A Stillness in Bethlehem(16)

“Does what?” Candy asked, confused.

“It’s about Tisha Verek,” Cara said slowly, as if she were talking to a mental defective. “You know Mrs. Verek? Who’s married to that artist who lives out at the end of the Delaford Road?”

“I know Mrs. Verek,” Candy said stiffly.

“Well, Mrs. Verek is going to court to sue the town about the Celebration,” Cara said, slowing her voice down, making any word of more than a single syllable take long seconds to get out. “That’s because there’s this law, called the Bill of Rights—”

“The Bill of Rights isn’t a law,” Candy said sharply. “It’s part of the Constitution. I know what the Constitution is, Cara.”

“Oh. Well. I’m sorry. I didn’t think that was the kind of thing you were interested in.”

“Who cares what she’s interested in?” Mrs. Johnson demanded. “I’ll tell her what it’s all about and I’ll do it in less time, too. What you’re going on about, Cara, is beyond me. It’s all that freedom-of-religion business, like the reason we can’t pray anymore in school. Tisha Verek is going to the federal court and saying that our Celebration keeps her from having freedom of religion, and that the court ought to make us stop.”

“Going?” Candy shot a quick look at the clock, bewildered.

“She’s supposed to leave at nine-thirty,” Cara put in. “At least, that’s what she seems to have told everybody. Camber Hartnell’s going with her. They’re going to try to get an injunction to shut the Celebration down. Maybe it won’t matter that we’ve done all this rehearsing. Maybe we’ll just have to fold our tents and go home.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Peter Callisher was absolutely positive that there wouldn’t be anything like that, this year at least. He told Betty Heath that Tisha Verek had waited far too long, and now it would be at least a year before she could get the Celebration shut down. If she can get it shut down at all.”

Cara Hutchinson shrugged. “Maybe,” she said, “but if you ask me, it all depends on the kind of judge they get down there in Montpelier, and with all the flatlanders we’ve got here now and that woman in the governor’s mansion, you can’t tell how things are going to turn out. I’m going to be ready no matter what. I think it’s the only sensible thing.”

“I think getting your name in the paper has gone to your head,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Nobody’s going to shut down the Celebration. If you’re using this as a way to excuse not knowing your lines—”

“I always know my lines,” Cara said.

“Well,” Mrs. Johnson conceded, “you probably do. But I say we get to work and keep working until we hear we shouldn’t, because if we don’t work, it will surely turn out we should have. Let’s go in to the auditorium and wait. Maybe it’ll be warmer in there. Candy?”

Candy went “mmm,” and then, realizing that both Cara and Mrs. Johnson were looking at her, forced a smile. The boulder felt bigger now, enormous, and Candy was doing as much as she could just to remember how to breathe. Cara and Mrs. Johnson were staring at her as if she were the stupidest person in the world—which, in Candy’s opinion, they had every right to do. Candy knew she was stupid in much the same way she knew she was ugly. She could look in the mirror and tell.

Candy backed up a little and made herself take a deep breath. “Excuse me,” she said. “I think I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Are you feeling ill?” Mrs. Johnson asked her.

“There’s that nasty flu going around,” Cara said. “It could put you in bed for a week.”

“I just have to go to the bathroom,” Candy said again. Then she turned her back on them and began to move faster, chugging down the hall, heading for the polished wooden door with “Ladies” printed on it. Behind her, Cara and Mrs. Johnson were muttering to each other. For one awful moment, Cara’s voice floated into the dead silence and steam-heated calm.

“God only knows what the committee was thinking of when they picked her,” Cara said. “She can’t think her way out of a paper bag.”

“Shhh,” Mrs. Johnson said, sounding frantic.

Candy got through the ladies’ room door, across the carpeted expanse in front of the vanities, down the tile corridor in the back room and into a stall. Then she shut the stall door and locked it and laid her forehead against the cold comfort of the gray metal partition wall. She didn’t care what Cara said about her mind. Everybody said that kind of thing about her and had been saying it for years. She didn’t care what Mrs. Johnson thought ought to be kept a secret, either. She knew enough about secrets to start her own college of witchcraft. What she did care about was—