Quentin didn’t bother with the DVDs, just flipped channels on the huge TV and slugged straight from the bottle until sunlight came bleeding up over the horizon, like more acid blood oozing out of his sick ruptured heart, which felt—not that anybody cared—like a rotten drum of biohazardous waste at the very bottom of a landfill, leaching poison into the groundwater, enough poison to kill an entire suburb full of innocent and unsuspecting children.

He never did fall asleep. The idea came over him around dawn, and he waited as long as he could, but it was just too damn good to keep to himself. He was like a kid on Christmas morning who couldn’t wait for the grown-ups to waken. Santa was here, and he was going to fix everything. At seven thirty, still half drunk, he busted out of the den and went down the hallways banging on doors. What the hell, he even climbed the stairs and kicked open Alice’s door, caught a glimpse of Penny’s bare white plump rump, which he didn’t really need to see. It made him wince and turn away. But it didn’t shut him up.

“Okay!” he was shouting. “People! Get up, get up, get up! It’s time! Today’s the day! People, people, people!”

He sang a verse of James’s stupid middle school song:

In olden times there was a boy
Young and strong and brave-o

He was a cheerleader now, waving his pom-poms, jumping up and down, doing splits on the parquet, shouting as loud as he could.

“We! Are! Going! To!

“Fill!

“O!

“Reeeeeee!”

BOOK III

BOOK III

FILLORY

FILLORY

They held hands in a circle in the living room, packs on their backs. It felt like a dorm stunt, like they were all about to drop acid or sing an a cappella show tune or set some kind of wacky campus record. Anaïs’s face blazed with excitement. She hopped up and down despite the load on her back. None of last night’s drama had registered on her at all. She was the only person in the room who looked happy to be there.

The funny thing was that it had worked. Quentin wouldn’t let it alone, he kept hounding them, and eventually, with surprisingly little resistance, they gave in. Today would be the day. Partly they were afraid of him, with his scary glittering pain-eyes, but partly it was because they had to admit he was right: it was time to go, and they’d just been waiting for somebody, even somebody as obviously drunk and demented as Quentin was, to stand up and call it.

Looking back, in a philosophical frame of mind, it occurred to Quentin that he’d always thought this would be a happy day, the happiest day of his life. Funny how life had its little ways of surprising you. Little quirks of fate.