With a finger tapping in the air, CiCi gave Simone a knowing look out of eyes Simone thought of as golden, and were, in fact, the same shade as her own.

“And don’t think I can’t see the smirk you’re giving me inside your head. Think them anyway. You’re going to cry together, but that’s a healing thing whether it feels like it now or not. You’re going to listen to her, to whatever she needs to say. And you’re going to tell her the truth about whatever she asks you because if you break trust with each other now, you may not get it back.”

“I don’t want to say anything that makes it worse.”

“It’s already worse, and you’re going through it together. You need truth between you. There’s her nurse now. Go see your sister, baby. Strong and brave.”

She didn’t feel strong and brave, not with the buzzing in her head and that squeezing inside her chest. She nodded at the nurse, but didn’t really comprehend what she said.

It all got worse when she saw Mi through the glass.

Mi looked so small, so sick. Frail, Nari had said, but to Simone’s eyes Mi looked broken. Something fragile already dropped and shattered.

Mi’s exhausted eyes met hers, and tears spilled.

She didn’t remember going in. Couldn’t remember if the nurse had told her not to touch Mi. But she had to, had to.

She pressed her cheek to Mi’s, gripped hands that felt as thin as bird wings.

“I thought— I was afraid they lied.” Mi’s voice, thin as her hands, choked with sobs. “I was afraid you were dead, too, and they weren’t telling me. I was afraid…”

“I’m not. I’m here. I didn’t get hurt. I wasn’t there. I left—”

Simone heard herself—and heard CiCi: Listen to her.

“Is Tish really dead?”

Her cheek still pressed to Mi’s, Simone nodded.

They cried together, with Mi’s frail body shaking under hers.

Simone shifted so she could sit on the side of the bed, hold Mi’s hand.

“He came in. I didn’t see him at first. Then we heard the shooting and the screaming, but it happened so fast, and we didn’t know what was happening. Tish said, ‘What’s happening?’ and then…”

Mi closed her eyes. “Can I have some water?”

Simone got the cup with the bendy straw, held it for Mi.

“He shot her. Simone, he shot her, and I felt this—like, this awful pain, and Tish fell on me, just sort of tipped over on me, and I felt more pain, and she was, I don’t know, jerking. Simone, he kept shooting her, and she was kind of over me, so she died. I didn’t. She saved me. I told the police. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help her. And I was awake, but it didn’t seem real. He just kept shooting and shooting, then it all stopped. The shooting. But people were screaming and crying. I couldn’t scream, and I couldn’t move. I thought I was dead, and then I … I just went away, I guess. I don’t remember until I woke up here.”

Her fingers squeezed, light as wings, on Simone’s. “Am I going to die?”

Tell her the truth.

“You were really hurt, and we were so scared. It took hours before the doctor came out, but she said you did really well. And today they said they’re going to take you out of ICU because you’re not critical anymore. CiCi’s here with me, and she talked your parents into going home for a little while to sleep. They’d never go home if you were going to die.”

Mi closed her eyes again. “Tish did. Why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t— I still think it’s not real.”

“You went to the bathroom. What happened?”

“I was coming back, and I thought the noise was from the movie. But someone—a man—tried to run out, and he fell. I saw the blood all over him. I looked in, just for a second, and I saw— I saw somebody shooting, and I heard everything. I ran back to the bathroom and called nine-one-one. They said for me to stay where I was, to hide and wait, and while I was talking my phone died.”

Mi smiled a little. “You forgot to charge it again.”

“I never will again, ever. The police came. A policewoman, I gave her your names, and my mom’s and Natalie’s.”

“They were in the mall. I forgot.”

“There were three of them, Mi. That’s what the news said. Two in the mall, one in the theater.”

“Your mom and Natalie? No, Simone, no.”

“They’re okay. Mom got a concussion and some cuts from flying glass. Nat dragged her behind a counter. She’s okay. They’re okay.” She hesitated a moment, then pushed on. “Three of them, killing people. Killing Tish. And we knew them.”

