And something nuts happens to me that I don’t understand, but I’m going to start doing what the rest of the world does and blame everything on my hormones because I used to be the coolest of the cool until I started having periods.

I get all mushy inside like some kind of wimp that buys into those greeting card commercials, and I think about Mom, and even though she did things to me that other people would think were awful, I understand why she kept me in a cage. There weren’t many choices and she didn’t have much money and she wasn’t always mean to me. She did it to keep me safe. I never blamed her for keeping me in a cage with a collar.

I just wished she’d stop forgetting me.

Like she didn’t want to remember me.

Or maybe she wished she’d never had me.

But it wasn’t always like that with us. I remember feeling crazy-loved. I remember when it was different. I just never could get it back.

And all the sudden there’s like this stupid fecking thing so cold at the corner of my eyes on the insides like I tried to cry or something and I don’t fecking cry, and it froze the second it started and my head hurts and I reach out and I touch the tiny fist wrapped around her mommy’s finger and my heart squinches and then I have this horrible pressure in my ears and then something inside me gives with a soft squishing sound, and all the sudden I can’t breathe and I’m so cold I guess it must be like getting dumped naked in space.

The cold knifes into me, flays me, slays me, glacierizes me.

Cold takes on new meanings and just about when I think I understand it, like it’s some complex state of being that I could exist inside of, it flips all around on me, and I burn everywhere and I’m hot, and I’m hot, and I’m so fecking unbelievably hot that I start tearing off my clothes and I can’t do it fast enough because I feel thick and slow and stupid and I realize somehow I’ve dropped back down into slow-mo!

Was it when I touched her? Was that why he told me not to touch anything? Does touching something so cold knock you down from fast-mo? How does he know that, if it’s true? Did it knock him down once somewhere, is that how he knew? Then why didn’t it kill him?

It’s too cold down in slow-mo, seriously like outer space.

I try to freeze-frame back up.

I stumble to my knees. I must have waited too long. Maybe the instant I dropped down was too long.

God, the floor is cold! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! I just thought “God.” I don’t use that word. Do I believe? Have I found faith here, on my knees, now, at the end? That seems kind of hypocritical-like to me. Ain’t dying a hypocrite. I start to snicker. I’m not shivering. I’m hot. I’m so hot.

Even now I try to absorb more details. Curiosity. Cat dying. May as well. It’s a vacuum here. Something’s wrong, something’s missing that I couldn’t feel missing in fast-mo but I don’t understand what. The stuff around me, the people and everything feel … somehow flat, void of an essential ingredient that would give it multidimensionality.

“Ry—” I can’t get his name out.

I hear him yelling, but I can’t understand the words and it sounds weird. Like he’s talking muffled into a pillow.

I try to skinny off my jeans. Need them off. They’re cold, so cold. Have to get everything off. It’s so cold it’s burning my skin. He’s fighting me, trying to keep them on me. Get out of my way, I try to say but nothing comes out. I need them off. If I can get them off I might be okay.

And all I can think is—

Help me! I scream inside my head.

My heart is going. It summons up the energy for one last violent feck-you pump but only manages a soft squish.

I can’t die like this. I have things to do. My adventure has hardly begun. Everything goes black. I see Death. Ain’t so fascinating. It’s a sledgehammer.

Aw, shit. I know what rigor mortis is. I know my face is going to stick. I’m choosing how.

I belly up a laugh from way down deep where I’m always half laughing anyway because being alive—dude!—it’s the greatest adventure in the world. What a ride it’s been. Short but stupendous. Ain’t nobody can say Dani Mega O’Malley didn’t live while she was here.

No regrets!

Dani out.

FIFTEEN

“Hot child in the city”

I lose track of them for one minute, distracted by a female Unseelie down in the streets that has what the Highlander in me considers revolting parts but the prince in me thinks are all the right ones. Sex has become bloody weird. Incredible. But weird. She’s a few blocks south of the church, and she’s throwing off pheromones that make my dick go flat to my stomach, and by the time I realize what’s happened to Dani, I have one more reason to hate Ryodan and the whole fucking world, as if I needed one.