Annie Peters, the third grade teacher at Huntington Park Elementary School (just outside Los Angeles) was not having a good day.

Leticia, one of her cutest students, had come to school with a black eye. Drawing her aside before class started, Annie had asked her how she had gotten it.

"I fell down," Leticia had said.

"Leticia, please tell me the truth."

Leticia had started to cry. "Mama's boyfriend hit me again. She lets him hurt me. And she went away with him all last weekend and left me alone. I was so scared."

Annie had known that she had better report this. But, just then, the bell had rung to signal the beginning of class. She had made a mental note to call social services as soon as the kids had left for lunch.

Then Pedro had begun to taunt George. Annie had moved him to another desk across the room. Now he was mocking Raul. Thank God Raul was impervious to verbal assaults.

Maria got up from the reading corner, where there were books and cassette tapes of books for the kids to read after their work was done, and came over to Annie.

"Miss Peters," she whispered respectfully, "I can't get the stories to play." She handed Annie the broken cassette recorder.

Annie took one look at the recorder and knew that she couldn't do a thing with it. "I'm sorry, Annie. I'm no good at fixing machines."

"I'll fix it," George piped up. He was only a fourth-grader, but Annie shrugged and handed him the recorder. What did she have to lose?

Pedro, realizing that words wouldn't get Raul's goat, gave him a mean swat while Miss Peters wasn't looking. Raul's scream gave Pedro away. Annie moved the misbehaving boy to a corner, facing the wall. She looked at the two apples that had been placed on her desk that morning in order to remind herself that most of the kids were sweet and kind.

George took the cassette recorder to the reading corner and handed it to Maria. Maria put the earphones back on her head and plugged the jacks back into the recorder. A minute later, Annie saw a contented smile come over Maria's face. Relieved, she realized that George had repaired the machine.

But the feeling of relief came too late. Annie's head had already started to hurt. She cursed her bipolar disorder; it made her very susceptible to migraines.

As Annie taught the last reading group of the morning, a titter of laughter ran through the boys sitting near Pedro. Annie looked up quickly. Pedro was doing a pantomime act for their amusement, although he had never left the corner. There was nothing more that Annie could do to keep him from disrupting the class. At least not until lunch hour, when she could take him to the school disciplinarian.

Now she had two things to do at lunchtime. When would she get a chance to relax and eat?

Annie gasped as a sharp pain stabbed through the left side of her head, which felt as if it had just been hit with a hammer. A migraine attack! And she couldn't do anything about it except take an acetaminophen tablet out of the pill case she always carried in her purse and pop it into her mouth. Lunch wouldn't begin for another ten minutes. She sighed, sent the last reading group to their seats, and began to organize the pre-lunch cleanup.

Leticia, still upset, dropped a piece of chalk on the floor near Miss Peters. The impact of the chalk on the wood sounded like a thunderclap to Annie. It sent shards of sharp pain through the pounding ache that was supposed to be her brain.

"Raul, I see a paper near your desk," Annie said.

As Raul cheerfully lunged for the paper, Annie happened to look in the direction of the window, through which the sun had been streaming all morning. Even though she didn't look directly into the sun, the light caused another wrenching pain to shoot through her head. She felt her body sway forward, then back again. The blood vessels in her brain pounded in her ears like conga drums.

Terrified that she might vomit, Annie sent her students to lunch a couple of minutes early and locked the door behind them. Then she staggered to her desk, sat down, and pulled out her lunch. She had to get food and juice into her stomach -- fast -- to stop the nausea. She ripped the lunch bag open and wrenched a sandwich out of its waxed-paper wrapping. She took a big bite of it, chewed furiously, and gulped down some fruit juice.

She felt the soothing food drop into her stomach just as another wave of hideous pain washed over her brain. The upper part of her body fell, helpless with agony, onto her desk.

On his way to the faculty lunchroom, James Lind, principal of Huntington Park Elementary School, noticed that Leticia and Raul were having an intense argument outside the door of Annie Peters's classroom.

