the three girls chanted, practicing one more time before the mirror, while Mrs. Fabricant fastened their arms together with rubber bands. “Okay, Hollow Men,” the teacher said. “You’re on soon.” They walked sideways like crabs down the hall to the stage door. Oh, the school at night! Opal thought. What a place it was; the floors shimmered in the dark, and you could hear the heating system breathing in the walls. The school at night was like a sleeping animal. Opal followed the others down the hallway, her wrists attached to theirs. Someone opened the stage door for them, and they silently waited in the wings for their cue. Opal watched the actors onstage; the fifth-grader playing Madame Sosostris was talking to Sweeney. “Those were pearls that were his eyes,” she was saying. And then that tiny redheaded boy, the one who had missed so many rehearsals, piped up from stage left in a surprisingly sure voice: “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?
