Somewhere in the pandemonium, Holden managed to break free of Wynonna. He lunged to the nearest window—one of the few at Piles Fork that you could actually slide open. This is what Holden did. Slid it wide open with one hand. With the other, he thrust the hostage bag of pork rinds over the three-story drop. The bag dangled in his fierce grip.

“Take one more step and the pork rinds get it,” said Holden.

Wynonna froze in her oversized combat-boot tracks. Raised her hands in a slow and steady cease-fire. She was apparently taking the hostage situation very seriously.

“Eeeeeasy, Durden,” said Wynonna. “Don’t do anything we’ll all regret.”

“Apologize to Ezra,” said Holden.

“Excuse me?”

“Or the pork rinds get it.”

Wynonna glanced at me with a sort of residual disgust. Or dismissive resentment. It was hard to pin down exactly what it was, however, because my mind was slipping. Like the moon was currently slipping over the disk of the sun, causing the sky to darken with a strange, dusky hue. Although I was only vaguely aware of it in some distant compartment of my brain.

“No way,” said Wynonna. “I am not apologizing to—”

Holden let his grip slide but only slightly. The pork rinds slipped half an inch.

“Okay, okay, okay!” said Wynonna. She turned to look at me. Took several steps forward until we were standing at a safe, apologetic distance. I could sense the words coagulating at the back of her throat, like a scab.

“Ezra Slevin,” she said, pronouncing each syllable of my name overdramatically. “I am sorry… that you’re a PATHETIC LITTLE CHICKENSHIT.”

She lunged at Holden. Smashed him into the wall, tweaking his “pork rind” arm against the window frame. Holden yelped. The brunt of the impact, however, went into her right combat boot, which she planted flat against the wall. A compressed spring. She fastened her arms around Holden’s head, Randy Orton–style, and kicked off, launching the two of them like a WWE finishing move. I thought for sure she was gonna RKO Holden’s ass “outta nowhere!”

Instead, Wynonna kicked off a little too hard, and she and Holden collided into Imogen and me.

I felt it—a cerebral FLASH! I felt the impact like my astral form was being knocked out of my human shell.

We were a tangle of limbs, a human blob, rolling across the vinyl tile floor—crash!—right into the lockers. The kshhhhhhh! of ringing aluminum buzzed in my ears.

“Owwww,” said Holden.

“Am I dead?” said Imogen faintly. “Is this what being dead is?”

“Fuck me,” I mumbled to myself, in a moment of existential quandary.

Those were the words I said.

Except it was Wynonna’s voice that said them.

Somewhere in the human blob, I felt a body stiffen. As if they, too, recognized that something was cosmically wrong.

I opened my eyes. Glanced down at my hands, palms flat against the cold tile.