“‘We knew them’?” Mi repeated slowly.

“They’re dead. I’m glad they’re dead. JJ Hobart.”

“Oh my God.”

“Kent Whitehall and Devon Paulson were in the mall. JJ was in the theater.”

“He killed Tish. I saw them in school almost every day. They killed Tish.”

“And Trent. He’s dead. Tiffany’s hurt bad. I saw her mom last night. Tiffany’s. JJ shot her. She might have brain damage and her face … I only heard a little. I don’t know how bad she is.”

“I knew JJ especially was mean, stupid mean sometimes, but…” Mi’s bruised eyes spilled over with tears again. “I’m the one who picked that movie. I wanted to see that movie especially, and now Tish is dead.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault I went to the bathroom and wasn’t there. But it feels like it. It really feels like it. But it’s their fault, Mi. I hate them. I’ll hate them forever.”

“I’m so tired,” Mi murmured as her eyes closed. “Don’t go.”

“I’ll be right outside,” Simone said after the nurse came to the door and signaled her time was up. “I won’t go.”

*

Once or twice in the past Reed had had very interesting dreams about getting Angie naked. Now, after recurring nightmares of hiding beside her dead body, he sat in the back row of the Methodist church for her funeral.

He’d nearly talked himself out of coming. They hadn’t really been friends. He hadn’t really known her. Like, he hadn’t known her parents were divorced or that she’d played the flute or had a brother in the Marine Corps.

Maybe he’d have learned those things if they’d gone to the movies or grabbed a pizza or taken a walk on the beach. But they hadn’t.

Now he felt lost and guilty and stupid, sitting there while people who had known her, loved her, cried.

But he’d had to come. He’d probably been the last person—who was not a customer—to have an actual conversation with her. He’d spent those terrifying minutes hiding a little boy in her kiosk with her body right … there.

He’d had her blood on his shoes, his pants.

So he sat through the prayers, the weeping, the heartbreaking eulogies in a suit too tight in the shoulders. His mother had told him when he’d come home for the summer to get a new suit, and he’d ignored the idea as a waste of money.

As usual, his mother was right.

Thinking about his suit made him feel disrespectful. So he thought about the three faces he’d seen again and again on the news.

Younger than he was, all of them, and one of them had killed Angie.

Not Hobart, he remembered. He’d been in the theater, and the cop—Officer McVee—killed him. The reports said Hobart had worked in the theater. They said he’d been the ringleader.

But either Whitehall or Paulson had killed Angie.

They looked normal in the pictures on TV and in the papers, on the Internet.

But they hadn’t been normal.

The one he’d seen—still saw in nightmares—all geared up in Kevlar, laughing as he shot a man in the head, hadn’t been normal.

He knew more about them now, the three who’d killed a girl he’d liked during their eight-minute slaughter. Hobart had lived with his father after an ugly divorce. His younger sister lived with the mother. The father, an avid gun collector, taught his children to hunt, to shoot.

Whitehall had lived with his mother, stepfather, half brother, and stepsister. His father, currently unemployed, had a couple of arrests: drunk and disorderly, driving under the influence. Whitehall—the neighbors said—kept to himself and had some drug issues.

Paulson appeared to be a model student. Good grades, no trouble, solid home life, only child. He’d been a Boy Scout—and had a sports shooting merit badge. He’d been a junior member of the USA Shooting organization, with an eye toward the Olympics.

His father had competed for the USA in Sydney in 2000, and Athens in 2004.

People who knew Paulson said they’d noticed a change (hindsight) maybe six months ago when he’d seemed to become more closed in.

That would be about the time the girl he liked decided she liked someone else better, and he’d hooked up with Hobart.

About the time the three who’d become mass murderers began to feed each other’s internal rage.

They’d documented it, so the reports claimed, on computer files the authorities were still studying. Reed, in turn, studied the reports, dug into speculation on the Internet, watched news broadcasts, talked endlessly with Chaz and others.