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"No, I ain't never tried that," said Zin "But what if puttin' sus that blows up the world?"

"If you blow up the world," the Ogre said, "you can blah for Zin He was, after all, her superior officer If and when she got to the pearly gates, she could always claiht, then"

She steeled herself, then held the sucker in her ripping hand, and tried to shove it through, into the living world

It was not an easy thing Just opening a hole into the living world was different now that her intentions were different It was like picking a lock Then when the portal finally began to open, the living world resisted

"It won't work, sir," Zin insisted "I think the livin' world's got all the stuff it can stand, and don't want no ritted her teeth and doubled her efforts As she tried to force that sucker through, she felt a powerful battle of wills between her and the living world The question was, did the world want to keep the sucker out more than Zin wanted to put it in?

To Zin's surprise, she won the battle: The living world relented, and took the sucker back When Zin was done, it sat on a counter in the candy shop, its bright colors faded and slightly out of focus, just like everything else in the living world Zin pulled her hand back, and shivered

"You did it!"

"Yeah," said Zin, pleased, yet troubled by this newly discovered power "I felt like I done so if you use it for the wrong things," the Ogre said

"But the world don't like it, sir"

"Did the world like you ripping when you first started?"

Zin thought back to her earliest days in Everlost Ripping wasn't easy when she first began The world held on to stuff like a kid holds on to toys "No," Zin had to adot used to it, right?"

"I guess "

"It got used to ripping, so it'll get used tocraas well" They both looked at the half-eaten sucker on the living world counter until the candy store cashier noticed it and eyed it with disgust He then picked it up, and dropped it into the trash

"I want you to practice this," the Ogre told Zin "Practice craet, until you can do it as quickly and as s"

Then Zin asked the million dollar question "Why?"

"Does there have to be a 'why'?" asked the Ogre "Isn't knowing the full extent of your powers reason enough?"

But if there was one thing Zin had coy as a generaland the fact that everything he did was always a single n

Chapter 23 Severance and Blithe

Doris Meltzer had led a long and productive life At the age of eighty-three, she knew she didn't have much time left, but she was satisfied with the life she had lived

For her entire adult life, she wore her atch on her left wrist, but would always glance at her right She would gently rub it, and convinced herself it was just a nervous habit The truth of it lay below the threshold of her understanding At ti of it--at the , or the instant before sleep set in--the two places where one's spirit coh to actually see it, but close enough to sense its existence

It all began the night of her high school prom It was a momentous occasion, but not in the way anyone had expected Her date was a boy narade school She had dreah school sweetheart was more the norm than the exception

Billy had just learned to drive and was proud to be doing it, taking her to the prom under the capable control of his own hands and feet, even if he was driving his father's clunky old DeSoto

He gave her a wrist corsage of yellow roses

It was a beautiful thing that ht wrist, and lifted it to her face, inhaling its rich aro Even then she knew that, for the rest of her life, when she sht She would think of Billy

The prom was spectacular, as a pro It wasn't Billy's fault He had obeyed all the traffic laws, but someti Such was the case when a car full of drunken classht at the corner of Severance and Blithe

Billy never felt a thing

He was gone before the car stopped flipping He had sailed instantly down the tunnel and into the light There were no pit stops in Everlost for hihteen, the walls of his tunnel were already too thick to allow an unexpected detour For hi world went exactly as it should

Doris, however, had a harder tih she also saw the tunnel, it wasn't her ti hio She awoke in the hospital days later with her fa God for a million answered prayers She was alive, and would recover

As for the corsage, it perished in the crash along with the boy she ht have married Doris's spine was severed at the L-4 vertebrae, and she never walked again--but in all other aspects she lived a full and exceptionally happy life She married, had children, and had her own antique business in a time when a woman's place was still considered to be the hoe of yellow roses didn't entirely perish