"Yes, and there's no time to waste. Did you make your list for me?"

Calla is already digging in her backpack for the sheet of notebook paper she hastily filled out last night before bed.

She hands it across the guidance counselor's desk and watches as she scans the list, nodding. "Penn State, Colgate, Cornell . . ."

"Those are my reach schools,"Calla says hastily. "My father is going to take me to see the campuses this weekend."

"All great places."Mrs. Erskine gives her an approving smile.

Yes, they are. But they're only on Calla's list because her father mentioned visiting them.

"Northwestern,"Mrs. Erskine continues, and Calla nods.

The counselor seems to be waiting for her to say something about it.

"My father's family lives in Chicago,"she says. "He grew up there, so he thought . . . you know, that I might want to go to school there."

"Do you?"

"Um . . ."

Mrs. Erskine lowers the list and looks at her. "Calla, you're the one who should make the decision about where you want to go. Don't apply to schools that don't interest you. Really. It's a waste of everybody's time."

"I guess you can cross off Northwestern, then."

It's not as if Dad will mind. He was merely making suggestions. She wrote down most of them for lack of anything better.

"How about Florida? You've listed a few schools there."

"I know . It's where I'm from, so I thought . . ."Again, she hesitates.

In truth, Lisa urged Calla to apply to the same schools on her list. She wants to be roommates, maybe even sorority sisters. It's what they had always planned on, from the time they were little girls.

But a lot has changed since then.

"Do you want to go back to Florida, Calla?"Mrs. Erskine asks.

"I'm not sure. Not really."

"Where do you want to go?"

To her horror, she feels hot tears spring to her eyes, and looks down quickly to hide them. "I don't know . I guess I don't really want to go anywhere."

"You don't want to go to college?"

"No, I do, but . . ."She takes a deep breath and forces herself to look up, trying not to blink and release the tears. "It's coming up so soon, and . . . I like it here. That's why I stayed for the school year. I never got to spend time with my grandmother, and I've never been to Lily Dale until a few months ago. It's where my mother grew up. I guess now that I'm here, I don't really want to leave."

She sees a flash of understanding-and sympathy-in Mrs. Erskine's blue eyes. "That makes sense."

"But I feel like such a baby- like I'm afraid to leave home."

"Calla . . ."The counselor reaches across the desk and touches her hand. "You've already left home. Under circ.u.mstances much more difficult than most kids your age will face in a lifetime. You're not a baby. You're one of the bravest young women I've ever known."

She's never thought of it that way.

Now the tears are rolling down her cheeks, and Mrs. Ersk-ine hands her a tissue.

"Look, maybe you should just focus on local schools. If you want to transfer down the road, you can, but . . ."She reaches over and opens a desk drawer. "I'm going to give you some information on Fredonia State University. Ever heard of it?"

Calla nods. Her mother went there, for undergrad. She told Calla that she was desperate to go away but couldn't afford to.

"It's just a few miles down the road, and it's an excellent school."Mrs. Erskine rummages through her drawer, plucking things from folders. "There are a few other good schools in Buffalo- not all that far away, either."

"Thank you."Calla gratefully accepts the packets the counselor hands her.

"Look them over, and talk to your father. I think you should go see the schools he wants to show you this weekend, too. You never know- you might fall in love with one of them."

Yeah, that, or fall in love- all over again-with my old boyfriend who goes to one of them, Calla thinks grimly.

Cornell is out of the question for her. With Kevin there, she'd only be asking for trouble.

That reminds her. She never did check her e-mail. Lisa said he sent her one. She probably has a bunch of others, too.

Later tonight, she decides, she'll pull out the laptop again.

Just to take care of her own business.

Not to stick her nose further into her mother's.

FIFTEEN.

New York City

Thursday, October 11

8:41 a.m.

According to Liz Jessee- the world's friendliest landlady- h.e.l.l's Kitchen, in the heart of Manhattan's West Side, was once a desolate stretch of the city.

Now, h.e.l.l's Kitchen- and thus, Liz Jessee's no-frills five-story brick building-is in a desirable location, entirely conve-nient to restaurants, theaters, and midtown office buildings.

Laura is headed toward one of them right now, having just received a new short-term a.s.signment from her temp agency.

As she descends the last flight of steps from her top floor studio apartment, she consults the address she scribbled on a sc.r.a.p of paper when the a.s.signment came in twenty minutes ago.