"Get away from there," Raul said in an urgent whisper. "You gonna get in trouble." He tugged at Leticia's arm.

"No," Leticia said firmly, resisting Raul with all her strength. "No!"

She stood on tiptoe and peered in through the small window pane in the classroom door. "I think she's asleep."

"Tal vez ella esta muerte -- ," Raul said.

Leticia burst into tears at Raul's suggestion that her teacher might be dead.

"You two should be out on the playground," Lind told Leticia and Raul gently.

"But, but -- " Leticia's tears grew to a torrent. She didn't want to desert her beloved teacher. She had always helped Miss Peters at lunchtime and didn't understand why she was locked out today. But she was terrified to speak up to the principal.

"What is it, Leticia?" Lind asked, noticing that Leticia's right eye was darker than her left one. He squatted down to her level. "Tell me. I don't bite, except for Raul." He playfully nipped at Raul's hand.

Raul jumped away from Lind's teeth, then broke out laughing.

Leticia smiled through her tears. "Miss Peters won't let me in today. She always lets me in."

"I think she sick," Raul said.

"Thank you, Leticia and Raul," Lind said. "Please go out and play. I'll take care of Miss Peters."

Annie, caught halfway between woozy sleep and nauseating awareness, heard thunder again. No, it was a key clicking in the lock of her classroom door. How could a turning key sound so loud?

Embarrassed that she lay with her head on her desk while someone with enough authority to have a key was entering her classroom, Annie jerked upright, opening her eyes. A blur of colors spun dizzily around her and a horrifying pain forced her head back down onto her desk.

She heard Mr. Lind's voice say, "Annie?"

He spoke softly, but the word echoed around inside her skull like a gunshot. She lifted her head and opened her eyes again. But this time she was slow and careful about it. A blur that looked a little like Lind stood over her.

"Annie? Are you OK?"

Annie's hand instinctively slipped over one ear to protect it from the machine-gun volley of sound coming from Lind's lips.

"I -- I'm having a migraine, but it'll go away pretty soon," she whispered. Lind's blurred image revolved around her eerily.

Lind detected Annie's auditory sensitivity immediately and lowered his voice. "Annie, you're very sick," he said softly. "When you're sick, you're supposed to take sick leave and go home." He placed his hand on Annie's forehead, then jerked it away, alarmed.

"I know. But Leticia needs me. I have to call Social Services." She stopped, realizing that she wasn't making much sense.

Lind put his arm tenderly around her. "Come on. I'll get you home."

"No," Annie said in a weak, un-teacher-like, voice. "Leticia needs me. Her mother's boyfriend gave her a black eye. I've got to call -- "

"Oh, Leticia's black eye! You're enduring an awful migraine just so you can protect Leticia from abuse. I'll call Child Protective Services for you." Lind led Annie, half carrying her, out toward his car.

As he passed one of the teachers, Lind asked her to have the school secretary find a substitute teacher for Annie Peters's class. He gently lifted the sick teacher into his car. As Lind drove, Annie lay back and closed her eyes, trusting the principal to take care of everything.

Lind parked his car as near to Annie's apartment door as he could get. He opened the door on Annie's side of the car.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

"I'm not sure -- " Before Annie could finish, Lind had picked her up.

Sick as she was, Annie felt the warmth of his body and the tautness of his strong muscles. As he carried her to her doorstep and set her gently down, her heart began to race.

"Give me your keys, and I'll unlock your door," Lind said.

"I'm OK," Annie said, flustered by the close contact with the principal's lithe, muscular, body. She wondered if her sudden rise in temperature had been caused by fever or by Lind's gallant act.

"No, you're not OK," he said firmly.

"You don't give a girl much choice," Annie breathed, handing him the keys. He unlocked the door and picked her up again.

"Is he going to tuck me into bed?" Annie wondered. But Lind laid her down on her sofa.

