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Still, she was winning.
His hands went up to his chest . . . his shoulders . . . finally to his throat. There they wavered—she
could hear him panting with effort. She bore down, and the hands gripped, shutting off his windpipe.
(that’s right you interfering bastard squeeze squeeze and SQUEE)
Something hit her. Not a fist; it felt more like a gust of tightly compressed air. She looked around
and saw nothing but a shimmer, there for a moment and then gone. Less than three seconds, but
enough to break her concentration, and when she turned back to the railing, the girl had returned.
It wasn’t a gust of air this time; it was hands that felt simultaneously large and small. They were in
the small of her back. They were pushing. The bitchgirl and her friend, working together—just what
Rose had wanted to avoid. A worm of terror began to unwind in her stomach. She tried to step back
from the rail and could not. It was taking all her strength just to stand pat, and with no supporting
force from the True to help her, she didn’t think she’d be able to do that for long. Not long at all.
If not for that gust of air . . . that wasn’t him and she wasn’t here . . .
One of the hands left the small of her back and slapped the hat from her head. Rose howled at the
indignity of it—nobody touched her hat, nobody!—and for a moment summoned enough power to
stagger back from the railing and toward the center of the platform. Then those hands returned to the
small of her back and began pushing her forward again.
She looked down at them. The man had his eyes closed, concentrating so hard that the cords stood
out on his neck and sweat rolled down his cheeks like tears. The girl’s eyes, however, were wide and
merciless. She was staring up at Rose. And she was smiling.
Rose pushed backward with all her strength, but she might have been pushing against a stone wall.
One that was moving her relentlessly forward, until her stomach was pressing against the rail. She
heard it creak.
She thought, for just a moment, of trying to bargain. Of telling the girl that they could work
together, start a new Knot. That instead of dying in 2070 or 2080, Abra Stone could live a thousand
years. Two thousand. But what good would it do?
Was there ever a teenage girl who felt anything less than immortal?
So instead of bargaining, or begging, she screamed defiance down at them. “Fuck you! Fuck you
both!”
The girl’s terrible smile widened. “Oh, no,” she said. “You’re the one who’s fucked.”
No creak this time; there was a crack like a rifleshot, and then Rose the Hatless was falling.
9
She hit the ground headfirst and began to cycle at once. Her head was cocked (like her hat, Dan
thought) on her shattered neck at an angle that was almost insouciant. Dan held Abra’s hand—flesh
that came and went in his own as she did her own cycling between her back stoop and Roof O’ the
World—and they watched together.
“Does it hurt?” Abra asked the dying woman. “I hope it does. I hope it hurts a lot.”
Rose’s lips pulled back in a sneer. Her human teeth were gone; all that remained was that single
discolored tusk. Above it, her eyes floated like living blue stones. Then she was gone.
Abra turned to Dan. She was still smiling, but now there was no anger or meanness in it.
(I was afraid for you I was afraid she might)
(she almost did but there was someone)
He pointed up to where the broken pieces of the railing jutted against the sky. Abra looked there,
then looked back at Dan, puzzled. He could only shake his head.