How was Alma doing over there? Not great. Getting pounded. Ha! There you go, kid. There’s an example of world-serving-as-teacher. Try snooting your way out of this one, Your Majesty.

From somewhere came the sound of a parade, that distant-drum sound, which was weird, because wouldn’t any parade have been canceled? On account of the hail? Only it wasn’t a parade; it was the sound the biggest hailstones yet made smashing down on (yikes!) the Obernicks’ Fiesta, the Neillys’ trash can, which—oof!—tumped over (as if knocked unconscious) and rolled out onto Pine.

Pammy or Cammie or whoever had her shirt off and was making a tent of it, over Alma.

Over her mother.

Kind of sweet, actually.

Oh, hell’s bells, hang on, somewhere in this mess she must have a—­

She stepped in, grabbed Dad’s duck-handled umbrella from the rack, stepped out.

Because who was she? She was Debi. Who was Debi? Debi was generous, a generous soul. She was known for that—she gave and gave and reached out to others, no matter how badly they’d treated her, even a meanie like Alma, who (yes, okay, she admitted it) she’d often wished dead, so that she might have a decent chance at the man she loved and a real house and all the things you were supposed to get in this world—but, no, she didn’t wish Alma dead anymore, because she, Debi, was love, was forgiveness, was goodness, was light; where there was need there was Debi, which was why she was about to do what she was about to—­

She stepped out, umbrella up, yelled across.

Wait.

Wait a minute.

Had Alma waved her off?

She had. Oh my God. You have got to be kidding. What nerve! What balls! Still queen? Peasant girl still too lowly? To come fetch you, Your Highness?

Stick it, Alma.

Let this be a lesson to you.

There is some shit I will not eat.

Because she, Debi, was also a person who had the wisdom to let the world teach the evil ones a lesson while she stood calmly by, watching/trusting the cosmos.

She stepped back inside, slammed the door, shot the umbrella down into the stand, retreated to the middle room, Mom and Dad’s old room, angrily pulled her tax things from the file cabinet, sat shuffling the forms uselessly around, thinking of how strange it was (beautiful, really, a mysterious unsought blessing) that after a lifetime of being everybody’s joke (easy lay, jilted lover, discarded mom), she was finally (in the eleventh hour) learning to frigging stand up for herself.

She stayed in there about fifteen minutes, fuming, getting absolutely nothing done, until she heard the first ambulance arrive and leapt to the window, heart in her throat, and watched as, without even trying the shock paddles, they pulled the sheet up over Alma’s head and loaded her in.