She put her hand on his arm and he stopped; he felt he couldn't move. "May I go to your room with you?" she asked, and now she sounded like the girl who had asked in the woods if the mushrooms were all dangerous, if the things in the trees had told him how to find his way, if he really could become invisible if he wanted to.

"You'll go back to your sisters and laugh at me like Susan did," he said.

"No!" she whispered. "Never! Susan wasn't laughing at you. They were scared, that's why they were all so nervous. Susan was most scared of all because she was picked to put the bracelet on you. They weren't laughing at you."

As she spoke she released his arm and took a step back from him, then another. Now he could see the pale blur of her face. She was shaking her head as she talked.

"Scared? What do you mean?"

"You can do things no one else can do," she said, still speaking very softly, almost in a whisper. "You can make things no one ever saw, and you can tell stories no one ever heard, and you can disappear and travel through the woods like the wind. You're not like the other boys. Not like our elders. Not like anyone else. And we know you don't like any of us because you never choose anyone to lie with."

"Why did you come after me if you're so afraid of me?"

"I don't know. I saw you run and… I don't know." He felt the hot flush race through him again, and he began to walk. "If you want to go with me, I don't care," he said roughly, not looking back. "I'm going to my room now." He could not hear her footsteps for the pounding in his ears. He walked swiftly, making a wide berth of the auditorium, and he knew she was running to keep up. He led her around the hospital, not wanting to walk down the brightly lighted corridor with her at his heels. At the far end he opened the door and glanced inside before he entered. He let the door go and almost ran to his room, and he heard her quick footsteps as she came after him.

"What are you doing?" she asked at the doorway.

"I'm putting the cover over the window," he said, and his voice sounded angry even to him. "So no one can look at us. I put it there a lot."

"But why?"