Futzy b.u.t.tweiler, in a moment of rare candor, had confided to them that Zane Fronemeyer's packet held his name and Tweed's that night.

A chill had coursed through him.

For all his bl.u.s.ter, Dex would have been no match for Mr. Fronemeyer. He would have suffered the fatal wound. Then he'd have seen Tweed fall beneath the knife blade, feeling the life ebb from him as she, in agony, struggled and died.

They felt relief.

And guilt.

Their slaughter would have fallen into the normal course of events, a sacrifice sad but accepted.

But the slaughter of Tweed's dad, of the sheriff, Jiminy Jones, the Fronemeyers, and all those kids? Those killings were perverse. They cut across the grain of all that was right and proper in American society.

Nurse Gaskin's deserved death would punctuate these atrocities. The media would, as ever, find renewed closure and new reasons to fret about whatever turned their fret-brains on and made their subscription rates rise.

But her death would not undo her atrocities, not even when the dead woman did her stint, the following spring, as a pinata.

Tweed had said as much, and Dex agreed.

Maybe that was what growing up was all about.

You got to see how ragged-edged life was, and how tidy the stories about life were.

It was a comfort, to confuse one for the other. But it was also a comfort, and a sanity, to know the difference and quietly accept it.

Dex gave his wife a squeeze.

"I love you," he said.

"What did you say?" she shouted over the melee.

"I said I love you!"

Tweed's eyes twinkled. She gave him a kiss, then turned her gaze again toward the staked and sought-after murderess before them.

Jenna had been one of the first students to sink a needle into Nurse Gaskin.

She had chosen a spot on the right arm, where the nurse's strained biceps ramped along above her elbow.

Jenna thrust it in deep enough that when she released it and stepped back, it only angled down a little and stayed stuck there. But she left an inch or so out, so that those who came later, the kids without a syringe of their own, could shove hers in deeper.

That was the considerate thing to do.

Share the vengeance.

Some kids slid under her and put theirs in from below. Those didn't stay stuck, of course. Gravity wouldn't allow it.

So some of them shoved it in again along her sides as they regained their feet.

Others circled around for another stab into b.u.t.tock or back, the blood from earlier puncture wounds anointing them as dry-ice mist curled about them.

"Cripes," some kid said. "Nursie's a f.u.c.kin' pin cushion, ain't she?"

Jenna and Pish exchanged get-a-clue looks.

Guys were so transparent when they wanted to hit on you, a window onto Geek City.

They ignored him.

He got the hint and drifted away. Some boys were so dense though. Surely everyone knew about her and Bo Meacham, about her and Pish Balthasar.

Jenna was off limits and happy to be so.

Pish of the smoky eyes said, "She's beautiful when she writhes." She was staring at the nurse's parted legs.

The hypos were so numerous, they seemed to weave weird metallic leggings, or some sort of oriental armor that halted at the parts most in need of protection.

Beautiful?

Yes, thought Jenna.

An image came to her of a cautiously smiling beekeeper covered in bees.

In her fight against pain, against death, the nurse seemed larger than life. Like a living suit, the forest of hypos magnified the nurse's body, the jerk of her movements.

Hers was a dance of denial.

It was also, strangely enough, a dance of affirmation, a struggle to embrace death.

"She is beautiful," said Jenna, touching Pish's friendship lobe so that the pretty dark-haired genius shut her eyelids in a gesture of surrender. "She'll look super, hanging up."

"Mmmmm," murmured Pish, looking like a Manx with a dead goldfish in its mouth.

For an instant, but how glorious an instant, Jenna imagined the fluxidermed nurse swaying above the warmth of the prom.

Her body was stuffed with blood sweets, hard circles of cinnamon and cherry, wrapped in twists of plastic and shaped like platelets.

She hung from ropes, those same ropes Sheriff Blackburn had dangled from, as an amazing sweep of lights played over her.

In Jenna's vision, the dance band was playing dreamy, caramel-taffy music.

Below the unclothed nurse lay two slain seniors.

She and Pish would survive.

They had to, to see this beautiful scene, and to be a part of it.

Midnight would arrive.

Then they would futter the couple. Futter them so fiercely, the blood would spew up, paint the nurse's bloated belly, and drip back down.

And when at last the orgy of futtering was done and the corpses not much more than memory, everyone would be given sticks tipped in needles only a little shorter than tonight's.

They would poke and jab, watching the dead nurse's body jiggle and swing at rope's end.

Her skin would rip open.

And out would spill a gorefall of candy, pelting them, battering their laughing blood-smeared faces and raining into their upthrust hands.

Taffy music would cream upon them.

Pish and Bo, in their b.l.o.o.d.y prom clothing, would smother Jenna in delirious hugs.

And life would begin in earnest.

At the last minute, Tweed handed her syringe to a former cla.s.smate. He had given a rebel yell and surged in, his body as thick and bulky as a rhino.

Dex had watched her give it to him.

Tweed shrugged, and Dex understood. Their minds were that attuned.

She felt no hard feelings toward the nurse. The wild scene unfolding before them seemed, even as it happened, a vivid memory. She nudged Dex, whose eyes were glued to the controlled carnage, the invaded body, the stream of needlers flowing in, out, and around Nurse Gaskin.

He turned to look at Tweed.

"Over here," she said, taking his arm.

Her father's plot lay close by. The screams, the mob sounds, were scarcely muted.

Above the top of the crypt, an illumined ridge of red papier-mache resolved itself into a slice of scalp, the twist of a ghoulish ear.

Tweed's gaze caressed the letters cut into her father's headstone. BORN SINGING, they said. And below that, SINGING STILL.

"He would have sung some interesting things tonight," said Dex, his voice full and fond.

"Life is short," said Tweed. "Dad knew that."

"Should we go? Or do you want to watch her die and hear what Mr. b.u.t.tweiler has to say?"

She shook her head. "There's no need."

"Okay."

"But I would like something else."

When Dex asked what that might be, Tweed knelt to her backpack, which she had set against her father's gravestone.

I love you, Dad, she thought. She wished he could be there for this.

Unzipping the pack, she reached deep into its cloth wound.

"Ms. Gaskin sure can scream," Dex said.

It thrilled Tweed, that sound.

The screams felt as if they were coming from Nurse Gaskin's deepest secret self, as hidden as the murderous part of her, close to the angels, a dark rich soil given voice.

It made sense of the universe.

And it offered a perfect backdrop for Tweed's revelation.

She withdrew a thermos and a tall tumbler.

When Dex turned back from the scream, he saw what she was doing and broke into tears.

"Oh, Tweed. Really?"

"Yes," she said.

She rose, uncapped it, poured until the gla.s.s swirled brimful of moonlight.

Then she set the thermos on stone, took a long cool swallow, and held the tumbler out to the father-to-be.

Nurse Gaskin's howls of pain corona'd Dex's head. He was crying.

How lovely her man was.

They would make a beautiful baby.

Tweed touched his friendship lobe, warmed it in her fingers, and kissed it with sweet ardency.

Then she took Dex's right hand and fisted it about the tumbler.

"Drink," she said. "For our love."

And he did.

His tears subsided. Through what remained of them, he smiled.

Then he raised the gla.s.s.

Over wounded-gazelle screams, a benediction from a supportive cosmos, Tweed watched the water glug down his throat, its silver backwash sloshing at his upper lip.

When he had emptied it, he smashed it against her father's headstone. Lifting her in his arms, Dex gave Tweed the deepest, wettest, sloppiest, most soul-stirring kiss she had ever known.