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leaving the sleepy, balding creature in a pom-pom hat Kitty Johnson had knit the sick girl when it went out at school that Astra was losing her hair. First lines to college essays occurred to Marlene: “Walking along the hospital corridor to see my sick friend was an unsettling experience.” Possible, but there was her dad essay, the one she had started: “My father looked me in the eyes and asked, ‘Are you ready?’ ‘No,’ I replied, and he pushed me overboard, and I sank deeper and deeper into a cold, enchanted realm.” Her father had pushed her into China Lakes, but Marlene had always wanted to go scuba diving, and who was to say she had not?
Siddons
    Five of the graduates from the class of ’96, home from college, came to see the last day of school and the Christmas spectacle when 536 girls from grades k through twelve gathered in the auditorium, the seats retracted for the occasion, and in the middle of the room, the fake Christmas tree with its paper-chain decoration. The fifth, sixth, and seventh graders gathered in the balcony with their teachers while the other grades filed in: big sisters and little sisters, starting with the seniors and their kindergarten charges, hand in hand, an endless coil of girls wearing red and green accessories, candy-cane tights, and tinsel in their hair—“I’m one big present, just for you!” Gillian Warring mouthed to Mr. Weeks in the balcony. Around and around, the elevens with the first grade, the tens with the second, on and on, the students came while most of their teachers sat on the stage of the auditorium. A few of the old favorite Christmas and Hanukkah songs to begin—“You would surely say it glows, like a lightbulb!”—and then Miss Brigham in a Santa’s hat, front and center on the stage, read from
The Polar Express.
Then some more songs until everyone’s favorite moment: “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” when the first grade began, “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,” and the kindergarten girls, no bigger than feathers, were held up by

their senior sisters to squeak, “Fa la lah.” The dreaded moment, of course, was “Five golden rings,” when the fifth-grade girls leaned over the balcony with their wagging hands outstretched and shrilly pitched the song. The sixth and seventh graders tried to outshout each other, and the teachers, predictably, frowned, but “Five golden rings!” always put the song on high, and there it stayed with some slight mumbled diminishment in the upper grades as the ninth grade mimed nine maids a-milking until, the moment anticipated, and the seniors stood, some of them already crying, and began their own Christmas medley—playful digs at teachers and Quirk, of course, and college horrors. The girls were often off tune and uncertain of the lyrics so recently composed. “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock, you might just think our essay’s a crock . . .”

 
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January

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CHF
    What could she write to Astra in the moment that would not be wrong?
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Dear A,
Maybe you feel like it has been a waste to have spent your life practicing for what turns out to be nothing. But you are lucky in some ways because you will know what it is like to die, and the rest of us will spend our lives wondering. I know that this isn’t comforting at all, but I’m sure you’ll be getting enough of that from others, and soon it will stop meaning anything. So I want to talk to you about your dying. I know you have envisioned your own funeral before. People missing you. People make the most impact on the lives of others by being absent.
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    Car had faltered over other letters, but this one she sent.
Siddons
    Mr. O’Brien was wearing his Irish pants, the thick Donegal tweed number that Suki and Alex always said must have made him sweat in manly