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"Jesus, Christ I thought you were still down there, you know that? I half swa to get you"

Sorin "Dumbass"

"Tell me about it"

"We’re all dead, now Get off of me, lady," he said to the EMT "I’m fine Get the fuck off of me"

She backed away, but came back a second or two later with a towel and a bottle of water "I don’t know if you’re fine or not, but here--take these"

He took the towel and wrapped it around his shoulders, then opened the water and downed it in a few quick gulps while I watched "Didn’t realize," he gasped "Didn’t realize how thirsty I was Water, water everywhere--and all the boards did shrink," he bubbled, killing off the last of the bottle and dropping it eh Christ, you’re alive And nownow I sort of want to kill you"

"Nothing but love for you too, Eden And I didn’t tell you to coet me I didn’t ask for help"

"Yeah you did Like, a dozen times you asked for help"

"Oh Well I meant today Or yesterday Whichever I didn’t ask for help then There wasn’t any help for Ann Alice, and I could find oddamn way out of the undersides How exactly did you plan to contribute to my survival, anyway?"

"I don’t know," I aduilty for years to co was the least ofhis hands down on his knees, and putting his head down on his hands

Guilt, I thought

I sat down next to Christ and tugged at the leg of Nick’s jeans "Guilt--that’s what it is," I told hi the vitality to suood transition

"Guilt? Who, Caroline, you ed to follow uilt, asMaybe it wasn’t just whiny self-flagellation; maybe the fire really was her fault"

"How?" Nick slipped his back down the glass and it squeaked where his shirt was still da next to me, Christ, and Jamie, he added, "If the fire was in 1919, she would’ve been just a kid"

Ja to join us "Kids do stupid destructive things all the ti to"

"True," I said "But how h to burn down buildings and kill people?"

Nick looked at me like I’d just beamed down from a pyramid-shaped spacecraft "Do you even watch the news at all? Ever? Even so happens all the time"

"I do watch the news sometimes, sure But never just because youre on it," I clarified, even though it was practically a bald-faced lie "I’ve got the Internet, too Fascinating stuff, real life"

"Fascinating and fucked up," Nick said "More fucked up than you’d ever believe, the stuff that happens every day"

"Today? Sure But eighty years ago, a little girl burned down a church full of people? Or ot the church burned down She wouldn’t need to have struck the match to feel awful about it Especially not if"

"What?" Ja Christ like aexcept sit there and pant

"Nick, you said--you said you saw a girl Didn’t you? A little girl, maybe, what--ten or twelve years old? That’s how old Caroline would’ve been, give or take What if that little girl was a friend of hers?"

Nick bobbed his head slowly, thinking right along withwith this, and I like it The church burns down and her little friend dies If she thought it was all her fault--whether it was or not--that could easily be the sort of trauma that would oh, say,institutionalization"

"Who? What? Who’s Caroline?" Ja way "Well, about eighty years ago, we think--"

"She’s the Lady in White," I said, giving him the shorthand that would let hi for her?"