"Get some rest, now," he said. It seemed as if he was looking more deeply into her eyes than he really had to.

"Thank you, Mr. Lind," Annie said, already drifting away. "Thank -- you."

As Lind left, he felt very concerned about Annie. She definitely worked too hard. Dedication to one's job is a good thing, but Annie took dedication too far. He resolved to try to lighten her work load so that she could get more rest. And maybe he could somehow help her relax.

Annie opened her eyes. Where was she? She looked around and was glad to see that she was safe in her own bed.

Then she remembered the migraine attack. The school principal bringing her home. Getting up off the sofa and falling into bed without pausing to take off her clothes.

Had the migraine stopped? Annie cautiously rolled over onto her right side.

No pain.

She looked at the clock. She had slept through six solid hours of broad daylight. She propped herself up on one arm.

Still no pain.

She was thrilled to discover that now she could stand without becoming nauseous, walk without falling, and turn on the light without experiencing pain. She felt different, as if she were starting a new, improved, version of this terrible day. She felt light, as if she had been freed from unbearably heavy chains. She felt a brand new appreciation for every straight step she was able to take, every pain-free breath she was able to take in.

She took off her clammy, slept-in, clothes, took a shower, and ate supper wearing fresh, clean clothes. She couldn't wait to get back to work the following morning.

Annie loved teaching. She loved the smiles on her students' faces. She loved the sound of their voices, chattering alternately in English and Spanish. To Annie, each student was a unique and precious person.

Leticia was a tiny girl with a plain Aztec face who was destined to become an aquiline beauty. George was a chubby kid who wore glasses and seemed to know all the answers. Pedro was the bad boy of the class, but Annie's heart had gone out to him when he told her that he had once been hit by a car.

"I thought I was Superman," he said. Seeing Miss Peters's puzzled look, he said, "Really! I thought I pushed the car so hard it went far away."

Maria was tall, lovely, and mature for her age. Raul was the smallest boy in the class, the one who had the most trouble with reading and math. But he never saw himself as a slow student. Always happy, no matter how many times Miss Peters asked him to redo a paper or reread a line in a story, he cheerfully plugged on with his studies.

Classes let out at 3:30 p.m., but Annie worked until 6:30 most days, comforted by the knowledge that a teacher's work lightens considerably after the first year ends. It was worth it for "her kids". She loved them. She constantly had to remind herself of the teacher's most important rule: don't smile until Christmas. She knew that one misdeed or badly timed smile can undermine a teacher's authority for weeks.

Annie stood in the doorway of the faculty lunchroom. She could smell tomatoes, onions, and meat. All the tables were occupied -- by strangers. At which stranger's table should she sit?

Then a teacher she recognized came in.

"Hi, Roberta," Annie said, overjoyed to see someone she knew.

"Hi," Roberta said. "You're the new teacher, aren't you? Come sit with us. This is Cora. She teaches second grade."

"Nice meeting you," Cora said.

As Annie sat down, Roberta said, "Where are you from?"

"New York State." Annie had already learned that if she just said "New York", Californians tended to assume that she was from New York City.

"Why did you come all the way to L.A.? Because the weather here is better?"

"No, I just couldn't find a teaching job in New York."

"But I'll bet you don't miss the New York winters."

"I sure don't, though I wouldn't mind seeing a waterfall again."

"We've got waterfalls," Cora said.

"Where?"

"You have to climb a mountain," Roberta said. "So, what do you think of Mr. Lind? Isn't he a doll? He's single, you know."

"I wasn't sure." Annie's cheeks flushed.

"I see you've got a crush on him too," Cora said. "Don't be embarrassed. Every unmarried teacher in the school has a crush on him."

"And some of the married ones too," Roberta said.

"I know who's going to get him," Cora said.

"Nobody's going to get him," Roberta said. "He's a confirmed bachelor."

"Well, if anybody gets him, it'll be Millie." Cora nodded discretely in the direction of a stunning blonde who sat at a nearby table.

