Esti’s head jerked up at the wail from the old theater building. She jammed her books into her backpack and leaped to her feet. Heart pounding, she raced across the grassy courtyard, fumbling to close the zipper of her pack. In front of her, a girl stumbled from the building, catching herself against a palm tree.

Esti grabbed the main door before it could close. Two teachers knelt beside a boy on the stage, speaking in urgent voices. Other students shoved into the theater behind Esti, jostling her to get closer. As people crowded around, she fought a rising sense of panic. She recognized the clothes and the colorful knitted cap on the boy’s head. Outside, someone yelled for an ambulance.

“I think he broke his neck,” the theater teacher said in a shaky voice. “He must have fallen from the catwalk.”

Esti clutched her pack against her chest and backed into the corner, following the teacher’s gaze to the narrow metal bridge above the stage. It didn’t look like enough of a fall to kill someone.

Not an omen, not an omen, she chanted desperately to herself. Asking to move to the Caribbean for her senior year surely wasn’t a giant mistake; it was the most independent choice she’d ever made. Her father would have been proud of her. As a ceiling fan creaked in the shocked silence, relentlessly stirring the humid air, Esti felt the sharp coral pattern of the wall digging into her shoulders.

So what if Paul was the first boy she’d met at Manchicay High School? Half an hour ago he had appeared on the stage from nowhere, scaring the living daylights out of her. She was still trying to shrug it off as a silly “new girl” moment, but it no longer mattered. He was dead.

Esti looked up at the strong West Indian dialect, startled by the deep brown eyes of a policeman. The police had shown up right away, then an ambulance. They had asked Esti not to leave the scene, although they moved her to the other side of the lush green courtyard. Now she sat on a carved stone bench at the edge of the school grounds as they stretched yellow tape across the theater entrance. She hadn’t been able to watch when they carried Paul’s body away on a gurney.

“I had try to call your mother,” the policeman said, “but no one answer the phone. I need to ask you a few question.”

“I don’t know what happened.” Esti picked at the belt loop of her faded jeans. She had called home several times, more frantic with each try, but Aurora wasn’t answering. “I don’t know anyone at Manchicay. It’s my first day here.”

“Yeah, miss.” Although the officer’s dark forehead dripped with sweat, his expression seemed kind enough. He sat down beside her, his arm remarkably black next to her pale freckled skin. “I ain’t accusin’ you.” He spoke slowly, making sure she understood his words. “You teacher say you was in class today, and I know you come to Cariba Island just a week ago. But you was in the theater before he fall.”

Esti didn’t know if the sweat trickling down her neck was from the heat, or from the anxiety churning inside her. Tucking a stray wisp of brown hair back into her long ponytail, she managed a quick nod.

“Paul Wilmuth was my nephew.” The policeman’s eyes became sad. “My brother son. You’s the last one talk to he, and I had like to know what he say.”

Esti slumped on the bench, wishing she could disappear into the tranquil sea. As a distant splash sent ripples surging, however, she couldn’t suppress a matching shiver. Sharks were probably hiding beneath the calm surface out there. She should tell Officer Wilmuth the truth, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

After her classes she had gone into the empty theater to get a feel for the stage layout, determined to start the year off right. She’d been reciting Juliet’s lines for almost twenty minutes, working herself into an unexpected reverie as the theater welcomed her with its nice acoustics. The knowledge of starting from scratch—making her own name in a new theater with a blank slate—filled her with a growing sense of joy. The very air around her seemed to radiate delight.

Then a boy appeared from behind one of the sets, laughing at her involuntary scream. “Scare ya, gal?”

He spoke with an accent so thick, she strained to understand him, his dreadlocks bundled beneath a tall, brightly knitted cap. Esti wasn’t particularly short, but the cap made the boy look huge. Her heart thudded as he approached in his flamboyant island clothing, and she forced herself to stay calm. She was going to make friends with the other theater students this year. This time she wasn’t going to blow it.

Before she could speak, however, he laughed again. “You got no chance at Juliet.”

She felt her face turn red. How could six words, spoken by a boy she’d never met before, hurt so much?

“For true,” he continued. “You best try something else.”

