More troubling to Mrs. Patterson was the angel fantasy, not so much for the religious overtones, though she felt absolute in keeping matters of God out of the classroom, or for the complexity of the child's role-playing, but rather for what the outburst revealed about Norah's inner life. In nearly twenty years on the job, she had seen a number of similar reactions to stress, usually stemming from a familial or domestic situation. One girl would pee in her pants right before every mathematics test. Another boy insisted on talking to an imaginary friend named Jack-Peter every recess and lunch hour. Any number of boys and girls had claimed that when they grew up, they wanted to be something entirely inhuman: a dog, a house, the moon. Why worry about an angel, for such moments usually passed, often without elucidation or lasting harm. She was even more concerned about the boy Sean Fallon, and how, since Norah's arrival, he had glommed on to her. This friendship allowed him to emerge from his cell, imprisoned as he was by feelings of anxiety and self-recrimination after his father left. In September, he had circled around the whirlpool, threatening to sink and drown, and by February, he could sail on. Norah had enchanted him and brought him back to normalcy, and Mrs. Patterson watched the transformation, the silent knowing looks, and all the stolen acts of two kindreds in a crowd that rewarded conformity. How obviously he adored her.
Chatter in the hallways shook her from introspection. The children, returning from the playground, were abuzz about the accident on the monkeybars. All through the winter, they had clamored to play outside for their morning exercise, but January had bitten cold, and February had been too snowy. A soaking rain and three days of abiding sunshine had cleared and dried the playing field, so Mr. Taylor had decided to herd them outdoors rather than stuffing them grade by grade in the cramped gym for half an hour. Most of the children ran free, chased after a ball or each other, or massed on the pavement to skip rope or etch their marks with hard stones on the macadam. A half dozen staked out the swings and flew into the sky, and a clump of kids perched on the jungle gym—Dori Tilghman, Matt Mansur, Sean Fallon, Lucas Ford, and in her crow's nest, Norah Quinn. “You can see over the tops of the trees. You can see the whole world from here. Look, there's a river and a bridge!”
Each child climbed the ladder of iron bars and took turns for the bird's-eye view, all except Lucas, the smallest in the group. Urged on by the boys, he inched to the rounded top, arms and legs stiff as a scuttling crab's, and from there he lost his footing, slipped and screamed, falling headfirst down the center space. Heads turned to the sound of panic. Some witnesses claimed that Lucas stopped midair, his head pointed like an arrow targeting the ground, others said that he seemed to be falling in slow motion, and later, not a soul disputed that there had not been time enough to rescue him. Norah reached through a square of space and grabbed his ankle in one hand, the weight of the boy wrenching her forward with such force that her face clanged into an iron pole as loud and sudden as a firecracker. The blow knocked her glasses to the bare ground. She managed to hold Lucas suspended three feet from impact until the others sprang to gather him into their arms like a frightened monkey fallen from the top of a tree. When she was sure the others safely had him, Norah let go and slumped forward, legs wrapped around the bars, and gingerly touched the welt thrumming across her left cheekbone. Blinking wildly, she seemed about to cry but was in fact searching for her missing glasses, and when Sean retrieved them, she put them on and peered through a lick of mud at the wallowing world. The bell called them in, and when she saw the bruise on the child's face, Mrs. Patterson asked her about the injury. Norah shrugged her shoulders. “We were playing.”
By day's end, the teacher had pieced together a rough draft of the events, and as the third graders packed their satchels and bookbags, Mrs. Patterson requested that Sean Fallon stay behind. He signaled Norah to go on without him, and within minutes he was alone with his teacher, shifting from foot to foot at the front row as she wiped the blackboard. “I've heard all kinds of stories, Sean, about what happened out there on the playground. Some students have the crazy idea that Lucas floated in the air. At lunch, one of the children said to another that Norah put a spell on Lucas. Levitated him, so to speak, to fall not quite as fast, so that she'd have time to save him. What do you think about that?”
“How would she do that?”
“Impossible. You were there. What happened?”
He chewed his bottom lip. “He was going to fall, so she just reached for him—”
“By instinct.”
“Right. And she made a lucky catch.”
“Like a baseball player sticking out his glove and the ball lands in it?”
“Just like that. And then we grabbed Lucas as she was about to drop the ball.”
Mrs. Patterson sat back on the edge of the desk and peeked at the clock on the wall. “You and Norah are good friends, right? You shouldn't let the other kids tell stories on her. You should tell them the truth like you told me. Lucky catch.”