Annie took a quick, cautious, look at Millie and knew immediately that she didn't stand a chance with Lind.

Annie was teaching reading. She had arranged the desks in her classroom in neat groups of six. The kids' best work was posted on the bulletin boards. The textbooks the kids used were arranged neatly on their shelves.

Before her group came to the front of the room to read, Maria went to the shelf of readers, picked up the correct books for her group's level, and passed out the readers to the other members of her reading group. Annie began to teach the group.

"Thank you, Leticia," Annie said, signaling her to stop reading. "Maria?"

Maria started reading. While Annie's right ear heard Maria's every word, her left ear heard most of the noises that came from outside the reading group. So she heard instantly when Pedro whispered something to George and George whispered with all the ferocity a nine-year-old voice can muster, "I am not!"

"Pedro and George," Annie said in a low, quiet, voice.

"Pedro started it. He called me a name."

"Fatso," Pedro said, right out loud this time. A giggle flew through the classroom.

"Pedro," Annie said, her voice more stern now, "that's your third black mark this week, and it's only Tuesday." As she spoke, she put a check on the wall chart she kept efficiently near her reading-group chair. Pedro knew the consequences of five black marks in one week; Annie didn't have to waste time telling him.

Suddenly, the fire bell clanged. Now Annie remembered: Mr. Lind had warned the teachers that there would be a fire drill that day. She asked a couple of students to close the windows. The class filed out onto the playground.

As the teachers, roll books in hand, checked to make sure that all their students were present or otherwise accounted for, Lind came out of the office and stood on the steps, stopwatch in hand. Annie's heart ached. He was tall, slender, and gorgeous, and he was totally in control. A man like that could get any woman he wanted. She was sure that he wouldn't be interested in her; there were so many more attractive women at this school.

She watched as the principal moved among the teachers, spot-checking roll sheets. She saw how most of the female teachers smiled as Lind passed by. She knew, as every woman knows, what those smiles meant. Lind wasn't just their boss. He was the prize they all hoped to win. Annie knew that she didn't have the slightest chance of winning his love. And even if Mr. Lind did get past her plain face, he would lose interest as soon as he found out that she had bipolar disorder.

Lind checked Roberta's roll sheet and moved closer to Annie's class. The new teacher, Annie Peters, stood, her face clean and fresh as a child's, watching her kids; Lind could see that she wasn't wearing any makeup at all.

"She doesn't need makeup," he thought. "She's beautiful without it."

Lind decided that hiring Annie Peters had worked out well. He had already noticed how much she loved her students. Yet she knew how to be firm with them, so that they didn't misbehave. And he was slowly becoming endeared by the way Annie's dark, wavy hair framed her lovely face.

But, as Lind walked past her, Annie was sure that she, a bipolar, didn't stand a chance with the principal.

Annie, sitting with Roberta and Cora, took another bite of her ham and cheese sandwich. The faculty lunchroom had reached its peak usage level for the day, and it was filled to capacity with teachers and staff.

An older woman came in. Roberta waved to her and invited her to join them.

"This is my mother, Joan," Roberta said.

After the introductions, Annie asked, "What do you do, Joan?"

"I'm the director of a nursing home."

"That's great. Do your residents ever get together with kids?"

Joan looked puzzled. "You mean, babysitting? They're too sick to do that."

"Oh, no, I mean kids visiting nursing home residents. I wonder if the kids from this school would like to visit your nursing home."

"That's a wonderful idea," Joan said.

"I bet the nursing home residents would get a lot of satisfaction from the kids' company," Roberta said. "I've been teaching the kids some spirituals. Why don't we give them a concert? You have a great theater in that nursing home."

"That's a wonderful idea," Joan said. "We're one of the few nursing homes in the country that have a fully equipped theater right on the premises. We can bring in not only concerts but plays too. I'm going over to the principal's office. I'll talk to him about it."

