Miss Jack: This story has been a real pain in the ass for the past month or so. And then, all in one day, the problems that seemed unsolveable ironed out and the result and final draft just flowed. I don't why that always happens. I'll stew and stew about how to fix something and then it just lands in my lap unexpectably. Too bad it thus far seems completely uncontrollable.

(oh, and if you're wondering, yes Ephraim is where I live in Utah, and yes, Snow College is the little community college I attended.)

On The Eve Of My Death Day

Jane Flagg, though suffering no physical malady of her own, always used the handicap stall. She didn’t know when this quirky personality trait started, but had a memory of wanting the biggest stall when her body was little enough in comparison that she had to climb to get on the seat, and the tips of her pigtails dipped half an inch in the toilet water. Maybe it was the open space. Who wants to be cramped up when you’re communing with nature, you know? Mostly, Jane liked its free-spirited availability—despite being designed for a specific type of person, it was open to the masses. And that was Jane’s style. No permit needed.

On a Saturday in October, Jane and her roommate were in the library. It was empty because of fall break—just Jane, General McFinn and the Asian kids doing ab-suh-tive-ly nothing, but having nowhere else to go.

Jane’s art scholarship, the one ensuring her enrollment at the little community college in the even more little town of Ephraim, Utah, was hasta-la-vista since the old lady funding her had gone on to that great retirement in the sky and left all her money to her only son, who had apparently been rich before the will was read. Anyway, in the space of the last forty something minutes, Jane had consumed two, maybe twelve, watermelon fizzy drinks to cheer herself up, and she had to go like a racehorse.

Slipping into the second floor ladies room, Jane saw three regular stalls open and ready for business, but the handicap stall was closed. Alright, she thought, pushing the irritation aside. Alright, alright. She got the preference and believed in sharing the things in life that made you happy. But just as she had resigned herself to using a lesser facility, she noticed a lot was going on in that bathroom stall, considering there’s really only one function for such a place. Curiosity subdued her raging urine levels for the moment, and she took a step toward the closed door of the handicap stall.

Typically speaking, she wasn’t the kind of girl that regularly peeped under stall doors, but these ones were like a foot off the ground, just begging for on-lookers, and she was going to be eighty flavors of pissed off if some girl was macking with her Jack Mormon fiancée when she needed to use the stall for its God-given purpose.

She edged closer and bent her head down for a better look, and wouldn’t you know it, there were two people shuffling around in there—but it wasn’t a girl and a guy, or even a girl and a girl, but two men, apparently socializing in the handicap stall of the women’s restroom.

What they were doing wasn’t a mystery Jane particularly wanted to unearth. Love was a beautiful thing, and however anybody wanted to express it was a-okay with her, but like… couldn’t they explore their suppressed passions in their own bathroom?

Just to be sure, Jane checked again. They were definitely some Y-Chromosome shoes. Italian, she guessed –swanky, with pleated pants that probably had real gold inlaid in the pattern, perfectly creased and hemmed to just the right length. Those feet, from mid-calf to the soles of the shiny shoes, were worth more than her life. If she died, those guys could match everything to her name with only a fraction of themselves. The bottom fraction.

The wrongness of the situation itched like a bad bug. Firstly, they didn’t belong because they were men, and furthermore not handicapped, but what was really spinning Jane for a loop was the blatant richness in unassuming, unfashionable, turkey-smelling Ephraim. Like a dash of caviar on your bologna sandwich.

And then suddenly, one of them said, “I am not sticking my hand down there,” and Jane, jerking back in surprise, remembered how rude it was to eavesdrop. Also, her bladder was reminding her it was past its expiration date five minutes ago, so like the biggest hypocrite in the world, she jetted into the men’s bathroom and used that handicap stall. Thankfully, nobody was in there due to the dead weekend.

