The school bus felt regulated and safe, as if everything would always be neatly packaged in bright yellow, and arrive on time, and stop for signals.

Everybody on it was white.

She pictured Elizabeth Eckford, age fifteen, getting on this school bus. People would be friendly and nice and ordinary, and the fact that Elizabeth Eckford came in a black skin would not mean a single thing.

But that was not true, and she knew it was not true. People would be friendly and nice and ordinary … and Elizabeth Eckford, age fifteen and black, would sit alone.

Macey took a deep, shuddery breath.

Try not to think about Venita.

How could she think about anyone else? Elizabeth Eckford, four decades ago, Macey could think about for a minute; but Venita was now. Was dead. Had no now.

Was not there to paint walls yellow, quote Shakespeare, baby-sit the sixes or give hairstyle advice.

If only Mom had said, Think about Venita.

The following morning was Thursday.

“But I can’t go to school today,” said Macey. “The funeral is at two!”

“Macey,” said her mother, “you will attend school. Your father and I are going to work, there is nobody to take you to that funeral, you would be totally out of place anyway, it would not make you feel better, it would not accomplish a thing.”

“I want to go!”

“That is absolutely out of the question, Macey!” said her father, getting very close to shouting. They were not a shouting family. “You knew this girl two hours! You are not going into that dangerous city to her funeral.”

“I need to!”

Inside herself, Macey had been screaming for two days. Her throat ought to be sore from all that yelling, but it hadn’t been out loud. Austin seemed deaf, walking without hearing, as if his thoughts about Venita had sealed him with tape; whereas her thoughts about Venita were exploding her. Grace, unbelievably, had actually asked Macey what she was upset about. Here was Venita filling Macey’s thoughts as a body fills a coffin, but Grace had just said politely, “I didn’t get to know her, Mace. I’m sorry in a basic sort of way, but I’m not weeping about it. She’s just a statistic for me. I know I sound heartless, but they have so many murders in that city.”

Macey was desperate for somebody else to feel the way she did. “Grace, my mother said not to think about her,” she’d told her friend.

“That sounds like good advice.”

“Grace! You have to think about people! It dishonors them if you don’t think about them. If I were shot and killed, wouldn’t you think about me?”

“I’d collapse if you were killed. But Mace, this is a stranger, and she was a stranger to you, too. I think your mother’s right. Don’t dwell on it.”