“No, you’re not. You’re thinking just what everybody else does—this crazy bitch probably deserved it. I didn’t, because nobody deserves that, but whatever. I don’t blame you for hating me. You should hate me. I hate you. I got enough hate to go around. And see, that’s where our paths go two different ways. I see you making friends with the faggots and the wetbacks and picking up every other downtrodden piece of garbage that goes floating by, cradling it to your breast like a teddy bear. You still feel bad about what happened to you—you see yourself as a loser, and so you hang out with losers. Bunch of turds bobbing in the same toilet bowl.” But here Skank stops, eyes shimmering. She gestures with the gun, punctuating each word with a thrust of the barrel. “But I found power in what happened to me. Found out that I was strong and I don’t have to swim with garbage. I see trash, I call it what it is and then I throw it away. Homos and niggers and spics.”

Atlanta narrows her eyes. “Let me guess. Your not-blood uncle wasn’t white.”

Skank clucks her tongue. “Cute. Fine. Yeah. Lincoln Sternberg. He was a fuckin’ Jew. Rich-ass, big-nosed kike. Just like all of them.”

“Man who touched me was white. That mean all white people are that way?”

Skank’s jaw drops. “Whoa. Wait. You know, I . . . damn, I didn’t even think about that. I didn’t even imagine that white people could do bad things and that maybe I’ve been prejudging people based on . . .” But she can’t contain it anymore and starts cracking up. “Whatever, like I’ve never heard that one before. White people can be shit, too. But they learn how to be an animal from the animals, you dummy.”

She looks away for a half second, shaking her head and laughing.

That’s when Atlanta moves.

Baton out with a button press—snick. She leaps up, baton raised.

Skank’s elbow catches her across the bridge of her nose. Everything is white flashes and dark shadows swirling together, an army of ghosts pulling at her. Skank grabs the baton, cracks it hard against the Morton building wall, breaking it into three pieces. Atlanta tries to run, but her eyes are watering and her vision is smeared, and by the time she starts to move, Skank’s got her by the hair again.

Wham. Back against the wall. Atlanta crumbles. Wipes her eyes and holds her nose—her palms come away red.

“You won’t surprise me this time,” Skank hisses. “I own you.”

“Girls,” comes an admonishing voice. Atlanta looks. Even through her bleary, smeary vision she knows who it is.

The devil has arrived.