Now they just buy a lot of CDs.

Sunday shook her hair.

Wow, Tobey said. What insight. You guys are so ironic and self-aware.

Oh, please, said Morgan.

I have to go, said myrrh.

Sunday left without saying anything.

Oh, well, he said. I guess it's just us.

I could have watched the smooth human machinery of his hands all day. But I picked up my tray and my book bag and left.

4

There's a character in every horror movie who doesn't die. She's the survivor, the Final Girl. She's the one who finds the bodies of her friends and understands that she is in danger. She is the one who runs and suffers. She is the one who shrieks and falls. Her friends understand what is happening to them for no more than an instant before they are killed. But the final girl knows for hours, maybe days, that she is going to die. She feels death coming. She hears it. She sees it.

Welcome to my nightmare.

From Innocence : A Novel by Jane Mendelsohn. © September 2000 , Jane Mendelsohn used by permission of the publisher, Riverhead.