Annie left the lunchroom early and spent the time she gained reading the records of her students, in order to get to know them better. She learned that George had an IQ of 150. Pedro's records confirmed what he had told Annie; he had, indeed, been in an automobile accident a few months ago. He had run into the street without looking and had been hit by a Cadillac.

But he hadn't pushed the car, of course; it had pushed him. His unconscious body had been found forty feet away from the front bumper of the car.

Science class followed math class today. Annie had her students sit on mats at the front of the classroom as she opened the science teaching manual to the next page, which contained a simple astronomy lesson.

She showed the class a diagram of the sun and the planets circling it.

"We live on one of the planets," she said. "Does anybody know which one?"

George immediately raised his hand but, now that she knew how high his IQ was, Annie wanted to save him for the tough questions.

"Maria?"

"Earth," Maria said. "The third planet."

"Yes. And why don't the planets go flying off away from the sun?"

Again George raised his hand. This time Annie let him answer, since the other kids seemed baffled.

"Gravity," George said. "The pull of objects of higher mass on objects of lower mass."

Annie saw thirty faces go blank, thirty bodies become restless. A couple of boys began whispering to each other while giving George mean looks. Needing to get the discussion back down to fourth-grade level, she asked George to demonstrate gravity.

"No problem," he said. He stood up, pulled a penny out of his pocket, and let it fall to the floor. "That's gravity. The earth pulls smaller things to itself as soon as you let go of them."

Now the other thirty kids were listening. Maybe they weren't listening with rapt attention, but at least they were listening. George pulled a tiny piece of candy from his pocket and dropped that to the floor.

"See?" he said. "It took longer for the piece of candy to hit the floor, because it's lighter."

Raul grabbed the dirty piece of candy and popped it into his mouth, an angelic smile on his face. But Annie didn't notice because she was busy telling George, "No, George, Leonardo da Vinci disproved that."

"The more dense an object is, the faster it falls to earth," George said to Miss Peters. "My father told me so."

"That was disproven in the -- " Annie stopped herself. She had lost the class's attention again. Maria seemed to be showing Leticia how her mother had curled her hair. Three boys were silently taking turns punching each other.

Annie knew that the students wouldn't listen to a verbal description of the experiment Leonardo da Vinci had performed standing at the top of the leaning tower of Pisa, much less understand it. So why not reenact the experiment herself? Annie quickly stuffed a box full of heavy objects, adding paper to keep them from moving. She also picked up an inch-long piece of chalk. She led the kids to the long set of steps leading out of the building. Like da Vinci at the top of the tower, Annie stood at the top of the steps.

"I'm going to drop this heavy box and this tiny, light piece of chalk at the same time," she said. "And we'll see for ourselves if they hit the ground at the same time."

George's eyes lit up. The other kids seemed interested too, finally.

Annie knew how mercilessly the other boys picked on George. She decided to let him take over the show for a couple of minutes, hoping that the other kids would see him as the cause of this break from schoolwork. Maybe then he would be better liked.

George stationed half the class to watch Miss "Leonardo" Peters and make sure that she let go of the box and the chalk at exactly the same time. He stationed half the class below the steps, where the objects would land. Annie wasn't sure that the students knew what they were looking for, but at least they were interested enough that they weren't misbehaving any more.

"OK, here I go," Annie announced. "One, two, three." On the count of three, she simultaneously dropped the box and the chalk. "How about it down there?"

"They landed at the same time, but -- " George said.

"But you don't trust me and my fifteen watchdogs," Annie said, smiling not only at George's skepticism, which would make him an excellent scientist one day, but at how silly she herself looked --

Oh, no! Lind had to pick just that moment to walk out of the office, right past her. As George picked up the box and the chalk and brought them up to Annie, Annie felt first her ears, then her entire face, become hot.

Lind stopped and gazed at Annie and her class for a moment, a puzzled look on his face. He obviously wondered why half her students were standing several feet above the other half. Annie could only avert her eyes and wish that she had a hole to crawl into. Lind shrugged his shoulders and walked on.

