1. The Beginning THURSDAY The Beginning It is 12:32 p.m., a little more than half an hour before the school day ends, and the classroom is swampier than a sinner''s armpit in the depths of hell. St. Bernadette''s, with its grand arched doorways and windows, its gables, its ornate tiles and stone staircases, stands imposingly on a hilltop in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, as it has done for the past one hundred years--all the better to look down on everyone else, so the haters say, and St. Bernadette''s has more than its fair share of those. That''s just part of what it means to be the best.

But even with the massive wooden double doors of each classroom flung wide open, there is simply no breeze to catch. Overhead, the ceiling fan spins in lazy circles, doing little to provide any kind of relief, and one by one, like the flowers for which each of the school''s classes is named, the students of 3 Kenanga begin to wilt in the relentless heat. Heads droop closer and closer to desks, eyes glaze over, and though the teacher does her best, coordinate geometry simply has no power over a room full of post-recess fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds as torpid as cobras after a feeding, and who are unwilling--or unable--to pay attention. It is 12:47 p.m., and Mrs. Lee is trying to explain something about "calculating the perpendicular" when the first scream makes the students all nearly jump out of their sweat-soaked skins. The scream is not a pretty, perfectly pitched horror-movie scream.

It is hoarse and low, and it shakes and skips, as if whatever is causing it is forcibly strangling it out of the screamer, shaking it out of them in fits and starts. And the source of it is a girl sitting in the third row, two desks from the left; a thin, pale girl with a mop of unruly hair that she wears hanging over her face as if she''s trying to hide from the world; a girl so new and so quiet that the others sometimes have trouble remembering her name, or that she is there at all. They will remember her now, though. "Fatihah!" Mrs. Lee shakes off her surprise and strides over to the girl''s desk. This is not a normal Thursday occurrence, but Mrs. Lee has been teaching for more than twelve years now, and the range of "normal" is so wide in a school full of teenage girls that little fazes her at this point. "Fatihah! What is happening? What''s wrong? Aiyo, this girl!" She has to shout to make herself heard, because the girl known as Fatihah will not stop screaming.

And the other girls, usually so eager for something, anything, to break up the monotony of the school day, begin to grow restless and fearful and uncertain. Because Fatihah''s eyes are wide and staring, gazing up toward a specific spot in the corner of the ceiling as if fixed on something only she can see, something she desperately wishes she couldn''t. "Mrs. Lee, what do we do?" "Should I call someone?" "Teacher, maybe we can throw some water on her face." "Teacher, please make her stop!" The classroom erupts in confused commotion. Girls are covering their ears, girls are trying to offer solutions, girls are trying their best not to panic, girls are panicking without reservation. Lily, who sits next to Fatihah, grabs Fatihah by the shoulders and shakes her hard so that her head bobs back and forth, back and forth. "Wake up, Fatihah!" she yells.

"Stop it!" "Don''t do that!" Mrs. Lee snaps, frantic in her own helplessness, hands flapping uselessly in the air. "You might hurt her!" Fatihah''s eyes roll back so that only the whites show; her hands clench at the edge of her desk, so tight that the knuckles are white and it seems as if she may crush the wood into splinters; her body shudders, and blue-green veins bulge in her pale temples. And the girls of 3 Kenanga have no idea what to do. Some stare, transfixed, unable to tear their eyes away; some cannot bear to look at all, closing their eyes as if they can will the nightmare away; some cry, and some babble, and many just stand, silent and bewildered and helpless. And then Lavanya, who sits by the wide open doors, pauses, frowns, and yells something over the chaos, something that silences all but Fatihah, who just keeps screaming. "There''s more." And as 3 Kenanga listens, they begin to hear it: screams piercing the afternoon heat; screams of every pitch and timbre; screams so raw and so terribly, profoundly afraid that they turn everyone''s blood to ice.

It is now 1:05 p.m. The bell rings to signal the end of school, and nobody hears it. They hear only the screams.