Mom made Rose promise to call if Muriel couldn’t give her a ride back home even though they’d been through it all earlier that morning, when Mom had phoned Muriel at her house to doublecheck everything. Even so, now she waited, the car spouting fumes into the cold air, until Rose had actually opened the door. Only when she was walking up the flight of stairs did Mom drive off.

Muriel must have just come in. She was sitting at her desk with her back to the door, still wrapped in her big cloak and talking on the phone. She raised a hand in greeting and made signals toward the locker room.

“I’ll get changed,” Rose whispered and hurried through to the lockers. The changing room had once been the apartment’s kitchen and bath, and Muriel had kept the quaint old doors which were half smoked glass. Whenever they had the occasional male student, the younger girls would giggle and screech if they thought he was nearby, worried he could see through the glass.

She dumped her bag down on the bench and took off her parka.

There was always a faint smell of sweat in the room, something she would forever associate with dancing and sore toes.

She was pulling on her tights when Muriel came to the door. “Hi,” Rose called, “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

Muriel didn’t answer. Her shadow lingered for a moment at the glass, then disappeared. Out in the studio, the music began. Vivaldi. II Sospetto.

Rose felt a tingle of excitement. A chance to dance for someone from New York at the recital. Lately, things had been getting in the way of dance. Now her resolve returned full force.

Muriel’s shape reappeared. “Just coming,” Rose shouted above the music.

But something.

Muriel’s shadow remained. She was just standing there on the other side of the door, saying nothing. As if she were staring in. But Rose knew you couldn’t really see anything, even if you felt like you could. That’s what made the girls screech.

The feeling they were being watched.

“Muriel?”

Rose took a step to the door, half laughing. Then stopped^ “Muriel? Is that you?”

Why was she joking around?

But the shape. Something was wrong. It was too tall. It suddenly seemed huge and black and menacing. And as Rose began to back away, two long arms went up and the hands splayed out against the glass. The shape was like a huge face now, the hands the two eyes, the spread fingers the eyelashes, the torso the long nose, and the edge of the glass like a thin-lipped mouth.

“Muriel, say something, okay?”

There was the faintest creak in answer. The door was slowly moving inwards.