Annie's respect for her boss went up still another notch. He had complete trust in his teachers, even when he didn't fully understand what they were up to.

She dropped the heavy box and the light piece of chalk again. This time, George watched her to make sure that she dropped them simultaneously. The scouts down below, catching on now to the point of the experiment, assured George that the two objects had hit the flat sidewalk at exactly the same time.

At last George was satisfied with the results of the experiment. "I'll tell my father," he said.

"You do that," Annie said. She led her class inside to clean the classroom, wishing that she were pretty enough and mentally healthy enough for James Lind.

"Hi, Roberta. Where's Cora?" Annie asked as she entered the lunchroom and sat down at Roberta's table.

"She stayed home today," Roberta said. "She's not feeling well. Mmm! That smells good," she added, commenting on the aroma of Annie's lunch.

"I'm sorry. I guess it's not fair to eat fried chicken in front of people who are stuck with warmed-over ravioli. I'm feeling so down today that I picked up something special for lunch to console myself. Want some?"

"No thanks," Roberta said. "I don't mind the smell of the chicken. Can I offer you my shoulder to cry on?"

"I really appreciate your offer. I can't confide in my mother any more. She lives in New York -- too far away. The long-distance phone call is prohibitively expensive." Annie opened her milk carton as she went on, "I'm feeling lonely. I'm 29 years old and I still haven't found a husband."

Roberta lowered her voice. "I know who you want. You want the principal, Mr. Lind, to ask you out."

"Roberta, what a thing to say!"

"I wasn't going to say anything. You brought it up."

Annie stabbed a limp french fry with her fork. "He'll never ask me out. Anyway, it wouldn't be a good idea to be so close to somebody I work with."

"I disagree, Annie. I've seen the way he looks at you. It's different from the way he looks at the rest of us."

Annie's face flushed.

"Mr. Lind is a good man," Roberta said. "Things will turn out OK. Oh, speaking of Mr. Lind, my mother says he called her and arranged the nursing-home trip for next week."

"It should be a lot of fun," Annie said.

By the next day, the rain had ended. During lunch hour, the kids were back on the playground, playing ball. Pedro was pitching. Raul was at bat. The umpire, doing double duty as catcher, was Annie Peters.

"Go for it, Pedro!" she called. "Pitch!"

Pedro pitched the ball. Raul swung -- and missed.

George shouted from the infield, "This game is no good. We don't even have enough players, and Raul has to come up to bat twice."

"Si," Lupe, an outfielder and the only girl in the game, said. "The other girls are big sissies and they won't play."

"Too bad Marlon's sick," Raul said. "He's a great player." Raul was too busy talking to see Lind come over.

"Need another player?" Lind asked, using a casual tone.

Raul jumped. "Mr. Lind? You want to play ball with us?"

"Sure," Lind said.

A chorus of "all right" and "go for it" rang out from the would-be junior leaguers. Annie smiled as Raul handed Lind the school's only, priceless, baseball bat. Lind went to home plate and took up a perfect batter's stance, his face mock-serious.

Pedro pitched. Lind swung, barely knocking the ball into the infield. The boys cheered. Onlookers gathered and joined in the cheering as the principal rounded first, then second, base.

George tried to move his overfed body toward the ball. A boy named Jose could see, all the way from the outfield, that George wouldn't make it in time. He rushed toward the ball as Lind approached third base.

Jose, after pushing George out of his way, grabbed the ball off the ground and ran with it to third base just as Lind slid in. Annie thought that the playground's hard asphalt must have taken most of the sole off each of Lind's shoes. He lay there, panting but grinning, as half the kids and teachers shouted, "Safe!" and the other half shouted, "Out!"

"Safe!"

"Out!"

"Safe!"

Annie walked, cool and smug, over to third base. Silence came over the crowd. Annie would never dare to declare her boss "out". Would she?

