Frantically she recalled everything she had done that morning: roll call in homeroom, then a general assembly, then- the school store, and finally a meeting with the counselor. She ran over the list twice, but she couldn't remember taping the photo to the door. Was she really losing her mind?

Ivy closed her eyes and leaned against the door. I'm crazy, she thought.

I'm really crazy.

"Am I nuts, Gregory?" she had asked three weeks earlier as she stood in her bedroom on her first day home from the hospital She held Tristan's photograph in her trembling hands. Gregory gently took the picture away from her, giving it to Philip, her nine-year-old savior.

"You're going to get better, Ivy. That much I'm sure of," Gregory said, drawing her down on the bed next to him, putting his arm around her.

"Meaning I'm crazy now."

Gregory didn't answer right away. She had noticed the change in him when he came to see her at the hospital. His dark hair was combed perfectly, as always, and his handsome face was like a mask, just as it had been when she first met him, his light gray eyes hiding his deepest thoughts.

"It's a hard thing to understand, Ivy," he said carefully. "It's hard to know exactly what you were thinking at the time." He glanced over at Philip, who was setting the framed photo on the bureau. "And Philip's story sure doesn't help much."

Her brother responded with a stubborn glare.

"Maybe now that no one else is around, you can tell us what really happened, Philip," Gregory said.

Philip glanced up at the two empty shelves where Ivy's collection of angels had once stood. He had the statues now. Ivy had given them to him on the condition that he would never again talk about angels.

"I already told you."

"Try again," Gregory said, his voice low and tense.