Now, of all times.

“Bloody hell! Bugger! Fuck you, you stupid fucking stupid fucks!” I’d leapt into the air, shaking both my fists at the distant stars.

Then I’d dropped to the ground, clutching my balled-up paper, wondering with a small part of my brain what moron had thrown away my immensely entertaining and informative news flash, while also wondering why it was still there five and a half years later, while also trying to decide with the largest part of my brain what the hell I was going to do.

I was screwed.

I’d stretched out on the ground and cried. Sobbed until I couldn’t breathe and my head was splitting. After I’d done that long enough to make myself even more miserable, I began laughing. Eventually, I went cold as ice.

So, this was how it was going to be?

We’d see about that.

I wasn’t the teen I’d been five and a half years earlier. I’d thought my childhood was challenging but my years Silverside had made my childhood seem like…well, child’s play.

I hadn’t held on to the really bad things that happened Silverside. I’d chosen to remember the good parts and chunked the rest in the oubliette. I’d already had too much baggage at fourteen, before I even leapt into the Hall of All Days, to accumulate more and leave it rattling around in my head. You’ve got to keep your brain tidy.

Things had gone downhill swiftly once I’d become invisible to my mother. I’d taught myself strict compartmentalization by the fourth month of my seventh year, when living in the cage had become unbearable, apportioning parts to me and parts to the Other, the one that was far more ruthless and self-contained than me.

I’ve always known who the Other was: me, pushed beyond enduring.

When you’re so hungry you can barely raise your head, and you aren’t sure anyone’s ever going to feed you again and you start to think maybe you should just slip away, and stop fighting it, you either let go and die or find a way to hang on that isn’t constant pain. I’d figured out how to hang on.

I’d played around in my brain and taught myself to partition it. I don’t know if that’s exactly what happens on a subconscious level in cases of dissociative disorder, but once I began consciously doing it, it became difficult to stop.

It was easier to be the Other. Safer to be the Other.

Especially at the end.

The Other killed my mom.

I killed my mom.

I know those two statements are the same thing.

Ryodan thinks I don’t but I’ve always known. There are parts of my brain not even he can get into.

And even knowing that I had to do it—that I would have died if I hadn’t—didn’t make it any easier for me to deal with. I missed her. I hated her. I loved her. I hated myself. I missed her. Moms, even bad ones—and she’d been a good one once—are sacred. They’re the taproot from which we grow.

Ro, the old bitch, figured out how to push me into that state, even when I didn’t want to go. And once I was free, I’d never wanted to be the Other anymore.

I’d learned during my first few weeks free of my cage that one of my mom’s many “boyfriends” during that last year had introduced her to the needle. It wasn’t wine that had changed her so drastically at the end. It was heroin. A drug had turned her into someone else, someone she’d never have chosen to be.

I’d added that bastard to my kill count, too. He’d been passed out with a needle in his arm, flirting with death anyway. Treasure your life. Or die.

Adaptability is survivability. When Ryodan said that to me, I knew he understood. I’d felt an instant kinship with him. I’d taken one look into those cool, clear silver eyes and known he’d had to do things no person should have to do. And he was okay with it.

He’d found the way to be okay with it.

Silverside, I’d carefully picked out the finest characteristics of me and my Other and merged them. Ironically, Silverside had been easier in some ways. Me, my imagination, and I had created The Daredevil Delights of Dani and her Shaz-tastic Sidekick Shazam! We’d even had our own theme song:

Shaz the mighty fur-beast lived up in the air,

Watching all of Olean, grouchy as a bear.

Dani the Mega O’Malley loved that rascal Shaz,

And battled dragons every day while Shaz covered her ass.

Oh, Shaz the mighty fur-beast…

And so on.

I’d come to this spot near the wall many times since my first night back on Earth, and stood just like this, staring up at the gray stones.

Each time I’d come here to think. Sometimes I’d tossed things through. Once, a big, battered steel trashcan. I’d spray-painted words on it before casting it through: I SEE YOU, YI-YI. I SWEAR I’M COMING. And each time I’d ended up trying as hard as I could not to think, and especially not feel.

Now, I sank down to the sodden grass, leaned against the wall, pulled out my cellphone and thumbed up a song, in a rare masochistic mood.

As little Jackie Paper cruised turquoise seas on boats with billowed sails, watching for far-off pirate ships from Puff’s enormous tail, I thought about everything I’d done in my life and all the things I’d lost, and I thought about Dancer and how I was going to lose him, too, at some point, and I had absolutely no control over it, and when the song got to the part where it talked about dragons living forever but not so little boys, I rolled over onto my side, curled up into a ball and let the grief come.

I cried and cried and made so much snot you’d think we were made of snot, like ninety percent snot and maybe ten percent bones, and who knew what the hell held us together at the end of the day that kept us from just melting into a puddle of snot?

I knew what the song was about. I’d always hated it. Mom had played it for me when I was a kid, singing and dancing around the kitchen, and I remember just looking up at her and thinking, Is she NUTS?

What a horrible song! Why would anyone want to listen to it?

I knew it was about losing the magic. The wonder and innocence. Losing the belief in fairy tales because we’re crushed beneath the weight of responsibility and the perverse expectations of the world. I knew how good I felt inside as a little kid. I knew how bad my mom felt inside grown up. I could see what growing up did to you and didn’t like it one bit.

That was the day I knew I was smarter than my mom. The day she played me “Puff the Magic Dragon.” And it didn’t make me feel happy or important, or like, gee, wow, I’m really smart.