She should have told him he had no right to cut her down. You’re the one in control, Esti, her dad had always said. No one but you. The problem was, she’d never been as good at clever comebacks as her dad was. Not even onstage, where she could think the fastest. So she had shrugged and turned away, blinking back tears as the boy sauntered over to a long metal ladder. She knew he’d seen her slink away, his shoes ringing against the high metal floor of the catwalk as he moved above the stage. When she reached the main entrance, she could barely drag open the heavy door, muttering the words that now tied her stomach in a knot. “I hope you fall.”

Esti forced herself to meet his uncle’s eyes. “I didn’t really talk to Paul. I hardly understood what he said.”

The policeman nodded. “He had say something? Anything?”

Esti took a deep breath. “He told me I didn’t have a chance of getting a part in the school play.”

Officer Wilmuth frowned. “That don’t sound like Paul.”

She chewed on her lower lip, trying to calm the heat in her cheeks. Officer Wilmuth looked so forlorn. “Paul probably wasn’t trying to be mean,” she whispered. “My dad died a few months ago too. I’m so sorry for your loss. . . .” She clamped her mouth shut, knowing from experience the inadequacy of those words.

“All right, miss.” Officer Wilmuth sighed and rose to his feet. “Good afternoon.” A white-skinned policeman across the round courtyard was speaking to a slender black girl with solemn eyes. They both glanced at Esti for a moment, then resumed talking.

Esti turned away, staring bleakly over the low stone wall that surrounded the grassy hills of Manchicay School. Bougainvillea and honeysuckle framed a breathtaking view of islands and turquoise water fanning out from the beach below.

For a few minutes in the theater she’d been happy again. She was certain she hadn’t imagined that part. It still crept around somewhere deep within her. She had to believe in the tiny flash of hope that sparked when her mom agreed to move to Cariba Island for Esti’s last year of high school. At her dad’s funeral, an old family friend had reminded them that he owned a house here. It was empty at the moment, Rodney Solomon said, within walking distance of Manchicay School.

Esti had jumped at the idea, but she’d felt cursed from the moment they arrived a week ago. She hadn’t left her painful memories behind at all. The airlines had lost her luggage, including a big box packed with a bunch of clothes and her dad’s last Shakespeare treatise, the one he had lovingly signed to her just before he died. Then she was sick for three days from something she’d eaten on the plane.

“Paul, he was wrong.” The girl with the solemn eyes stood several feet away, her expression hard to read. “I had tell Paul’s uncle you was the last one talk to he.”

“You?” Esti asked, startled. She sat up straight, studying the girl’s yellow T-shirt and matching head-wrap. “Do I know you?”

“Lucia. I come in with Ma while she clean this morning. We watch you practice.”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

“You had not look.”

Esti locked eyes with her. “Did you see Paul fall?”

“Nah, we was in the back when it happen.” Lucia scowled, then gave Esti a piercing look. “You gotta try out for Juliet. ’Tis a good thing you do.”

“A good thing?” Paul’s last words still filled Esti with anxiety. She’d been through countless auditions in her life, each one overprepared, but this one was different. Her dad was no longer here to hold her hand. “A good thing,” she repeated.

Lucia’s lip curled with a cynical expression that seemed too old for her. “I will try out, also. Sometime Mr. Niles does let in freshmen. The jandam had tell Headmaster Fleming he close Manchicay School this week to respect Paul, since he pass. Next Monday you do Juliet, eh?”

Lucia waited until Esti nodded, then she turned and walked away.

Who was the jandam? Esti doubted she would ever understand the local customs, or why half the school had apparently been hiding in the theater this morning, watching her. All she’d wanted to do was to get a fresh feel for Juliet, to bring her favorite character alive again in this new place. Instead, she had left the building too embarrassed to even look at Paul, desperately longing—as usual—for her dad’s reassurance.

With a pensive shake of her head, she started across the parking lot. Had she imagined the rich murmur as the theater door thudded to a close behind her? A ghost of Shakespeare emanating from the stone walls. And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d. . . .

She had definitely imagined it. Maybe she was pulling a Hamlet and finally going crazy after her dad’s death. Strangely enough, the idea brought a brief smile to her face.