I watched her start to make her way around the coffee table. Seeing my face, she let out a little laugh. “And Dani, stop harboring all this animosity about Dave Gallagher. It wasn’t like the two of you were going to end up ‘old and crazy’ together.”

I lunged for her and my hands found their way around her neck. I started squeezing. I didn’t want to hear any more of this. I just wanted her to shut up. My hands tightened around her thin throat, and I could feel her go from trying to be defensive to struggling to wriggle out of my grasp. I felt her tense into full panic mode. I held her neck in my hands and stared at her freckled face. She was gurgling now; she was trying to say something but my viselike grasp wouldn’t let her.

At some point I had lifted her five-foot-three-inch frame off the ground. I was moving in slow motion, walking slowly one step forward and then another. My fury kept surging in fresh waves and I felt like the strongest woman alive.

I was so intent on staring at her freckles that I didn’t realize that I had backed her into the wall. I could feel her shaking; I could feel her feet claw at the air like a bug on its back. Every couple of tries she’d feebly graze one of my shins, but it didn’t really hurt. I loved being so much taller than her. I didn’t see the freckles now; I saw her and Dave here on the slipcovered couches hanging out. Making out.

“Just shut up, I want you to shut up.” I was hitting her against the wall now. She was bouncing off the wall . . . her head was snapping back and forth with each word as I said, “Shut up, shut up.”

She didn’t feel heavy, I thought. Maybe I had been getting stronger. Maybe taking all those classes at Barry’s Boot Camp was actually working. I banged her against the wall again and thought of Dave and Chloe, Dave and Madison, and Troy spanking me.

My hands released her.

Chloe slid down the wall and crumpled onto her side near my feet.

She lay there motionless, and the eyes that everyone thought were so amazing stared back at me unblinkingly. I crouched down

close to her to get a better look.

Chloe was dead.