Page 22 (1/2)

I just ives e to fall into a shrub a few feet down It hurts, but I’lebehind ray Leaves and hair are in

There are sick flashes of white in the sky

My sense of direction is gone All I can see is dingy angry air And there’s so et quieter no rass are rising and dancing chaotically as though enchanted

I don’t knocried, once and then several tiht about the tiolf course Okay I can navigate better now that I knohere I am

I don’t kno far the exit is I have been to every garden, the golf course, the tennis courts, the pool I’ve even passed the horse stables, which have been abandoned since Rose’s illness But I’ve never seen an exit

I press iant chocolate scoop as branches fly past

The trees! If I could climb one of them, it would be easier to see farther There has to be a fence or at least a shrub I’ve never seen before A hidden door Soainst the scoop The air is sucked froround and try to turn myself away from the wind so I can breathe, but it’s everywhere It’s everywhere and I’asping, to the storet to see the world one last tie utopia The spinning windht I think ht persists It spins, shooting toward hthouse My very favorite obstacle because it reht that brings the fishing boats hoht into the trees, and if I can’t escape, I at least want to die beside it, because it’s as close as I can get to ho is i, and I actually think Iolf course for traction Isiren, away fro pain that hits me somewhere I don’t look to find out what the injury is, but there’s blood I can taste it I can feel it pooling and dripping I only care about not being paralyzed I can keep hthouse

Its paint is chipped; the wood is splintered Even though I’ve reachedabout thisBut there’s nowhere to go

My hands grope for a solution, for a path up to the light

I a to a ladder Not the kind that’s meant to be climbed It’s clearly for decoration, flihthouse’s side But it can be clio Up and up and up

My hands are bleeding too, now So sucked out of h I’ve been cliht

All reetsinto my eyes I look away froher than all the trees

And I see it, far, far in the distance Like a whisper

Like a tiestion The pointed flower froate

It is the exit, miles from me

It is the end of the world

And I realize what the lighthouse was trying to tell me That I am not supposed to die today I a for me--like Columbus with his Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria--to the end of the world

The gate in the distance is theI’ve ever seen into cliain It’s too loud and too close to ignore this time

"Rhine!"

Gabriel’s blue eyes and his bright brown hair, and his ar toward me Not all of hi and flickering in the wind I see the fierce, angry red of his openout!" I scream "Come with me! Run aith me!"

But all he says is "Rhine! Rhine!" with increasing desperation, and I don’t think he hears what I’