MRS . Widmer

The girl who lived across the hall teased her for being

a perfectionist, but since many of the other freshman architecture students

had arrived at MIT—Massachusetts Institute of Technology—fresh from

summer internships with large firms, Liza had spent her first weeks trying

doggedly to catch up. Even so, there was still an unfinished floor plan on her

drawing board, and the unfinished Frank Lloyd Wright paper on her desk.

Liza put down her pen, but in a few moments picked it up again. What I have

to do, I think, before I can mail you a letter, is sort out what happened. I have

to work through it all again—everything—the bad parts, but the good ones

too-us and the house and Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer, and Sally and

Walt, and Ms. Baxter and Mrs. Poindexter and the trustees, and my parents

and poor bewildered Chad. Annie—there are things I'm going to have to

work hard at remembering. But I do want to remember, Liza thought, going

to her window. I do want to, now. The rain hid the Charles River and most of

the campus; she could barely see the building opposite hers. She looked

across at it nonetheless, willing it to blur into—what? Her street in Brooklyn

Heights, New York, where she'd lived all her life till now? Her old school,

Foster Academy, a few blocks away from her parents' apartment? Annie's

street in Manhattan; Annie's school? Annie herself, as she'd looked that first

November day…

Mrs. Widmer, who taught English at Foster Academy, always said that the

best way to begin a story is to start with the first important or exciting

incident and then fill in the background. So I'm going to start with the rainy

Sunday last November when I met Annie Kenyon. I've wanted to be an

architect since long before I could spell the word, so I've always spent a lot

of time at museums. That day, to help focus my ideas for the solar house I

was designing for my senior project, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of

Art, to visit the Temple of Dendur and the American Wing. The museum was

so full of people I decided to start with the American Wing, because it's

sometimes less crowded, especially up on the third floor where I wanted to

go. And at first it seemed as if that was going to be true. When I got to the top

of the stairs, everything was so quiet that I thought there might even be no

one there at all—but as I started walking toward the colonial rooms, I heard

someone singing.