Chapter 17: A Day Early

The stage boards were cold against my cheek.

I could hear everything, and I could not make my body answer.

Shoes pounded, a chair fell over, and somebody screamed my name.

Then a pair of hands turned me onto my back, and they were hands I knew.

"Maddy. Maddy, look at me."

Mom's hairnet had come off.

She knelt over me with her apron still on, and she had gotten across a gym and up three steps faster than anyone in the room.

"Mouth," she said to somebody, not to me. "Look at her mouth."

"It's blue," the school nurse said, dropping to her knees on the other side.

"Her nails too. Is she breathing?"

"Fast. Very fast."

"Get the oxygen from the office."

"It's in the office. It's not a hospital, it's a school."

"Then go and get it!"

The nurse ran.

Mom tucked her arm under my shoulders and lifted my head onto her lap.

"Slow breaths," she said, in my ear. "In through your nose, baby. That's my girl. Slow."

I did it.

My chest felt like it had a hand pressed on it.

"It's early," I whispered.

"I know."

"It's not 2:15."

"I know, baby. It doesn't matter. I'm here."

"Call 911!" the principal shouted into the microphone, and her voice banged off every wall. "Somebody call 911 right now!"

Two hundred children started to cry at once.

Parents were standing, and phones were up, and a teacher was herding the first graders toward the cafeteria with her arms spread.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dad.

He stood at the edge of the stage with his hands hanging.

His mouth was open.

He did not move toward me.

"Craig," Alana said.

He did not hear her.

"Craig, her color."

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