Sean loved the panther best and nearly leapt with joy when he found one tensed for the attack. He was surprised by the bear—not the sitting circus bear, but the grizzly on the prowl. The zebra and the camel were acceptable, though one or both sets of legs frequently were missing. The broken ones disappointed, left him feeling somehow cheated. An elephant without a trunk was a catastrophe. Once in a while they came out misshapen altogether, a walrus glued to a kangaroo or the features of a moose puddled in horror. These he almost could not eat. But more than the crackers, the box fascinated him with its vibrant colors, the caged animals poised wild against the bars, the reclining gorilla, the snarling tiger, the mystery of the musk ox. On the bottom panel, instructions, lines to cut and fold, enabled the construction of the wheeled circus wagon and a top-hatted ringmaster holding a megaphone. Or, on alternate designs, a lion tamer with a whip. He never bothered to make the train of wagons, knew of nobody who actually destroyed one illusion to create another. Most appealing of all was the thin red cloth string along the top edge of the box. A handle, of course, that made the emptied carton a purse or a treasure chest for any collection of small valuables. One was filled with plastic army men and molded wild animals. Another held marbles, smooth stones, and a discarded jack. A third contained feathers from jays and robins, sparrows and wrens, the black ace of the crow, the white of some unknown flying thing. And nested nearby, the pale blue teacup Norah had given him.
His collection of animal cracker boxes was situated artfully among the books and magazines in the rough-hewn case of shelves his father had made when Sean was a baby. Hidden carefully within the books, tucked between the covers and title pages, were all the birthday cards from his parents, first signed jointly and later two separate notes. Norahs valentine he secreted, like a pressed wildflower, in the pages of Birds of North America, the volume missing a score of clipped illustrations. He stared at the spines of his library, hoping for the distraction of a good book, but every title left him slightly dissatisfied. He could not shake the image of Norah's deceit in the lunchroom earlier that day.
She had promised to be good. Ten days had passed uneventfully since Valentine's, for with Diane gone, there was no subterfuge to carry out. They played together like normal children, once going round to the Rosa Rossa Flower Shop to marvel at the finches. Another afternoon was spent drawing side by side, arguing over who was better—pirates or knights. Checkers and hot chocolate. Sunday on a sled. At first, Norah waved off any discussion of her confession in private or in school, content to bask in newfound admiration and popularity, but one by one, the temporary friends drifted away, bored by her ordinariness. The memory of the spectacle gave way to prayer conspiracies to conjure another snow day's vacation and to a general colloquy on the horrors of finding common denominators when confronted by more than one fraction. She was being forgotten. Matthew Mansur began taunting her at lunch, the ridicule pathetic and absurd. “If you are an angel, show us a miracle. Faker.” And then the bully picked up Sharon's animal crackers and spilled them onto the cafeteria table. Without fuss, Norah brushed them to her with both hands, and the children watched intently as she lined the animals nose to tail along the surface and then held the open circus box in her lap.
“Happy are they who believe but need not see,” she said. The table began to vibrate slightly as if from the shock of a faraway rumbling earthquake or lifted by a séance and an unseen force beneath the surface, and into the box the hippos and rhinos and giraffes fell one by one to the very last cracker. Nobody said a word during the entire performance, and soon after the finale, the bell rang. The children packed their bags and lunchboxes to hurry back to the classroom, murmuring among themselves. Sean walked three steps behind her and looked at the tiles between his feet when she glanced over her shoulder, wondering, if she was an angel was she also a girl, also his true friend?