made up my mind,” she whispered. “I’m going to jump off the diving board.”
Immediately, Dr. Engersol left his chair and came to remove the helmet from her head while two graduate students detached the electrodes from her body. But the cameras, which had been recording her every facial expression, every movement of her body, were still running.
And everyone was still watching.
She approached the ladder that led to the diving board and gripped the handrails tightly. She put her foot on the bottom step and started climbing.
She was halfway up when she looked down, and froze.
Do it! she told herself. Just climb up, walk out on the board, and jump.
Then, as she stared down at the concrete beneath her, her terror of heights welled up in her and she knew she couldn’t do it.
Don’t look, she commanded herself.
She forced herself to look up, and there, looming above her, was the board itself.
No!
She couldn’t do it, couldn’t possibly walk out on it! It was too narrow. She’d fall before she took even a single step.
As she felt the last of her nerve slipping away from her, she began to sob. Tears streaming down her face, she scrambled back down off the ladder and fled toward the locker room, covering her face with her hands, already imagining she could hear the laughter following her. Then she was inside the locker room, scurrying across the empty shower room. By the time she came to her locker, the bathing suit was already half off, and she jerked it the rest of the way, hurling it into a corner and pulling on her clothes as fast as she could. Leaving her locker standing open, sobs of humiliation racking her body, Amy Carlson fled from the gym.
By the time Hildie Kramer came looking for her, the locker room was empty, but Hildie was almost certain she knew where Amy had gone.
As she, too, left the gym, every trace of the warm and kindly expression she habitually wore when she spoke to either the children or their parents was gone from her face, replaced by a look of harsh determination. Before anyone else saw Amy Carlson again, Hildie Kramer intended to find her.
Jeanette Aldrich gave up trying to concentrate on her work. Though it was only a little after four o’clock, she knew that no one would object if she left early today. Not that she’d gotten all that much done, for while the morning had been lost to all the people who had come in to offer her
sympathy and support, most of the afternoon had been lost to thinking about the thesis that still lay hidden in the depths of her purse. During lunch she had managed to find a quiet corner and begin reading it, but she hadn’t gotten very far. Simply reading about all the other children who had fallen victim to the same pressures to which Adam had finally succumbed had almost torn her heart out. More than once she’d had to stop reading altogether, for even through the dry prose with which the graduate student had constructed his paper, the human suffering kept breaking to the surface.
It was as if each of the children discussed in the thesis was reaching out to her, calling for help, pleading with her to do something for him.
But there was nothing she could do, for, like Adam, they were already dead.
The youngest had been only five years old when, in front of his mother and older sister, he’d walked in front of a bus.
There had been no question that he knew the bus was coming. He’d even pointed it out to his mother.
Together, they’d stood watching it roll along the road, moving at a steady thirty-five miles an hour.
At the last second the little boy had jerked his hand out of his mother’s and darted into the street, throwing himself under the tires.
Jeanette could barely bring herself to finish reading the paragraphs, feeling the pain the mother of that child must have felt, her tears blurring the words until she finally had to put the thesis back in her purse.
But tonight she would finish it, no matter how difficult it was for her. Until she did, she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else, for no matter what she tried to do, the thesis seemed to beckon to her, demanding her attention.
At last she gave up even trying to work, and began the process of closing her office for the day. Giving her computer