“Mel?”

Mom’s at the foot of the stairs now, calling up. Melanie knows. She’s heard Mom’s voice from that very spot a thousand times. Through the glass, that person on the bike, too big for the bike, that same slow-motion way. She (it’s a woman, Melanie knows this for sure now) rides through the intersection, crosses the street, is illuminated by a streetlamp.

Then, into the darkness again.

“Mel?”

Melanie leans closer to the window, cups her hands to see better. Nothing. Is the biker still in the darkness? Melanie squints. She can’t tell.

But directly below her window on the lawn, an impossibly tall woman looks back up.

Melanie steps back.

“Oh God…”

The front door to the house opens.

Closes.

“Mel?”

Melanie thinks of the face she saw, looking up at her.

Her room feels hot. Crawling heat. She hurries out into the hall, stops at the top of the stairs.

There’s a seven-foot woman in denim crossing the foyer, climbing the first step. Her hair hangs greasy, her fingers black with oil. She steps by Melanie’s mom, Mom, who looks up to Melanie as if to ask, You okay, Mel?

Melanie raises a shaking hand, points at the woman who is now halfway up the steps.

It’s Daphne, yes. Her head grazes the ceiling as she comes.

“MOM!”

But Mom only looks confused.

“Mel, what is it? Is there news? Did they find who did it?”

Melanie smells smoke and alcohol.

“Mel?”

She turns and runs for her bedroom. Slams the door behind her. Rushes to her desk and opens the top drawer and hears her bedroom door open and turns to face Daphne with a pair of scissors that feel too small. She cries out as she stabs the space between them, as two bare hands cover that space, one taking Melanie by the upper arm.

The sound is clean, quick. Melanie can smell the grease, the oil.

Daphne has torn off Melanie’s arm.

Melanie opens her mouth to scream, to speak, to say anything, but Daphne swings the arm against the side of her head and the world goes black. Yet Melanie takes with her into that darkness the makeup, the face that is not Paula’s story, not Natasha’s, nobody’s.

On the floor, blacked out, there is still some life in her. Enough to feel the giant boot upon her head.

“Mel?” Mom calls from below.

Then, footsteps, ascending, even as Daphne, finished, enters the hall.

Mom passes, without seeing the woman responsible for the death of her daughter, doesn’t hear her, but will later tell Detective McGowan it smelled strong of smoke and whiskey, yes, it smelled of the bar. Search the bars for who did this. Search them now.

At the doorjamb, Mom sees her Mel, though it takes her moments to believe the split face on the floor belongs to her daughter. At first, she mistakes it for a basketball jersey the girls wore when they played for the middle school team.