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Whit looked interested. "That might be fun to watch. Am I included?"

"Of course," Maggie answered. "We're supposed to meet here at eleven-thirty. That's next Saturday, not tomorrow. Ms. Gross said there'd be chairs set up for us, so we can sit while we watch the removal of the statue, and listen to the mayor's speech. My dad thinks the whole thing is going to take a lot

longer than anyone's planning, to get the old girl down off that roof." Maggie began moving toward the barbecue cart. "Personally, if I know the mayor, the speech will take a lot longer than anyone's planning."

Whit's eyes met Maggie's, as if to say, This is just between you and me> as he asked, "But you're going to be there anyway?"

Her own eyes glinted. "Well, let me think about this." She tapped an index finger against her lips. "A Saturday in Felicity gives me two choices: I can go to the library and check out a couple of books, or I can catch one of four old movies at the mall, none of which were that good to begin with. Tough choices there." She nodded. "Yeah, I guess I could squeeze in a little history-making."

He nodded, smiling at her.

"We'll all be there," Lane said. "It's our civic duty, right?" The brittle tone of her voice told Maggie she was offended because Whit had made a point of checking only Maggie's Saturday plans.

"So," Maggie asked lightly, "how's Scoop?"

Lane glared at her. "He's fine, Maggie. Just fine."

Maggie had to eat hurriedly. Used paper plates smeared with rust-colored barbecue sauce piled steadily higher on the kitchen's wide stone windowsills. All trash was supposed to be passed through the two open windows to the kitchen for disposal, but her mother was having a hard time keeping pace. "Be there in a sec, Mom!" Maggie called as she left the barbecue cart with a full plate of her own.

Lane, Whit, Helen, and Alex were still waiting in line. "Man," Scout said, taking a deep breath as he and Maggie took seats on a stone bench, "they should bottle that smell and sell it!"

"They do bottle it, Scout. It's called barbecue sauce." Maggie took a bite of her hot dog and just then spotted James Keith, leaning sullenly against the courthouse wall, his eyes on her. She was tempted to walk over and tell him to stay away from her house or she'd call the police, but decided against it. For one thing, he wasn't alone, and the two boys flanking him looked every bit as nasty as James. His girlfriend was there, too, and beside her stood Alice Ann "Chantilly" Beckwith. Birds of a feather, all of them glaring at her as if she alone were responsible for every bad thing that had ever happened to them.

The other thing that stopped Maggie from eon-fronting James was that she couldn't be certain it really was James who'd dissected the gavel and left it on her porch as some kind of message. She couldn't prove it. Innocent until proven guilty, she told herself, and turned away from his hostile gaze.

kShe was grateful that Scout hadn't noticed ames. He might have felt compelled to start somehing, in a misguided move to '"protect" her. Scout ras tall and strong, but the odds were overwhelming.

He wanted to go with her when she went on duty. "Nothing doing," Maggie had to say. "No one's allowed inside the courthouse but volunteers. That doesn't include you. Relax, have fun, okay? I'm only

working for an hour. I'll find you when Fm done."

Reluctantly, he went off to join the others.

Maggie's mother was glad to see her. "I've got a splitting headache," she said, wiping a hand across her brow. "I should have asked for more volunteers. Most of the other committee members are already delivering the things we sold, so we don't have to do it tomorrow." Because Maggie was wearing long sleeves, there was no sign of the bandage, so when her mother gave her the once-over to make sure she was as okay as she'd said over the phone, relief shone in her eyes. She passed Maggie a tower of soggy paper plates and motioned toward two huge trash cans lined with black plastic bags sitting in the middle of the kitchen. "I have to leave you on your own here. I want to do some deliveries, too. Less to pack up tonight. Can you manage here by yourself?"

"No problem." Maggie glanced around quickly. The room was small, with dingy yellow walls and peeling black-and-white floor tile. It contained an old, white gas range and a small refrigerator, a tall, wooden cupboard, and a table piled high with new paper plates, cups, and napkins. 'With the trash cans taking up so much room, you couldn't get two people in here, anyway. Whew, it stinks, though! The smell of barbecue doesn't mix very well with the odor in this building, does it? It's pretty sickening."