She's been in New York long enough to know that she'll have to head uptown, and east, to get there.

She'll walk, of course. She doesn't take the subway unless an a.s.signment takes her all the way down to the financial district. Not just because Laura finds the subway unnerving, but because she can't afford it. She still has three more days until payday, and she'll be lucky if she can sc.r.a.pe together enough money to eat.

When Geraldine, her supervisor at the temp agency, told her that today's a.s.signment was at a company called Overseas Corporate Funds, she expected it to be downtown near Wall Street, too. Midtown was a pleasant surprise.

She arranges her shoulder bag in a cross-chest, mugger-proof position and steps outside to find Liz Jessee sweeping the stoop.

A pleasant woman in her midsixties, she looks up with a smile. "Good morning, Laura."

"Hi, Liz."

"It feels like July out here, doesn't it?"

Laura realizes that the sun is already beaming warmly from a clear blue sky and wonders whether she should have worn her other suit. She only has two, and she wore the other one yesterday. But this one is wool.

"So it's going to be hot again today?"she asks Liz, who has a way of knowing these things. She's plugged into the weather, the news, even the neighborhood gossip.

"Near ninety. Of course, where I grew up, that's nothing."

"Where did you grow up?"

"Florida."

Florida.

An image flashes into Laura's head: palm trees, the ocean . . . and, standing in the sand, an attractive, brown-haired woman wearing a charcoal gray business suit with shiny black b.u.t.tons, carrying a briefcase.

It's such an odd image.

Why did it pop into Laura's head?

Things do, sometimes. Things that don't make sense.

And, once in a while, things that do make sense, but only later. When something- or someone-she's imagined in her head or seen in a dream shows up in real life.

When she was really little, she used to find herself inexplicably thinking about a stained- gla.s.s window filled with interlocking loops of rose- and-green-colored gla.s.s. The window had a distinctive shape: rectangular on the bottom half and curving up to a point on the top half.

It popped into Laura's head pretty often-particularly when her mother was cruel to her. Somehow, it made her feel better. She even used to draw pictures of it, with crayons.

It wasn't until she was older that she actually came across it. She was returning from running an errand for Mother- taking the long way back to Center Street to delay having to go home- that she saw that window on the rectory door tucked away beside a church.

The coincidence was so startling that she found herself drawn from the sidewalk to the door, mesmerized.

Then the door opened, and a man dressed in black with a white collar stood smiling down at her.

"Down south, it wasn't considered hot unless the thermometer broke a hundred,"Liz chatters on. You're not used to this kind of heat, though, are you, Laura? Coming from Minnesota."

For the hundredth time, Laura regrets the lie she told Liz Jessee when she moved in.

Why Minnesota?

Why not someplace she's actually been?

Because you haven't been anywhere that wasn't too close to Geneseo for comfort, she reminds herself.

Anyway, she knows enough about Minnesota to realize the temperature doesn't break a hundred degrees there on a regular basis.

"Back home,"she tells Liz, for good measure, "it isn't considered cold unless the thermometer drops below zero."

"Is that right. Well, it's supposed to turn colder tonight- a front coming in from the west-but nowhere near zero. I'll bet you'll be homesick for that kind of weather when December rolls around, because we don't get much snow around here. Unless you're going to be going back home for the holidays?"

"I . . . I'm not sure."

"Well, if you don't, you'll have to join Jim and me for Christmas dinner. We have a whole big crowd."

"I couldn't intrude on your family celebration."

"Oh, it's not family, other than us and our daughter. Every year, I invite people who have nowhere else to go."

That pretty much describes me, Laura thinks. It describes her even before she landed in New York, alone.

"This year, we'll have a couple of the other new neighbors, and some of Jim's coworkers, and Jose who runs the bodega two blocks down on Ninth."

Laura buys her New York Post at that bodega, when she can spare a couple of quarters. Jose must be the silent, smiling man who is always behind the counter. "Is he a friend of yours?"

"Sure. I mean, we don't get together for lunch, or anything, but I consider him a friend. I love meeting new people. Someone once told me I could talk to a wall,"Liz confides cheerfully. "One of my favorite things to do is people- watch. You know-see a stranger and try to guess what his life is like by the way he dresses or talks, or by his body language. Know what I mean?"

"Yes."

And people who like to people- watch make me ner vous.

All she wants is to live an anonymous life, and she came to the largest city on the East Coast hoping it would be possible.