River falls back on her feet and looks at her hands, her chest shaking with some essence of life—if not the breath humans breathe, then something even stronger. And she starts to float, back slightly bent, arms and legs waving like strips of a flag. Particles of light peel away from her feet and legs, and pieces of her travel like glittering doves through the darkness.

“What’s going on?” The ecto-mist eats at her skate shoes, up her jeans, the fabric of her band shirt—tiny stars making homes for themselves in her skin and bones. Her hair burns white, each strand glowing hot. A snake of light fastens around her head like a crown.

“I think you’re . . . passing on to the After?” With one hand in front of my forehead, I watch her face break in a constellated crack and burst into mist. Her body rushes through the darkness and lifts me in its electric wind. My sweater and shirt billow like the chutes of a sailboat as the glowing stream throws me to the tarmac and then rips like a determined fish through the darkness beyond.

I watch it soar and then vanish into the dark, beyond where my eyes can reach.

Was Sawyer’s defeat tied to River’s death loop? If so, her passing on would mean we’ve beaten him. But it doesn’t seem that way. I could swear I saw him moving away on purpose, like his energy had run out and he needed to restore it.

The wind pulls me backward, and my eyes spring open to the real world, where I had passed out on a square of asphalt. I squeeze my eyes shut against the security light above me.

“Fuck—” A headache breaks in my skull as I make sense of the school building. My phone is in my hand, my thumb jittering over a new text message. Keysmash is all that’s in the box.

My face is bleeding. Yellow bruises around my wrists. Elbows ripped open to their cherry-red states. Blood leaking through my jeans at the knees. Cuts all over my knuckles, like I fist-fought a stone. I plant my hands on the leather of my shoes and then erupt like a strike of lightning from the pavement.

“Ouch.” My voice is a whimper.

I find my bike against the wall, and I roll it onto the pavement. “Never again. Never.”

Is it over? I wonder as I swing my leg over the seat and push off. My feet dip and rise as the wheels turn, taking me down the carpool lane, through the phantom Sawyer. His clouds pass like gun smoke over my shoulders.

Are you coming back?

Onward to the crosswalk and out of the school zone, my safety is compounded by dread as behind me, a bus keeps crashing and crashing.

Jake