I didn’t even have to lay a finger on her. I walked close enough for her to panic and fall backward into the flowers, which seemed to part and then close around her. Her cries were awful because they were the guilty, terrified cries of a person being dragged to hell.

Like in my dream . . .

I stopped short, and suddenly I realized who the lurching figure in my dream had been—it was me.

Oh, that’s funny, I thought. All I’d been afraid of was myself.

And then I turned and walked away, confident that Laura wouldn’t be standing up anytime soon.

I made it as far as the Adam and Eve gate.

Up ahead, I saw a pair of uniformed police officers moving quickly through the garden.

I paused for a moment, then crumpled to the ground like a rag doll. I found myself staring at a flower I’d seen before—the tiny blossoms so cheerful and sweet. They seemed to be watching me like a thousand curious, tiny creatures.

I saw the officers approach and the surprise in their eyes, and then behind them I saw a weak, staggering figure, teetering in her long nightgown.

“Hey, Ags,” I tried to say.

And then I passed out.

I AWOKE BRIEFLY as they were loading me into the ambulance. The paramedics said some comforting things that I couldn’t remember even moments after they were spoken. Through the open doors I could see Agatha watching me, wrapped in a blanket. She seemed worried.

Beyond her were about eight police cars.

And past them, at the entrance to the garden, I could have sworn I saw my mother.

She looked at me. Her eyes were shining with love and pride and sorrow.

And then she disappeared.

EPILOGUE

SIX MONTHS LATER

“TONIGHT,” AGATHA SAID, “you, me, Barrett, some rando Barrett knows—Pauline’s Pizza?”

I looked up from my biology textbook.

“Say yes,” Agatha said. “Please? Barrett misses you.”

She slipped off her Camden blazer and hung it on the hook on her side of the closet door, then slid onto the bed next to me and grabbed Blue Bunny (who had magnanimously forgiven her for the earlier mistreatment). She held him in front of my book.

“Barrett keeps whining about you and it’s driving Agatha craaaazy,” she said, in a very poor impersonation of what Blue Bunny’s actual voice would sound like. “You should just do her a favor and go.”

I shut the book and flipped onto my back. “I have a bio test to study for.”

“That’s in three days.”

“I’m too tired to go out.”

“No, you’re not. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

I tried again. “It’s freezing and I’m tired of Pauline’s. We just went there last week.”

“I have nineteen coats, and no one is ever tired of pizza. Stop making excuses.”