Jessica Mastriani’s decision to stay in Indiana and become a teacher turns a tentative possibility into a new direction for her life. Rather than pursue the professional music career for which she is training at the Juilliard School, she plans to transfer to Indiana and earn a teaching certificate, with the prospect of teaching music at the alternative high school her brother, Douglas Mastriani, and Tasha Thompkins are developing. The decision joins a practical commitment to arts education with a more personal resolution: Jessica will remain in the place where Rob Wilkins lives, and build a future that does not depend on leaving for New York.

A Different Idea of Education

The teaching path becomes imaginable through the kind of school Douglas and Tasha hope to create at Pine Heights. They describe an alternative high school where students can work at their own pace, rather than being confined to a standardized state curriculum. Its program would emphasize music, drawing, sculpture, drama, and dance, and would have no sports. Tasha, an education major at Indiana University, states the arts-centered approach; Douglas presents it as an alternative to Ernie Pyle High School, which he remembers as large and impersonal, more like an education factory than a place where students could be known.

The proposal also has to answer anxieties about what an alternative school means. At a public discussion, a neighborhood resident associates alternative schools with expelled students and troublemakers, while another concern is that teenagers might roam unsupervised. Douglas counters that the school would require state certification for teachers and prohibit loitering on the grounds after hours. His defense makes clear that the plan is not simply a rejection of school rules: it imagines a different form of learning while retaining professional standards and supervision. The ambition is to create a school parents and students can both value, rather than reproduce the impersonal institution the proposal seeks to replace.

From Musician to Teacher

Douglas and Tasha connect that vision to Jessica’s demonstrated experience with children. Tasha tells her that the school will need a music instructor and that she would like Jessica to fill the role. Douglas likewise points to what Jessica is already doing during the summer with Ruth. The offer therefore emerges from a concrete need at the proposed school and from work Jessica has already undertaken, not from an abstract suggestion that she might someday teach.

Ruth’s nonprofit summer job gives that work a specific shape. She organizes musicians, actors, and other performers to visit inner-city day-care centers and camps, where they help children put on plays and musicals. The program responds to a shortage of city funding for certified teachers. Jessica initially doubts that a camp play can make much difference in a child’s difficult life, but she is nevertheless involved enough to bring Ruth a forgotten wallet, even though the errand interrupts her practicing. When Douglas asks whether teaching is what she is doing with Ruth, the question links the practical experience to a possible vocation.

Jessica resists the first version of that future. She explains that she is at Juilliard to become a professional musician, not to train as a music teacher. Tasha presses her to consider whether she actually wants the life she has named: playing in an orchestra, traveling, and being a musician. Jessica’s response is an inward reversal. She recognizes that those prospects are not what she wants, even though they have defined the course she appeared to be following. The teaching offer brings that distinction into focus: musical ability need not lead to an orchestra career; it can also become a way to work with children.

The Choice and Its Complications

The prospect of staying is not only a career decision. While speaking with Ruth, Jessica admits that she has not yet told her about Douglas’s offer because she is unsure she can remain in town, knowing Rob is there, without being with him. Her hesitation makes the choice emotionally contingent: Indiana offers meaningful work and a possible teaching role, but it also keeps her close to a relationship she cannot treat as incidental. Ruth’s advice is to ask Rob directly, rather than allow the uncertainty to decide Jessica’s life for her.

The school proposal gives Jessica a reason to imagine a future in her hometown; it does not, by itself, settle what will happen with Rob. At this stage she is still uncertain about both. That uncertainty matters because the eventual decision is not presented as a simple career substitution or as a consequence of the school’s existence alone. It brings together the possibility of teaching, Jessica’s reassessment of professional music, and her attachment to someone who lives locally.

Staying in Indiana

Later, when Cyrus Krantz visits, he acknowledges that Jessica’s brother has asked her to teach at the alternative school and asks whether she will do it. He does not demand that she return to government work. Instead, he recognizes that she has already done considerable good, admits that the people who pushed her expected too much, and tells her that what she does with her restored powers is her choice. He also affirms that her other strengths can serve the world, whether or not she uses her psychic ability again. Jessica answers that she will transfer to Indiana and obtain her teaching certificate. Her answer makes the career change explicit, while Cyrus’s response frames it as a choice she is entitled to make rather than another assignment imposed on her.

Jessica’s final declaration to Karen Sue makes the geographical decision just as definite. Asked when she is going back to New York, she answers that she is never going, then says she is staying in Indiana. When Karen Sue asks why, Jessica points to her engagement to a local business owner. The exchange confirms that the decision encompasses more than the teaching position: Jessica is choosing a life rooted in Indiana and linked to Rob, rather than treating the state as a temporary stop before returning east.

Significance

The decision redirects Jessica’s abilities without requiring them to define her future. The novel connects her earlier work with missing people to a new form of service: instead of making a career out of her psychic powers or professional performance, she can help children through music and teaching. Ruth’s arts program and Douglas and Tasha’s proposed school make that alternative tangible, while the possibility of teaching lets Jessica’s musical training remain valuable in a different setting.

Her choice also echoes the proposed school’s own emphasis on alternatives. The school would give students room to work at their own pace and make art central to learning; Jessica, in turn, declines to follow the career path that once seemed to be the obvious measure of her talent. Her commitment is not simply that she will stay, but that she will prepare for a different kind of work and make that future in Indiana. Together, the teaching plan and her decision to remain turn an uncertain offer into a chosen direction.