Candy put the pens and pencils down on her desk and gave the book and paper to Miss Schwartz. Then—without looking around at the rest of the class—she made her way to the door.

Once she was outside the classroom in the eerie hush of the corridor, she felt a peculiar sense of relief . She knew she should be feeling full of regret and self-recrimination, but the truth was that a significant part of her was glad she'd said what she'd said. Miss Schwartz had picked on her one too many times.

She was a ridiculous woman anyway, with her endless snide remarks and her ludicrous obsession with chickens.

"Who cares about chickens ?" Candy said, her voice echoing down the empty passageway.

The door at the end of the corridor was open. Through it she could see the sunlit yard, and beyond the yard the school gate and the street. It would be so easy, she thought, just to walk out of here right now and never have to hear Miss Schwartz pontificate on the Glories of Chicken Farming ever again.

What was she thinking? She couldn't do that. She'd be expelled for certain.

So what ? said a voice at the back of her head. Just walk out. Go on. Walk out.

For some reason, the doodles that she had drawn in her workbook came back into her mind. Only this time, instead of being black lines on gray, recycled paper, they were bright in her mind; very bright. And all kinds of colors, the way the sun appeared in your mind if you looked at it for a moment and then closed your eyes. Dozens of little suns: green and red and gold; then colors, too, that you couldn't even name. That was the way the lines looked in Candy's mind's eye.

And they were moving . The wavy lines were rolling across the darkness inside her skull, rolling and breaking, the brilliant colors bursting into arabesques of white and silver.

Behind her she heard a familiar sound: the click, click, click of Miss Schwartz's heels.