Annie looked at Jose, standing proudly on third base, raising the ball high in the air. She looked at Lind, lying on the ground, his eyes twinkling, his expensive-looking pin-striped suit dirty and wrinkled. She could even see a tear in the fabric of his pants, although Lind didn't seem to mind. What a great sport he was!

The crowd waited.

"Out!" Annie called. The whole schoolyard, even those who had been yelling, "Safe!" cheered and laughed. Laughing herself, Annie helped her boss up off the hard pavement. She wasn't afraid to call him out, but she was afraid that she was falling in love with him. She was very afraid, because she was sure that he would never love her once he found out that she was bipolar.

"Thanks, Annie," Lind said, laughing. He dusted himself off, waved off cheering fans who wanted an encore, and went back to his office to continue doing the less exciting parts of his job.

Lind pulled his car, loaded with precious cargo, out of the school parking lot.

"Do we have to visit old people?" Raul asked, never one to mince words.

"Old people are more interesting than you think, Raul," the principal said. "You'll see."

His passengers, six kids from Annie Peters's class, were silent for a while, enjoying the ride. Then Raul spoke up again. "You and Miss Peters should get married."

Lind jumped. "Raul, you say the darndest things."

"Not really," George said. "It's obvious that you two are good for each other."

"You and Miss Peters love each other," Leticia said in her sweet, quiet voice. "I can tell."

"What would be wrong with it?" George asked.

"Oh, here we are," Lind said a little too loudly. "This is the nursing home. Everybody out of the car."

Lind and the other two drivers, Roberta and Annie, had all pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home. Twenty-five kids clambered out of the vehicles and looked around, making a sudden transition from talkative to quiet. James led the whole entourage into the nursing home building. Roberta's mother, Joan, came out of her office and said hello to everybody, beginning with her daughter. She turned to the teachers and said, "I'll take you all to the auditorium. The residents are there already."

Annie Peters and James Lind sat down behind the residents. Joan went to the stage and introduced Roberta and the young singers. Roberta had taught them well. The residents listened with rapt attention as the sweet voices sang "Just A Closer Walk With Thee".

As they began "Amazing Grace", Annie had a peculiar thought. She, James, and Roberta had brought twenty-five kids to the nursing home. Roberta had arranged them in two rows. So why was there the same number of kids in each row? Annie counted. There were only twenty-four kids on the stage.

Which kid was missing? Pedro's name came to mind immediately. She scanned the diminutive performers for Pedro's face. He wasn't there.

"Excuse me," she whispered to the principal as she got up out of her chair. She went out the front door of the theatre and checked the unisex bathroom. The door was wide open and Pedro wasn't there. She shut the bathroom door for decorum's sake, went in the stage door of the theatre, and peered into the shadows behind the students. Now they were singing, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?"

Pedro wasn't hiding behind the students or the backdrop. Where could he possibly be? Annie looked up. There, high up on a scaffold, stood the little rascal. She had to get him down before he hurt himself. She thought of asking for Lind's help, but she knew that if she took the principal out of the show the performance would be interrupted. She had to go up after him herself.

It was difficult, but she stepped up on one board, and then on higher and higher boards, until she was only a few feet from Pedro. He didn't seem to know that she was there. He was busy looking down at the singers. He leaned out over the edge of the scaffold, apparently trying to see something or somebody more clearly.

Annie climbed up onto Pedro's scaffold. She reached out her hand, whispering, "Pedro". But it was too late. Pedro, too preoccupied watching others to watch his own step, lost his balance. As Annie watched, horrified, Pedro fell off the platform.

Roberta, facing the students as she led them in "How Great Thou Art", saw the falling figure and screamed. The kids abruptly stopped singing. But Annie, high up on the scaffold, heard no thump. Pedro didn't hit the floor.

As kids cried "Pedro!" and "Ayuda!" ("Help!") Annie leaned out and looked down, being much more careful than Pedro had been. The little rascal had gotten his foot caught in a rope and was now dangling, upside-down, his head five feet from the floor.

