I kept wondering how anyone, even the lords of Hell, could want to harm that radiant beauty. The official version would be that she had a face like a Renaissance angel, beautiful, delicate, full of lofty thoughts. But the truth was that she looked like the most innocently wicked graduate of a very, very expensive private school. If I hadn’t known for a fact that Caz had been around since before Columbus sailed, I’d have been feeling very, very guilty after all the things we’d just done. I was beginning to believe I was in love with this woman, but of course she wasn’t actually a woman at all, and she came from Hell. Think about that a little and you’ll probably understand why I didn’t want to consider our situation too closely.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything . . .”

“No! No, thank your lucky stars that you don’t know, Bobby. I want you to stay that way. I don’t want you ever to know what that place is like.” And then she suddenly hugged me so tightly that for a moment I thought she was trying to crawl through me somehow and out the other side. Her small, hard body seemed both the most real and the most vulnerable thing in the world.

“I won’t let you go back,” I said.

I thought she laughed. I only realized later that the noise had been something else, something far less simple. Her legs tightened on my thigh; I could feel her wetness pressing against me. “Of course you won’t, Bobby,” she said. “We’ll never go back, either of us. We’ll stay here and drink ice cream sodas forever. So kiss me, you dumbfuck angel.”

Have you ever had somebody you loved die on you? All that stuff you feel, and you’re still feeling it, but they’re just gone? You carry that around with you every moment—all the things you failed to tell them, all the ways you were stupid, all the ways you’re missing them. It feels like holding up a huge, collapsing wall, as if you were some hero in a movie waiting for everyone to get to safety, but you already know you’re not going to get away yourself. That eventually the weight will just crush you.

Ever had somebody leave you and tell you they never really loved you? That you’re a loser, a waste of time they should have known to avoid? You carry that one around too, but instead of an insupportable weight, it’s more like a horrible burn, nerve endings fried and stuck on jangling alert, a pain that occasionally subsides to a bitter, itching ache, but then flares up into agony again without warning.

Here’s one more: Ever had somebody steal the thing that mattered most to you? Then laugh in your face about it? Leave you helpless and seething?