But in came Marcy, screaming her head off.

Dahlia jammed her hand against the stall door to make sure it would stay shut.

She waited for the scream to turn into a laugh. Or to break off and be part of some phone call. Or for it to be anything except what it was.

Marcy kept screaming, though.

Until she stopped.

Suddenly.

With a big in-gulp of air.

Dahlia leaned forward to listen. There was only a crack between the door and frame and she could see a sliver of Marcy as she leaned over the sink.

Was she throwing up?

Washing her face?

What the hell was she doing?

Then she saw Marcy’s shoulders rise and fall. Very fast. The way someone will when . . .

That’s when she heard the sobs.

Long. Deep. Badly broken sobs.

The kind of sobs Dahlia was way too familiar with.

Out there, on the other side of that sliver, Marcy Van Der Meer’s knees buckled and she slid down to the floor. To the floor of the girls’ bathroom. A public bathroom.

Marcy curled herself into a hitching, twitching, spasming ball.

She pulled herself all the way under the bank of dirty sinks.

Sobbing.

Crying like some broken thing.

Dahlia, despite everything, felt something in her own eyes. On her cheeks.

She tried to be shocked at the presence of tears.

Marcy was the hateful witch. If she wasn’t messing with Dahlia directly, then she was getting her friends and minions to do it. She was the subject of a thousand of Dahlia’s fantasies about vehicular manslaughter, about STDs that transformed her into a mottled crone, about being eaten by rats.

Marcy the hag.

Huddled on the filthy floor, her head buried down, arms wrapped around her body, knees drawn up. Her pretty red blouse streaked with dirt. Crying so deeply that it made almost no sound. Crying the way people do when the sobs hurt like punches.

Dahlia sat there. Frozen. Kind of stunned, really. Marcy?

Marcy was way too self-conscious to be like that.

Ever.

Unless . . . What could have happened to her to put Marcy here, on that floor, in that condition? Until now Dahlia wouldn’t have bet Marcy had enough of a genuine human soul to be this hurt.

The bathroom was filled with the girl’s pain.

Dahlia knew that what she had to do was nothing. She needed to sit there and finish her business and pretend that she wasn’t here at all. She needed to keep that stall door locked. She needed to not even breathe very loud. That’s what she needed to do.

Absolutely.

— 5 —

It’s not what she did, though. Because, when it was all said and done, she was Dahlia Allgood.

And Dahlia Allgood wasn’t a monster.

— 6 —

She finished in the toilet. Got dressed. Stood up. Leaned her forehead against the cold metal of the stall door for a long ten seconds. Reached back and flushed. Then she opened the door.