The bathrooms were arranged so the doors faced each other on either end of a separate section in the hallway, and as she walked out, who should emerge from the other side but the swanky Italianers with a penchant for restrooms marked with a skirt. All three froze, clearly aware of each other, but no one said anything because neither could call the other out on exiting the wrong bathroom. One of the gentlemen was older— gray face, his scowl his most predominant feature. His partner, Jane was sorry to note, was maybe the best thing she’d seen all year, and it was really a shame he was homosexual and kind of a weirdo besides.

She didn’t say anything like she was thinking, such as, Hey that is a fine eighth world wonder you have for a face, because he looked like anyone who even glanced at him funny was going to get the bitch fit of their lives; his mouth puckered much like a young girl denied her pony ride, his eyes alight in ugly rage. The six foot scowl nodded curtly, then together he and the young man stormed away.

For a minute, Jane didn’t move, then after a cautionary glance around the corner to be sure they were gone, walked back to the table where General glared, presumably for taking so long.

“I have things to do,” he said, making a point of looking somber and ill-omened. “That I could have been doing . . . while I was waiting here. By myself.”

“It’s not even four o’clock,” Jane replied tiredly. “Still plenty of time to off yourself.”

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NINETEEN DAYS EARLIER

--------

Sebastian Montgomery pushed his cigarette into the ashtray on his desk. As always, it had burned halfway through without once touching his lips. The red light on his bulky office phone blinked rapidly, but he ignored it. Probably it was Henderson again, complaining about the hippie do-gooders in the way of the wrecking crew. I don’t, he had explained the first time, give a shit about the hippies.

The blinking didn’t stop.

“What,” he barked into the receiver.

“It’s your mother,” Cindy Hansen, the most recent, freshest and supple of his receptionists, said in a slow, faint voice.

“God, please tell me she’s dead.”

There was an awkward pause. “We just had a call from a hospital in some place called Mount Pleasant…” Cindy managed after a moment, “They said your mother passed this afternoon.”

Sebastian hung up and pressed 1, the speed dial for his lawyer.

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THE NEXT MORNING

------------

James Montgomery gave a muted noise of frustration and leaned back heavily in his chair. God damn the Yankees.

The groans and shouts of the dimly lit café faded away, and he turned his attention from the small screened television back to his usual purchases: the international edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the international edition of the Times (for the crossword), and a large cup of coffee. Black, no sugar.

On the side of his coffee cup was the small stack of mail he’d picked up on his way over. Yawning, he leafed through the bills and invitations. Exhaustion felt like sand in his eyes. It had been a particularly brutal weekend: after taking his brother to play mini-golf like he’d promised, tech rang with the frantic report that systems were crashing all over the building. When he arrived it was nearly nine o’clock and they spent the next ten hours painstakingly untangling the network until they could isolate the virus and eradicate it. He had been sorely tempted to just go home after the ordeal, but in the end routine won. Every morning he was up by eight and had his coffee at the same little shop.

He paused seeing his name elegantly scripted on the outside of an expensive, water-marked envelope. James Sebastian Montgomery Jr. He turned it over, looking for any other clue, but that was it. Just his name. Using the pen he normally reserved for the crossword puzzle, he opened the letter.

When he unfolded the three-part crease, a cloud of white dust exploded in his face. The toxic powder instantly swept into his eyes and filtered through his nose, burning a torrid path along the back of his throat as he coughed painfully. Liquid streamed down his face from both his eyes and nose.

Shaking violently, he managed to flatten the letter on the table and read the thick, black handwriting through the blur of tears in his eyes.

Dear James, I’m very sorry that you appear to have turned out like your father. I hope now you will recognize the precious commodity that life is.

He could feel his throat constricting –not with emotion, but with physical pain—even as he tried to make sense of the mysterious message. His father? He hadn’t seen his father in years. They exchanged the odd e-mail now and then. Maybe a phone call. James only really kept in touch with Alex, his seventeen year old brother.

He couldn’t breathe. His tie felt like it was choking him. Hooking his fingers around the double-Windsor knot, he frantically tried to pull it loose, and in his efforts, crashed from his chair onto the floor. Black spots crowded around the edge of his vision and drawing in air was like sucking through a coffee straw.

