A bell sounded. The girls didn't move.

"Did she leave a note?" Tia asked.

Paige hesitated, then shook her head.

"Neither did my mother," Julie said, "but we knew it was suicide. She had been threatening to kill herself for a long time. We never thought she'd go through with it, but when a person climbs all the way to the thirty-third floor" "Don't say it again, Julie," Deirdre begged as girls from the floors above began to pass through the lounge and out the door.

l "It was a deliberate act," Julie insisted.

"It's depressing."

"Life is depressing."

"Life is lonely."

"Was Dr. O'Neill lonely?" Tia asked Paige hadn't been aware of it.

"She was always busy. She was always with people."

"So are we. Still, there are lots of times I'm lonely."

"Same here," came another voice.

And another. "It's the worst at night."

"Or after phone calls from home."

"Or out in the woods after ten."

"Which," Paige injected lightly, gis one of the reasons why going out in the woods after ten is against school rules. Everything seems ominous. Every little fear is magnified."

Still, the girls had a point. Mara's days might have been full, but not her nights. She had more than enough time to think about the distance between herself and her family, the failure of her marriage, the child she had aborted years before. Paige hated to think it Mara had never said anythingbut she might well have been lonely.

"I can't imagine Dr. O'Neill being afraid of anything," Alicia said.

"She was always so strong."

"But she killed herself," Julie cried, "so something was awful in her life."

"What was it, Dr. Pfeiffer?"

Paige chose her words with care. Although she wasn't about to betray Mara's secretsdidn't know some, she wageredshe wanted the girls to know that suicides, if that was indeed what Mara had committed, weren't frivolous happenings. There were reasons for them and ways to prevent them "Dr. O'Neill had disappointments. We all do.

None of us makes it through life without some.

If she did commit suicide, it was because those disanDoint ments got the best of her, such that she lost her ability to cope."

From behind came a quiet, "So what makes one person able to cope and another not?"

Paige turned to face her runner, Sara Dickinson. She had a backpack slung over a shoulder and was among the last of the girls passing through the lounge. "I can't give you a definitive answer to that.

The person who copes may have an inner strength, or a distinct reason for coping, or a support system that helps her cope when she has trouble doing it herself."

"Didn't Dr. O'Neill have those things?"

Paige was asking herself that. She struggled to understand and explain. "She may not have put them to use."

"What do you mean?"

"She was independent. Too much so, sometimes.

She didn't ask for help."

Another girl spoke up, Annie Miller, a junior, sounding frightened.

"My brother swallowed a whole handful of aspirin last year." There were gasps from the group. They pumped his stomach. He was okay. It wasn't enough to kill him anyway My dad said it was a cry for help."

"Probably," Paige said, terrified that one of the girls listening might contemplate a similar stunt, "but that's a tough way to get it.

Overdoses of drugs can cause physical damage that the person who survives then has to live with for the rest of his life. It's a foolish way to get help. A dangerous way." She went from face to face. "The thing is that when something like Dr. O'Neill's death happens, we have to learn from itthe lesson being to speak up when we're upset."

"To who?" Sara asked from behind.

Paige looked back. "A family member or a friend. A teacher, a coach, a doctor." l That fine support system you mentioned?"

"What if you can't talk to people?"

"Everyone here can talk to people."

"I mean, what if you can't trust people7" "There's always someone you can trust." But Sara remained doubtful, so Paige added, "If not the people I mentioned, then a minister.

There's always someone. You just have to open your eyes and look around."

Sara looked past her, her expression suddenly stony. Everything about her spoke of resentment though she didn't say a word.

There were murmurs from several of the other girls. Paige followed their gaze to the door, through which was striding a man she had never seen before. He was tall and lean, wore gray slacks and a pale blue shirt that was open at the neck and rolled at the sleeves. His skin was tanned, his jaw square. His hair, which was long enough to hit the back of his collar, was the color of sand and either sunstreaked or shot with gray, Paige couldn't tell which.

Round, wire-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his nose.

He was a spectacular-looking man.

She glanced at the girls. If they were struck by his looks, they didn't show it. They were sitting straighter, with nothing remotely akin to the adoration she might have expected to see on their impressionable teenaged faces.

Oh, they knew him, no doubt about that, or about the fact that they didn't like him.

"Study hall?" he prompted in a way that was at the same time soft-spoken and steely.

The girls remained silent, but Paige sensed in them defiance rather than meekness. A confrontation was imminent. Given Mara's death and the upset they were all feeling, she wished to avoid that. Leaving the arm of the chair, she approached the man. "We blew it, huh?"