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Sickle had to say, “Witnesses reported several huge cracks,” he burst out into uncontrollable giggles. The network quickly broke away to the sports segment, but angry phone calls immediately came pouring in from viewers. Sometimes there was an extremely fine line between a Nobody and a Somebody, and John Sickle had crossed it in the space of a few seconds. That could happen, if people weren’t careful.
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    After she had finished going through the papers, Clara headed outside. The day was cool and fine, with fragments of bright blue sky peeking out between the buildings.
    The Huxley Academy was about half a mile downtown. Clara considered taking a taxi, but she was still in high temper over Annabelle, and she thought that a walk might be just the thing to calm her down.
    She walked past Pish Posh, which was closed now, and cut across Washington Square Park. The park was not really a square. It was more like a rectangle that was skirted by a wrought-iron fence. At its entrance was the great marble arch, which Clara’s father liked to look at wistfully through the small kitchen window, sighing about how one day he would return to his beloved Paris, where the kitchen workers were not all so revolting.
    Today, as Clara passed through the arch, she suddenly, out of the blue, remembered something Dr. Piff had told her when she was younger. More than two hundred years ago, he’d said, Washington Square Park was a burial ground for slaves and poor people, many of whom had died of yellow fever.
    â€œWhenever I enter the park,” he’d said, “I always tap my foot twice on the ground. Just so those old New Yorkers know that I’ m thinking of them. ”
    How odd that she’d remember something so trivial. And what a silly thing to do, on Dr. Piff’s part! She frowned. It was unfortunate that Dr. Piff had popped into her thoughts when she had managed to block him and his mystery out of her mind all morning.
    The park was crowded as usual. Some people were playing chess, others were watching a man juggling sneakers in front of the fountain, and dozens of people sprawled out on the grass, eating soft pretzels with salt the size of hailstones.
    â€œCome have your portrait sketched!” called out a very short, slight man to anyone passing by. He was standing under a huge elm tree, surrounded by charcoal sketches of celebrities. The tree was very tall and ancient looking, and Clara had always been mesmerized by it. True, it wasn’t nearly as tall as her climbing tree, but it had a strange, wizened look that made Clara wonder what it had seen in its long life. She found herself staring at it now, and the artist, encouraged by the fact that she had stopped near him, waved his arm wildly for her to come closer.
    â€œYes, come here, little one! I will draw your portrait. I will make you look like a movie star. Like her!” He held up a drawing of June Loblolly, a movie actress whom Clara had recently banished from Pish Posh. It was rather a good drawing of Ms. Loblolly, too. Her hair was whipping around her face in pale tendrils, and she looked terribly sad, as she always did in the movies.
    â€œAh, the extraordinary June Loblolly!” the artist exclaimed when he saw how intently Clara was studying the sketch. “She does not belong to our world, no?”
    â€œI don’t see what you mean,” Clara said curtly, embarrassed that she had been caught staring.
    â€œWhy, she has a face that belongs to the ancient world, does she not?” he said, apparently amazed that she did not see this for herself. “You may see her likeness on the marble busts of Greek goddesses, gilded on Egyptian sarcophagi, carved into fertility fetishes unearthed in Peru. Not beautiful, perhaps, but full of wisdom, full of sadness, full of mercy!”
    Clara was silent for a moment, and then drew herself up. “She’s an actress. She can make herself look however she wants.