Distantly, he thought he heard someone shout to call 911…

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BACK TO JANE

------------

Jane fingered the funeral pamphlet of Elaine Montgomery, tacked up next to the calendar on the wall. The grainy black and white photograph on the cover didn’t give a very good likeness, in Jane’s opinion.

She remembered the first time she met Elaine, when she was begging for her passage into education and the real world. At the end of the interview, Elaine said, “Tell me something interesting about yourself, Jane.”

She realized now she should have said her dream was to be a studio artist in New York, or maybe that she was put up for adoption by a lady who couldn’t give a kid a good life, then adopted by a family who really couldn’t give ten kids a good life, but thought they could anyway, and she was number seven.

But at the time, what she came up with was: “I like to use the handicap stall.”

Elaine Montgomery leaned forward. She looked, Jane thought, a bit crazy. Around the eyes mostly, there was the awkward sense of unbalance. “You should see the one they have at the Hilton in upper LA. You’d never go back to regular stalls.”

Jane smiled. Elaine was in a wheelchair, so she had to use the handicap stall. She could kick people out of it if she wanted. “It must rock to be paralyzed,” she said, and honest to God, at the time, didn’t even realize how totally stupid it was to say that.

“It has its moments,” she said, amused, then added with a vague smile, “but I have to tell you, Miss Flagg, I’m not paralyzed. Just old.”

“Oh,” Jane said, stupidly.

“But old ain’t bad either.”

Besides General, Elaine had been one of Jane’s only comrades her freshman year. Jane sighed. Now there was just General.

His real name was General. Seriously— on the birth certificate and everything. Which explained some things, but not everything. He was her onlyroommate—not because she couldn’t get other people to like her (or at least a few people), but because nobody but her could stand to live with him. He paid the rent the potential roommates would pay, because as she often reminded him, it wasn’t her fault nobody would live with them, it was his. She was cute, and damn likeable.

Every month or so, General decided to kill himself. He marked it on the calendar in red sharpie marker. My Death Day, he called it, and drew a little skull. On Death Day, Jane always made sure they went to the movies, or she would buy him something at Walmart (something small, cause she couldn’t afford more, like a string cheese or a keychain from the quarter slot), and always he said, “Why would I want to do that? You know I have plans today.” And she’d say, “Listen, General McFinn. This is really important to me,” and then he’d come, but he whined the whole time.

One time, she really forgot Death Day. She trudged into the apartment, dragging her drawing pad at her hip, and looked up to see General standing on a kitchen chair, the tips of his shoes hanging precariously over the edge and a homemade noose around his neck. He saw her and relief crashed over his face. His cheeks —already streaked with dry tears—were wet again, and his nose started running.

“Don’t try and stop me, Jane. Don’t—“ His breath caught and he continued in a shaky whisper, “Stop me.”

“I have to,” she said, and eased him off the chair. “I can’t pay the rent by myself.”

Then they ate stale ramen noodles and watched reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond until they fell asleep.

General didn’t care about Elaine Montgomery’s death. Jane dragged him to the small funeral (as far as she could surmise, no family even attended), but didn’t explain that Elaine’s slowly lowering casket meant she would soon have to leave.

The last day to register was in two days, and there was no scholarship, no money. Elaine Montgomery’s close-lipped smile, looking very subdued and uncrazy, was nearly parallel with the day, a Friday the third week in October. A crescent icon indicated it would be a quarter moon. With a pen, she wrote “Jane’s Death Day” in the little white square.

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EARLIER

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“…and I grant my only son, James Sebastian Montgomery Sr. inheritance of all my monies, properties and possessions.”

There was a slightly baffled pause, and no one was more shocked than James Sebastian Montgomery Sr. himself. Well, well. The old hag hadn’t hated him after all. He curbed the bloated urge to smirk, giving a solemn, grief-filled nod.