Maggie had thought she would be nervous, being inside the same building that had collapsed on her

that afternoon. But the kitchen was so far away from the damaged wing, she told herself there was no danger. And then she got so busy, she really had no time to think about anything except keeping the windowsills clear of dirty paper plates and cups. Lane and Helen helped from the outside, collecting plates from other places on the grounds and bringing them to a window to hand in to Maggie.

The odor grew stronger. In less than fifteen minutes, she had a headache, and after another five, her stomach began churning. Closing the trash bags would have helped, but since she was making steady trips from the windowsill to the cans, repeated opening and closing of the bags would have taken up too much time.

Five more minutes, and the barbecued hot dog she had eaten half an hour earlier revolted.

Maggie had no choice. Hand over her mouth, she dashed out of the kitchen and ran in search of the nearest rest room.

She had just located a door down the hall marked ladies when there was a thunderous boom from somewhere behind her.

A brilliant flash of light illuminated the hallway.

The hardwood floor beneath her feet rocked violently.

The white plaster wall in front of her, already zigzagged with hairline age cracks, shook, spreading the tiny cracks until, in no more than a second or two, the entire wall looked like a giant road map.

There was a second, louder boom behind her, and

even as her head turned to see what was happening, she was picked up bodily and flung into the road-mapped wall headfirst.

"What?" Maggie cried just before the world disappeared.

Maggie opened her eyes. Helen's face was right next to hers. The hazel eyes were brimming with tears. No, that couldn't be. Helen never cried. She hadn't shed a tear when her parents had gone flying off to Egypt or wherever, leaving her to board with Ms. Gross. Must be an optical illusion. Maybe it was just moonlight shining in Helen's eyes. Except. . . they weren't outside, were they? Weren't they inside? Hadn't she been in the kitchen . . . ? She couldn't remember.

Maggie managed, "Why am I lying on my face?"

'There was an explosion." Lane's voice this time, not Helen's. From somewhere above Maggie. "In the kitchen. We all thought you were dead, because you were working in there. Helen was practically hysterical. We didn't know you'd left. You're very, very lucky, Maggie." Lane's voice moved closer. "Does it feel like you have any broken bones?"

Maggie didn't know what a broken bone felt like. Probably really painful. Like the way her nose felt? Was her nose broken? "An explosion?" She was speaking directly into a pile of debris. Wood and plaster, all in chunks and pieces. Like in the basement. Had another ceiling collapsed? "Is anyone else hurt?"

"A bunch of people who were waiting in line at the barbecue cart." Helen's voice again. Still shaking. "There are ambulances on the way."

"Fire? Is there a fire?"

"No. There was, but some men put it out already. Whit and Alex and Scout helped. Don't talk, Maggie," Helen whispered, as if she didn't want anyone

else to hear. "They think there was a gas leak in the kitchen."

''Where's my mom? Was my mom hurt? I would like to see my mother right now, please."

"Oh, god, Maggie, she's not here." Helen certainly sounded like she was crying. "She and your dad are already delivering the stuff that people bought. They didn't want to have to pack it up tonight. Your mom had just left when the kitchen blew up."

Maggie tried, very gingerly, to turn her face to the other side, but the piece of wood stabbed her viciously. She lay still. She was very cold, although someone had covered her with a jacket or heavy sweater. She could feel it lying across her shoulders. "The kitchen blew up?"

"Someone said the stove in there was really old." Helen sighed heavily. "I don't know, Maggie, maybe your mom will give up now. This place was bad enough before, but now ..."

But Maggie was still trying to grasp the information Helen had given her. A gas leak? The smell ... that sweetish, sickening smell... that had been gas fumes, the telltale odor overpowered by the smell of barbecue. The fumes must have caused her mother's headache, her own headache, her churning stomach. If the barbecue cart hadn't been right outside the open window, maybe she or her mother would have recognized the fumes for what they were before it was too late.

But if her stomach hadn't been upset, she wouldn't have left the kitchen. In a bizarre way,

the same gas fumes that had caused the explosion had saved her life by making her ill. That struck Maggie as funny, and she laughed softly to herself. The pain was excruciating, so she stopped laughing.

A siren screamed that help had arrived. Maggie's eyes closed in relief.

She learned at the hospital that she had no concussion. "A miracle/' the doctor who examined her said when she told him she'd been tossed into the wall headfirst. "You must have a thick skull, you lucky girl."

