I'd like to give special thanks to Pamela Dorman at Viking, an editor with the persistence and patience (not to mention just plain guts) to keep authors striving for the same level of excellence she achieves in her craft. My deepest appreciation too to Deborah Schneider, dear friend and the best agent in the world. And to the entire Viking/NAL crew, especially Barbara Grossman, Elaine Koster, Michaela Hamilton, Joe Pittman, Cathy Hemming, Matthew Bradley (who's earned the title Combat Publicist a hundred times over), and Susan Hans O'Connor. No mention of gratitude would be complete without acknowledging the fine folks at Curtis Brown in London, especially Diana Mackay and Vivienne Schuster, and at my top-notch British publisher, Hodder-Headline, notably my editor, Carolyn Mays, and Sue Fletcher and Peter Lavery. Thanks to Cathy Gleason at Gelfman-Schneider, and thanks and a "hey" to my grandmother Ethel Rider and my sister and fellow author, Julie Reece Deaver, and to Tracey, Kerry, David, Taylor, Lisa (Ms. X-Man), Casey, Chris, and Bryan Big and Bryan Little.

"Eight gray birds, sitting in dark.

"Cold wind blows, it isn't kind."

The small yellow school bus crested an abrupt rise on the highway and for a moment all she could see was a huge quilt of pale wheat, a thousand miles wide, waving, waving under the gray sky. Then they dipped down once again and the horizon was gone.

"Sitting on wire, they lift their wings

"and sail off into billowy clouds."

When she paused she looked at the girls, who nodded approvingly. She realized that she'd been staring at the thick pelt of wheat and ignoring her audience.

"Are you nervous?" Shannon asked.

"Don't ask her that," Beverly warned. "Bad luck."

No, Melanie explained, she wasn't nervous. She looked out again at the fields that streamed past.

Three of the girls were drowsing but the other five were wide awake and waiting for her to continue. Melanie began again but was interrupted before she'd recited the first line of the poem.

"Wait – what kind of birds are they?" Kielle frowned.

"Don't interrupt." From seventeen-year-old Susan. "People who interrupt are Philistines."

"Am not!" Kielle shot back. "What is that?"

"Crass dummy," Susan explained.

"What's 'crass'?" Kielle demanded.

"Let her finish!"

Melanie continued:

"Eight little birds high in sky,

"They fly all night till they find sun."

"Time out." Susan laughed. "It was five birds yesterday."

"Now you're interrupting," lean tomboy Shannon pointed out. "You Philadelphian."

"Philistine," Susan corrected.

Chubby Jocylyn nodded emphatically as if she also had caught the slip but was too timid to point it out. Jocylyn was too timid to do very much at all.

"But there are eight of you so I changed it."

"Can you do that?" wondered Beverly. At fourteen, she was the second-oldest student.

"It's my poem," Melanie responded. "I can make it as many birds as I want."

"How many people will be there? At recital?"

"One hundred thousand." Melanie looked quite sincere.

"No! Really?" offered enthusiastic eight-year-old Shannon, as a much older eight-year-old Kielle rolled her eyes.

Melanie's gaze was again drawn to the bleak scenery of south-central Kansas. The only color was the occasional blue Harvestore prefab silo. It was July but the weather was cold and heavily overcast; rain threatened. They passed huge combines and buses filled with migrant workers, their Porta-Pottis wheeling along behind. They saw landowners and sharecroppers, piloting their huge Deeres, Masseys, and IHs. Melanie imagined them glancing nervously at the sky; this was harvest time for the winter wheat, and a storm now could ruin eight months of arduous work.

Melanie turned away from the window and self-consciously examined her fingernails, which she trimmed and filed religiously everynight. They were coated with faint polish and looked like perfect flakes of pearl. She lifted her hands and recited several poems again, signing the words elegantly. Now all the girls were awake, four looking out the windows, three watching Melanie's fingers, and round Jocylyn Weiderman watching her teacher's every move.

These fields go on forever, Melanie thought. Susan's gaze followed Melanie's. "They're blackbirds," the teenager signed. "Crows."

Yes, they were. Not five or eight, but a thousand, a flock of them. The birds watched the ground, the yellow bus, and the overcast sky, gray and purple.

Melanie looked at her watch. They weren't even to the highway yet. It would be three hours before they got to Topeka.

The bus descended into another canyon of wheat.

She sensed the trouble before a single clue registered in her conscious thoughts. Later she would conclude that it was no psychic message or premonition; it was Mrs. Harstrawn's big, ruddy fingers flexing anxiously on the steering wheel.

Hands, in motion.

Then the older woman's eyes narrowed slightly. Her shoulders shifted. Her head tilted a millimeter. The small things a body does that reveal what the mind is thinking.

"Are girls asleep?" The question was blunt and the fingers returned immediately to the wheel. Melanie scooted forward and signed that they weren't.

Now the twins, Anna and Suzie, delicate as feathers, were sitting up, leaning forward, breathing on the older teacher's broad shoulders, looking ahead. Mrs. Harstrawn waved them back. "Don't look. Sit back and look out opposite window. Do it. Now! The left window."

Then Melanie saw the car. And the blood. There was a lot of it. She shepherded the girls back to their seats.

"Don't look," Melanie instructed. Her heart pounded fiercely, her arms suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. "And put seatbelts on." She had trouble making the words.

Jocylyn, Beverly, and ten-year-old Emily did as instructed immediately. Shannon grimaced and peeked, Kielle blatantly ignored Melanie. Susan got to look, she pointed out. Why couldn't she?

Of the twins, it was Anna who'd gone still, hands in her lap and her face paler than usual, in sharp contrast to her sister's nut-brown tan. Melanie stroked the girl's hair. She pointed out the window on the left side of the bus. "Look at wheat," she instructed.

"Totally interesting," Shannon replied sarcastically.

"Those poor people." Twelve-year-old Jocylyn wiped copious tears from her fat cheeks.

The burgundy Cadillac had run hard into a metal irrigation gate. Steam rose from its front end. The driver was an elderly man. He lay sprawled half out of the car, his head on the asphalt. Melanie could now see a second car as well, a gray Chevy. The collision had happened at an intersection. It looked like the Cadillac had had the right of way and had slammed into the gray car, which must have run a stop sign. The Chevy had skidded off the road into the tall wheat. There was no one inside; its hood was twisted and steam plumed from the radiator.