His smoldering cigarette rested by his large hand on the polished conference table. He’d quit smoking after Diane left him. In retrospect, it wasn’t the most opportune time in his life to willing put himself into fits of withdrawal, and for weeks he lulled himself to sleep by naming tobacco brands, but he never smoked again. Wanted to. But didn’t.

It was a good thing for him, and that’s why he continued to let the long cigarettes waste away in his ash trays. The idea of Diane giving him anything worthwhile galled him—to the point of pretending, however expensive and pointless it may be, that nothing had changed when she’d gone.

Sebastian was passed some papers to sign to signify he had heard, understood and agreed with the terms of Elaine Montgomery’s will. He’d heard alright, and agreed just fine. Understanding it was another thing, but then he’d never understood the woman who had given birth to him.

“Oh, and she left this letter to give to you on the day of the reading.”

The lawyer handed Sebastian a white envelope with the words My Son in his mother’s handwriting.

The single line read:

I’ve given you my treasure, but taken yours.

The cryptic sentence didn’t faze the hardened tycoon. Loopy as a twisty straw, he thought, crumpling the note in his palm and sticking it in his jacket pocket. Probably the dry cleaners would find it, and if they were reading a good Stephen King paperback or something, freak themselves out.

He scrawled his name on the appointed dotted lines and cleared his throat heavily.

Cindy burst through the door. “Mr. Montgomery, your son is—“ She paused, straightening her pencil skirt. “Sir, your son has just been admitted to the hospital.”

Sebastian felt a tightening in his lower stomach. “Alex? Is it Alex? What’s wrong with him—?”

“Not Alex, sir. Your oldest son.”

Jamie.

He jerked his jacket on and stormed by Cindy, who stepped out of his way with a timid squeak. The ominous threads of coincidence tugged at him. I’ve taken yours. His body reacted to the feeling with a light shiver even while his mind forced the improbability away.

--------

The doctor patiently explained what was happening to the younger Montgomery, speaking in the small, compassionate tones of one delicately handling an explosive bomb. So far, Sebastian’s level of rage was minimal, and the doctor’s tiptoeing was only annoying. He half-listened to the diagnosis, not that it mattered. The toxin found in Jamie’s system was slowly and methodically attacking his system, and it was only a matter of time before his organs started failing.

Jamie, meanwhile, stared straight at the wall, his face expressionless, but the gray undertone of his skin spoke of his fear. He didn’t appear to be listening to the doctor either. His gaze shifted to his father. “Where’s Alex?” he asked.

“School, probably. I didn’t call him.”

“Good.”

Silence once more.

“Unfortunately,” the doctor concluded, “there is no way to stop the chemical… we’re not even sure what it is, entirely. Our best hope is to continue running tests and perhaps identify what we’re dealing with, and maybe find a drug that would counteract the effects… an antidote, if you will. Until we do, however, it isn’t safe to give Mr. Montgomery any form of medicine, for fear of how it would react to the chemical toxin.”

Nearly identical scowls appeared on both faces of the Montgomerys, and the doctor paled. “I’ll leave you to discuss things,” he muttered and ducked out of the room. Before the door had clicked shut, it swung open again, banging on the opposite wall. A tall young man, longish light brown hair tucked behind his pierced ears, ran into the room.

“Omigod,” he said. Jamie winced and Sebastian heaved a sigh.

“Alex—“ Sebastian opened his mouth to explain, but the boy exploded, cutting him off.

“You weren’t going to tell me Jamie was in the hospital? What the hell?” He scrubbed his hands frantically over his face. Sebastian’s scowl deepened. Cindy must have told him. He made a mental note to fire her when this fiasco had settled.

“Alex, calm down,” Jamie said patiently and Alex nodded, pulling in a shuddery breath with his fists still pressed up by his face. Alex always listened to Jamie. Diane used to listen to him too.

“What happened?” Alex asked quietly, appearing, at least for the moment, in control of himself.

“Some type of poison, they think,” Jamie said, choosing his words carefully, “In a letter I received this morning. Probably some crazy terrorist that wants my money—“

“Was it from Grandma?” Alex asked. “I got a super weird letter from her this morning too.”

