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  14

  He fell to his knees twice while struggling to make it to the corner. Blood covered his hands but there really wasn't that much of it. The hole was small, nothing a couple of stitches couldn't close, but he knew it was deep. How far was too far? In a way, he'd been trying to answer that for most of his life.

  Jaw muscles clenched, he fought off the pain and almost got his normal stride back. No one on the street noticed.

  He stepped off the curb and, in a blossoming silence, went into another place that couldn't be defined by its borders. People crowded him and he moved aside, until he realized he recognized them all. Stacy came at him, smiling and looking pleased, even hopeful. She took his hand and he grinned back at her.

  Her mother, Annie Singleton, brimmed from a doorway, and he noticed the scar tissue at her eyes was gone. A residue of fear still remained in her face, but seemed to be losing some of its vicious hold as she learned to finally relax. Mom and Dad clustered around him, the way a family might ring a proud young man on graduation day. Mom had her camera out and was taking pictures, not only of him but of everybody—his father hamming it up and chuckling wildly, holding Doreena's made-up baby.

  So, it was going to be that kind of party.

  Maybe it was the time-sense aphasia, perhaps he'd been hit by a taxi. Been run over by a Chinese delivery kid on a bike. Or his heart had stopped. Maybe he'd come back in an hour or a day, or maybe he wouldn't. She took more photos and kept telling him to smile. Mom moved in on him, about to say something else, perhaps a touch of advice that would bring meaning to his life.

  The flash went off, once more, and again, and her glistening lips parted, the immense sunlight pouring down, as she said his name. Jez came up behind him and whispered in his ear, and Chase felt something horrible but healing break within his chest. He cut loose with a sob.

  He gathered up the dead and led everybody over the big edge together, with each of them about to speak their wondrous truths now as he waited and turned his head to listen.