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I cried out, “She’s alive!”

And just then, as though nal, she sat up She sat up and now, drea wildly unstable, I putwithin my reach but the shoulder of the boy in black

My fingers closed around his bicep, which flexed atin its solidity He was real, not soment

He shook his head and did not meet my eyes “I am not to be touched”

It wasn’t anger but a soft-spoken warning It was said hat ret but with absolute conviction

I pulled y, but I was less concerned about hi directly into the dead girl’s eyes She had risen to her feet She stood The hole still a testament to brutality, bloody, only no, ohohIt was bleeding Wet and viscous, the blood drained from the hole in her head as the blood see more solid slid down the trail of blood, bits of her brain forced outward as the bullet had forced its way inward

Her eyes were brown and eht breeze, and the blood ran down her cheek and down her neck and pooled at the hollow of her throat

I wanted to say that we needed to call 911 I wanted to say that weator whatever unholy cross between the two that defined Samantha Early

Dead too early

“The question you want answered,” the boy in black said as though no time had passed, “is whether you are dead”

I licked h I’d been days without a drink of water “Yes,” I said to him

“You live,” he said “She does not”

2

“WE HAVE TO HELP HER”

“She is past help,” the boy in black said