Sixteen! I squeezed my eyes shut, wrapping my arms around myself, savoring the sensation before I had to get up. Humph. I didn't feel any different at all. This was supposed to be a magical age. Old enough to drive, to be a debutante (if, of course, you were a blue-blood or had oodles of money), to be the heroine in a romance novel, to wear black underwear. I swung my bare feet to the cold wood floor as I opened my eyes to yet another grey school day. Oh well, maybe the day would get better.

     And really, it did. Mom was still in bed but on my door she had hung a new dress she had made for me and I found a box of butter horns Dad left on the table. My parents were wonderful. They both knew how to get my day off to a good start by eliminating my normal frantic search for clothes, the iron and food. I never allowed myself enough time. This morning, I indulged in a luxurious cat-stretch as I rose from the table, brushing pastry crumbs from my mouth and thinking again of black lace undies.

     I got to the bus with time to spare for a change and everyone sang "Happy Birthday" on the way to school. Friends were great! Then the day was about normal for the first period. I was looking forward to English because Linda Wolf sat right behind me and it was her birthday, too, although she turned seventeen. We wiggled and squirmed, whispering and comparing notes on the day when suddenly someone (I can't remember who, but it was a girl) BURST into the room without knocking. Our teacher stopped talking mid-sentence and turned, scowling, to reprimand the intruder.

     One look at the girl, though, and nothing came out. Our teacher stood, motionless, one arm still raised, her hand holding a piece of chalk as if preparing to write, mouth still open. The whole room became as quiet and still as a tomb yet the air was electrified with expectancy. Every fraction of a second became a slow-motion eternity. "President Kennedy's been shot!" the girl rasped into the waiting room. Seeing her, no one doubted what she said.

     Crackling over the intercom . . . and than a man's voice, disembodied, echoing in the silence like a news bulletin from hell, flat and without emotion: "President John F. Kennedy has been shot and killed."

     I really can't remember what else was said or even how the day ended. I can't even tell you who else was in the class or who the teacher was. Just that one moment has been freeze-framed in my mind: Linda and me and the wild-eyed girl and the statue of a teacher with a voice-over of death on my sixteenth birthday, November 22, 1963.