“I don’t know, Aus. It’s hard for me to feel 1959. I try to touch it, and it moves away. It feels like a slower time, an easier time … and yet such a dim, shadowy time.”

“That’s because you’re trying to find out what it was like to be black in 1959, and you’re never going to know that,” said Austin. “The only thing we might figure out is what it was like to be white in 1959.” Aus felt like weather: He was a warm front, she was a cold front, and any moment there would be a storm. When he touched his cheek against hers, pressure began to build that Austin could not manage. “Okay, fine, we won’t trace the guy through his driving records,” said Austin. “Let’s go to the old junior high and interview teachers who were there in 1959.”

“Aus,” she said, “you’re a genius.”

Austin jumped to his feet, stuck his hand down and pulled her up.

When Mr. Sibley taught, the building had been a junior high, grades seven through nine, but now it was a middle school, six through eight.

Middle school was not a phase of life that Macey cared to recall. In seventh grade, she had grown tall so quickly that her arms and legs did not match. She fell off risers when the choir sang. Stairways tripped her going up and ambushed her going down. When she clapped, her palms missed, because one arm was longer than the other. Her parents took her to the doctor, who said that was ridiculous, her arms matched fine—but what did he know? She was the one whose hands missed when she tried to clap.

How had it been here for Mr. Sibley? Had he been on tiptoe, as Dr. King had written? Harried by day and haunted by night? Or was he just teaching and never thought about it? After the fire, he sure thought about it.

A teacher Macey had never had, a woman so old she must have been around thirty-eight years ago, trudged wearily toward them. “Mrs. Smith!” Macey called, trotting over.

Mrs. Smith smiled in the bright, unremembering way of people who see thousands of kids over the years.

“My name is Macey Clare. I was here a few years ago, but you weren’t one of my teachers.”

Mrs. Smith continued trudging, and Macey fell in step. “I’m hoping to talk to a teacher or an administrator who was here in 1959. Were you?”

“No, I didn’t go back to work till after my children were grown. That was seventy-nine. I don’t think there’s a single person here who taught here in fifty-nine. The principal would have been Bob Rutland, and he’s been dead twenty years.” She said this while still walking, and by the time her sentences were done, she had entered a classroom, and Macey and Aus were alone in the hall with her echo.