to almost a whisper. "He's got his dog with him."

"Fred!" Miri said. "Fred is here?"

"We bent the rules, just for the night. A brave boy deserves to have his dog."

Polina came in from the kitchen carrying a platter of pancakes. Miri almost didn't recognize her in a blue hairnet, an ap.r.o.n over her plain dress, st.u.r.dy shoes, no makeup. She looked younger, softer, than the day they'd met at Dr. O's office.

"Polina, this is a friend of Mason's."

Miri didn't think Polina recognized her and she didn't feel like reminding her they'd already met.

"What a boy!" Polina sang.

"What a boy!" the children repeated, reminding Miri of the way Penny and Betsy liked to imitate their parents. Let's go, Jo! But thinking of Penny and Betsy made her too sad.

"I didn't catch your name, dear..." the woman said.

"Miri."

"I'm Mrs. Traynor. Sit right down here"-she pulled out a chair at the table-"and let Polina bring you a nice hot cup of cocoa."

"Thank you," she said to Mrs. Traynor, "but I have to go. My grandmother will be wondering where I am."

"Not even one pancake?" Mrs. Traynor asked.

"No. Really. I have to go home and get ready for school."

"I'll tell Mason you stopped by."

"Thank you."

Elizabeth Daily Post

Special Edition UMBRELLA OF DEATH HAS CLOSED.

FEB. 11-Just hours after the crash last night of a National Airlines DC-6 into the field behind the Janet Memorial Home, the third such disaster in eight weeks, the Port Authority closed down Newark Airport "pending further investigation," and Mayor Kirk has promised it will be shut indefinitely. "The chaos, the horror, the terror is over," he said. "The Umbrella of Death has closed."

In Washington, E. S. Hensley, director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration's office of aviation safety, could offer no explanation why three major crashes have occurred in the same place within less than 60 days. "It could just as easily have been San Francisco, Timbuktu, or Saskatchewan," Hensley said. "Why the Lord let it happen at Elizabeth I cannot guess. There is no earthly reason."

22.

Miri At school, the boys were excited.

ANGELO VENETTI (waving around the special edition of the paper): No earthly reason. What did I tell you? But they won't write about the unearthly reasons. They're scared the aliens will unleash a full attack against us.

PETE WOLF: Yeah, but is it a plot against America or just a plot against our city?

WINKY HERKOVITZ: Either way, we're in deep s.h.i.t.

DERISH GRAY: But the mayor says...

WINKY HERKOVITZ: You're going to believe him?

DERISH GRAY: And Newark Airport is closed.

CHARLEY KAMINSKY: Indefinitely.

ELEANOR: Robo's father knew what he was doing moving his family out of town. And just in time, too.

SUZANNE: How did Robo's father know?

ELEANOR: He's connected.

SUZANNE: To the aliens?

ELEANOR: To the mob.

SUZANNE: This is about the mob?

WINKY HERKOVITZ: Wake up, Little Suzy. Everything is about the mob.

You should know, Miri thought, but she didn't say so. She was willing to bet the kids at Robo's new school wouldn't be talking about the latest crash. They'd probably be talking about the latest show at the Paper Mill Playhouse. She felt like lashing out at all of them. She was sick of their stories. If only she could be sure Uncle Henry was right, that the crashes were accidents. But she'd just read a convincing article in Life magazine, "Making a Case for Interplanetary Saucers," that made it all seem possible.

Miri turned and walked away. In a minute Eleanor was by her side. "They're imbeciles," she said, nodding toward the boys.

"They're scared but they won't admit it," Miri said.

"We're all scared," Eleanor said. "Aren't we?"

Miri nodded. They were all scared.

"I'm still not convinced it isn't sabotage." Eleanor said. "But if it is sabotage I believe your uncle will uncover it."

Miri was glad to hear Eleanor had confidence in Uncle Henry.

At lunchtime, she ducked out of the cafeteria to call Natalie's house. She'd called last night before she'd gone to sleep, before any of them knew their world would be shattered a third time. There hadn't been any answer, which made no sense. Even if no one else was home there would still be a babysitter for Fern. This time Mrs. Jones answered. "Osners' residence. Mrs. Jones speaking." Miri recognized her voice before she identified herself.

"It's Miri, Mrs. Jones. Can I speak to Natalie or Mrs. Osner?"

"Everyone is out. I don't know where."

"Do you know when they'll be back?"

"Sorry, I don't. Try them tonight." Mrs. Jones hung up first.

She called again before dinner. This time she got Steve. When she asked for Natalie, he said, "She's not here."

"Where is she?"

"Visiting relatives."

"What relatives?"