"This book," Harriet says, picking up the diary off the toilet lid. "I read everything you've written in here. You and I come from a similar place. Small town suburbs. Repressive family life. A yearning to do and be more than what your life allows. With just the right push you could come to love the things you can see and do as a result."

"I'm not cruel. I'm not like you."

Harriet raps her knuckles against the diary's cover.

"One difference does exist," Harriet notes. "Even Ingersoll's steady hand and my life experience would not – could not – pull you out of this nosedive you've created for yourself."

"Nosedive."

"Yes. I know how to read what's on the page and what you've written between the lines." Harriet's eyes are now alive, alive in a way they weren't when she was physically hurting Miriam. This hurt, the hurt that's coming, is going to cut way deeper.

"And what did I write?"

"You're planning on killing yourself."

Miriam says nothing. The only sound is her breathing – labored, whistling through dry nostrils, sucked in through bloody lips.

"I never wrote that in there," she finally says.

"Not a convincing denial."

"It's true. I never wrote that. Don't know where you get the idea."

"You make it as clear as possible without ever coming out and writing it. You note the number of pages left in nearly every entry. You even hint that you're counting down to something. That it could be all over. That it's the end of the line. Pair that with the fact you hate yourself, hate what you can do and see, and the conclusion isn't a hard one to reach. Am I right?"

"It's bullshit."

"Really? I think your suicide is one last grab for power. You talk a lot about fate in here. But you still don't know how you die, do you?" Harriet grins. "Suicide is you taking that power for yourself. It's your way of saving that little boy with the balloon."

A pair of tears runs down Miriam's cheek, warm over the bruises and blood.

"It's okay," Harriet says. "I understand."

It's true, Miriam thinks. This has been her plan all along. The end of the diary is an easy target. Any time she visits someone's death – and steals from them like a thieving magpie or chewing maggot – she writes an entry in the diary: one more page down, one more page closer to the finale. She never knows how it will happen. When the time comes, she'll do it by whatever means are at hand. The world offers its residents a billion ways to die: knife, gun, pills, fire, step in front of a car, fall backward over a cliff, swim out to the center of a frozen lake, kick a gang thug in the junk. She can grab a fistful of gravel on the side of the road and eat it. She can steal a cop's gun and run into a Gymboree full of kindergarten kids. Dying is easy.