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lights of Broadway, all kinds of holiday lights. Made her jump up and down inside. She stepped outside for a fast minute. She looked up and down the street, but saw no one. The street was clearing of people. Winter evenings and empty streets in a city so big.
    She turned back, went inside the outer doors, took out her key. Someone came in behind her. She froze. Her mind went dead, and she felt the cold.
    “Dreenie.”
    “Daddy!” Oooh, you scared me!
    “You’re out here, and you know you shouldn’t be.”
    “But I looked up and down, and there was no one.”
    “I came across the street through the parked cars. Anybody could do that, and you wouldn’t see them. Remember what I told you? Look three ways when you look out the doors. Left and right and across.”
    “I forgot about across,” she said.
    “But you need to remember.”
    “I’ll remember. I won’t go out and look anymore, I promise.” And she meant it.
    “How’s my girl?” he asked her when they went in.
    “Fine, Daddy,” she told him.
    He spoke to Mr. Palmer a minute. About the weather, about the New York Knicks. Basketball. Then he and Dreenie took the elevator.
    Dreenie told her dad about Tuli, and about this girl who had her own chair-on-wheels.
    “I like the way you put that,” he said. “It makes her, well, maybe a new kind of individual.”
    “Yeah, that’s right!” Dreenie agreed.
    It surprised her how easily she could tell things to her dad. But then, she didn’t tell him some things, like how she felt about Bluish. “Her name is Natalie,” she said. “Mom says she has leukemia. Or she had it.”
    Her dad glanced at her. She was staring at the floor. “I bet she’s better, though,” he said. “She’s in school.”
    “Guess so,” she murmured. She asked me to come home with her was what Dreenie didn’t tell him.
    He put his arm around her. The elevator opened, and they went out.
    “Dreen, you all right? You worried about Natalie, huh? She’s your friend?”
    “She threw up in class. It was gross, Daddy! I mean, e-ew! Kids just went nuts.”
    Scary Bluish!
    “That’s too bad. But anybody can get sick. The flu. It doesn’t have to be … anything more than that.”
    “Daddy? Do … do kids get sick … and die, I mean, real easily?”
    “No, not at all. Kids are tougher than anybody! Dreen, she’s in school with you.” And quickly, before she could tell him how scary it all was, he changed the subject. “You haven’t told me what you want for Christmas.”
    You won’t get what I want, she wanted to say.
    “You and your sister, remember? You get one special present each.”
    “Anything?”
    “Anything within reason.”
    “Well, what does that mean?”
    Her dad laughed.
    He knows what I want. What I’ve always wanted.

CHAPTER FOUR
The Project
    D REENIE GOT TO CLASS just after Ms. Baker emptied her briefcase and put her lunch in her desk. “Well, good morning to you, Dreanne,” Ms. Baker said, calling Dreenie by her proper name. “We’re both the first ones today. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t see you or Tulithia near the front of the morning!” She used Tuli’s full name, also.
    Grinning, “Yes, ma’am. Morning, Ms. Baker,” Dreenie said.
    Then Ms. Baker got busy with her work. And Dreenie went to the fake tree in the corner, on the couch side of the room, just beyond the double windows. She bent low behind the tree and was careful not to knock into any of the decorations. She found the plug and put it in the wall socket. Suddenly, tiny lights blinked: on, off, on, off, on, off, red, green, and white, over and over.
    “It’s magic, Ms. Baker!” Dreenie exclaimed. Straightening up, she stood still a moment to admire their tree.
    All week students had been bringing in ornaments for it. There was a Santa Claus and her own shiny reindeer that Dreenie liked the best. Ms. Baker had brought a kinara, the candelabra with seven branches, for the Kwanzaa holiday. It was on a bookcase. There