"Aaiiieeee!" Pedro cried as the rope swung him back and forth over the heads of his fellow students. Once the kids realized that their classmate hadn't been hurt, they stopped yelling and started laughing.

Annie also realized that Pedro was OK and, relieved, decided to climb back down to the stage. She looked out over the rear of the scaffold. How had she gotten up here? She couldn't see any way back down. She must have been so concerned about Pedro that she had come up here on sheer adrenaline. Now that the adrenaline rush was over, she was trapped.

Her face turned beet red. She felt like a cat stuck in a tree. She was too embarrassed to cry out for help. She would lose all her authority if her students found that out she was up here. The last thing she needed was to be the laughingstock of the school. She cringed back into the shadows. She had no idea what to do.

Down below in the audience, James looked around as the kids sang "How Great Thou Art". He had heard the bathroom door close a while ago and had thought that Annie had been in there. But she still hadn't come back.

Just then, Pedro fell from the scaffolding above the stage, his foot caught in a rope that kept him from getting hurt. James saw Joan rush up onto the stage and grab the little boy. He saw her start trying to get Pedro's foot untangled from the rope as Roberta worked on calming the other kids down.

It looked as if they had the situation under control. James started looking for Annie.

"How do I get myself in these messes?" Annie thought as she huddled, deeply embarrassed, on the dark platform high above the stage.

"Psst!" she heard someone say. She turned around. She let out a surprised gasp.

"Mr. Lind!" she whispered.

"It's time for you to start calling me James," he whispered back. What an angel James was! He was so thoughtful that he had actually climbed up here to help her save face in front of her students.

James leaned over the platform from the board he was standing on and put his mouth at Annie's ear, in order to make sure that only Annie heard him.

"Let me guess," he whispered. "You came up here to save Pedro, and now you can't get back down?"

Annie nodded yes, glad that it was so dark up here above the spotlights that James couldn't see how red her face and ears were. She let out a breath of sheer relief that James was going to help her get down before she was discovered in this silly situation.

But, to Annie's surprise, James climbed up and got onto the scaffold with her. It was a very tight squeeze for him. In order to fit in, he had to sit with his long legs touching the whole length of Annie's legs and his feet hanging over the edge of the scaffold. His right arm had to be behind Annie's back, since it wouldn't fit anywhere else.

"James!" Annie cried in an indignant whisper.

"What?" James again put his mouth right against her ear. "They're all watching Pedro. I've got a few minutes to relive my childhood."

"Childhood?"

"Yes. My friends and I built a tree house once and crawled into it and just sat there, dark and quiet and hidden from the rest of the world."

Annie pictured the safety, the serenity. James's body was warm against hers.

She broke out laughing. She couldn't help it. She clamped her free hand, the one that wasn't trapped by James's body, over her mouth so that her laughter wouldn't be heard by the crowd below. Her whole body shook with suppressed giggles.

Her giggles must have been contagious. James's body started shaking with laughter too. How silly they must look! They laughed at the very idea that two fully grown people -- teachers, no less -- would crawl into a secret hiding place just as any kid would.

Annie took her hand from her mouth and turned her head to look at James. His lips, still at her ear, brushed like a feather across her left cheek. He could have moved his head just far enough away so that that wouldn't have happened. But he didn't. His lips touched hers.

Just as quickly as their silent laughter had begun, it stopped. The touch of James's mouth started a row of goosebumps shivering down Annie's spine. His lips were so soft, yet so firm and full of yearning. She felt his arm, the one behind her back, squeeze her shoulders with urgent longing.

"I shouldn't be doing this," Annie told herself. But James's kiss was pure heaven.

She forced herself to end the kiss. "James," she said. "You have to know the truth about me."

"What?" James asked. Annie looked unbelievably beautiful to him right then. More beautiful than ever.

"I have bipolar affective disorder," Annie made herself say. She watched James intently.

"So do I," James said.