There’s a moment when the woman watches me like a beaten animal. Then she snatches the candy bar faster than I would have given her credit for. She tears off the wrapper in a split second and stuffs the candy in her mouth. Her strained face relaxes as she tastes the nutty, sweet flavor from the World Before.

“My kids, my husband,” she says in a hoarse voice. “Where did everybody go?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But a lot of people ended up at the Resistance camp. They might be there.”

“What Resistance camp?”

“It’s the Resistance who attacked the angels. People are gathering to join them.”

She blinks at me. “I remember you. You died.”

“Neither of us died,” I say.

“I did,” she says. “And I went to hell.” She wraps her thin arms around herself again.

I don’t know what to say. What difference does it make if she actually died or not? She certainly lived through hell and she looks it.

Sanjay walks up to us like he’s approaching a stray cat. “What’s your name?”

She glances at me for reassurance. I nod.

“Clara.”

“I’m Sanjay. What happened to you?”

She looks at her jerkied hand. “I got sucked dry by a monster.”

“What monster?” Sanjay asks.

“The scorpion angels I told you about,” I say.

“The hell doctor said I could go free if I led him to my little girls,” she says with her parched voice. “But I wouldn’t give them up. He said the monster would liquefy my insides and drink them. Said the mature ones wouldn’t go all the way and kill if they could help it, but the developing ones would.”

Clara starts shaking. “He said it would be the most excruciating thing I could imagine.” She shuts her eyes as if trying to keep tears back. “Thank God I didn’t believe him.” Her voice sounds choked. “Thank God I didn’t know any better.” She starts crying in dry heaves as if all the fluid actually was sucked out of her.

“You didn’t give up your children and you’re alive,” I say. “That’s all that matters.”

She puts her trembling hand on my arm, then turns to Sanjay. “The monster was killing me. And out of nowhere, she came and rescued me.”

Sanjay looks at me with new respect. I worry about her telling him about Raffe, but it turns out she passed out in the basement as soon as she saw me get stung by a scorpion, so she doesn’t remember much.

Clara’s plight eats away at me like acid as we pick through the debris. Sanjay sits on the sidewalk beside her, talking gently with her and taking notes. Comforting someone like her is the kind of thing my sister would have done in the World Before.