Maggie wasn't feeling very lucky. The only thing she was feeling was pain. The wood shard on which she had landed had gouged a shallow gash in her left cheek, alongside her nose. No stitches required, but the nurse's careful cleaning of the wound brought tears to Maggie's eyes. Both forearms had been badly bruised when she hit the wall, and the impact had pulled loose the stitches on her earlier wound. Having it sewn up a second time was worse than having the wood splinter pulled from her cheek.

Because her parents still hadn't arrived, her friends were allowed in the small white cubicle when her treatment was completed.

"I heard a fireman tell someone it was probably a leaking gas pipe," Helen said. "I can't believe the whole building didn't go up in flames, like Lane's mother was always saying it would."

"Whit, Scout, and Alex were so brave. They jumped right in to help." Lane gave Whit a brilliant smile, neglecting to include Scout. Both faces were

gray with grime, their eyes red-rimmed.

"Wasn't that big a fire," Whit said modestly, smiling at Maggie. "And the firemen were there right away." He shook his head in disbelief. "You just happened to leave the kitchen right before that stove blew?" His eyes on hers were warm with concern and relief. "Man, you got any idea how lucky you are?"

Maggie was beginning to, and the knowledge made her weak and watery inside. If she hadn't eaten the hot dog, would she still have felt sick enough to leave the room? Gingerly fingering the thick gauze bandage on her cheek, she asked if there were other, more serious injuries.

"Don't know," Alex answered. "Lots of people in the barbecue line were knocked silly. I don't think anyone was killed, though."

Maggie gasped.

"It was an explosion, Maggie. Someone could have died."

"Well, I'm glad no one did!" She touched the bandage again. "Everything hurts. Even my eyebrows."

"You landed on your face when you hit the floor," Helen said. "But it doesn't look that bad, Maggie, honestly it doesn't. Anyway," her voice shook again, "you're just so lucky to be alive. We were all so sure ..." Unable to finish the thought, Helen feS silent.

Feeling a pang of sympathy, Maggie reached out to touch Helen's hand. With Helen's parents gone, she relied heavily on her friends. "I'm sorry you

were scared." Maggie managed a small, shaky laugh. "If Fd known the stove was going to blow, Fd have hollered out the window that I was running to safety, so you'd have known."

Her parents came rushing in then, her mother's face pale and set, her father's brows drawn together in a worried frown. Whit signaled to the others, and they eased out of the room, leaving Maggie to be comforted by her parents.

When all of her X rays came back negative, she was allowed to go home.

She slept an exhausted sleep and woke up late, to an argument at breakfast about the restoration project.

"After what happened yesterday and last night, you can't possibly be thinking about continuing," her father told her mother. "The old courthouse has served its purpose, Sheila. Let it rest in peace."

Maggie, aching in every part of her body, her cheek and nose throbbing, sat quietly at the table as they argued. Her father had never been all that enthusiastic about the restoration project. But as always, he had eventually supported her mother's efforts to improve the community. Now he sounded adamant. "Maggie was lucky yesterday and she was lucky again last night. Next time," he pressed, "her luck might run out."

Maggie was glad she hadn't told them about the gavel. Not that it had anything to do with the explosion last night, but her dad was already so upset, he'd go ballistic if he heard that someone had

brought a nasty message right here to this very house.

"Give it up, Sheila. YouVe got the damage from the explosion to deal with now, as well as all the other problems. Who knows what might happen next?"

"That explosion was a fluke," Maggie's mother argued. She was standing beside the kitchen sink, sipping orange juice. "A defective gas line. Just one, Martin. We'll have all of the old lines replaced. We had planned to do that anyway. And we always intended to get rid of that horrible little kitchen." A frown appeared. "But you could be right. Not about the damage ... we could fix all of that. But about not knowing what might happen next. It does seem odd, though," she mused aloud, her eyes unfocused, "that disaster struck twice in one day. Seems awfully coincidental to me, and just when public sentiment was swinging in our direction." She sighed heavily. "Maybe the committee needs to sit down and rethink things." Her eyes swung to the bandage on Maggie's face. "I don't want you going anywhere near that place in the meantime," she said. "Just stay away from there."