“Why would Grandma poison me?” Jamie asked, smiling humorlessly.

Why indeed. Shit, Sebastian thought. Holy shit. “Do you have the letter?” Sebastian asked, surprising both of his sons with the strained bark of his voice.

“Yeah, it’s in my pocket…” Alex mumbled in confusion, pulling it out of the back pocket of his torn jeans.

Sebastian all but ripped it from his son’s hand, his eyes chasing over the contents in glazed panic. Jamie’s eyes narrowed. “What does it say?” he asked.

“It says,” Alex quoted from memory, “Dear Alex, you’re a sweet boy. Please cut your hair. I love you, Grandma.”

“That’s it?”

“Postscript,” he continued, “Chase the cure—forever more—What you want—resides in my old haunts. It’s like some weird poem or something. Whatever.”

Sebastian finished reading and had the bridge of his nose pinched between his forefinger and thumb, eyes closed as if warding off a headache.

“You think she poisoned me on purpose,” Jamie said in the silence. He barely spoke above a whisper, but the words seemed to trumpet. Sebastian didn’t answer. “The poem. She hid the antidote at her old haunts. Probably her house. Or that tiny community college she patroned.”

Sebastian looked at his son, mildly surprised. Smart. Always so damned smart, that was Jamie. Alex had always been the baby of the family. He had a naturally sweet disposition and was the single binding unit in their family—the one thing they all agreed on. He was the favorite child and grandchild—everyone knew that, including Jamie and Alex.

But Jamie… James to everyone outside family… quiet, self-sufficient Jamie…

She’d known, somehow. She’d known Jamie was his real treasure. She’d known how Sebastian felt even when he’d never said so, especially not to Jamie.

“Alex, I want you to stay here. James and I are going to Ephraim, Utah,” Sebastian said darkly.

“…where?” Alex asked.

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PRESENT DAY

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General came into the kitchen, his wrists marked up with green Crayola Washable marker to indicate the best entry points for a razor. “Did you take my drugs?” he asked impatiently.

“I didn’t take them,” Jane answered, “And anyway, I thought you were slitting your wrists?”

“Maybe. Maybe I am, and maybe I just led you to believe that so you wouldn’t try and interfere in a decision rightfully mine.”

When Jane didn’t answer or even seem to hear him, just frowned at the wall, General sighed and threw her a line—a little smidgen of interest in that listless expression so she would get over it faster and start paying attention to him.

“Are you still on about those guys in the bathroom? It was probably nothing, like plumbing testers or something. Or maybe their girlfriends lost a purse.”

Jane tilted her head thoughtfully. Maybe. She could believe they were looking for something, but not a purse. She’d found all kinds of treasures in the handicap stalls of bathrooms. And one in particular. A chill chased up her arms.

“I hid your razors,” she told General, “And your Advil. And you’ll never find them.”

She left the room, and General called after, “Curse you, June Johnson, to the ninth level of hell. I hope Satan gnaws on your head for eternity.” Typical moody English major response.

Once in her room, she knelt by her bed and pulled out the small cardboard box that used to have fruit roll-ups in it. She removed the ring first. It looked nice—maybe even a real diamond, but she wouldn’t know. Then a shoelace, then a Babe Ruth bar. Finally, she took out her very latest treasure she had found several weeks ago in the Eccles Center bathroom (her favorite of all the campus options).

It was a small brown box, with a folded note on top. To: Jane, it said, You were my favorite scholarship student. With love, Elaine Montgomery. (P.S. When the time comes, don’t give this up for nothing).

This happened to be a small injection vial with a needle point sticking out the end, carefully encased within the box. Jane had no idea what it was, though she was currently entertaining a Jekyll and Hyde theory. You were my favorite scholarship provider, Jane thought (the only one, too). And… you were totally nuts.

But then… what were those two guys looking for?

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Jamie sat in the passenger seat of his father’s red Corvette, waiting –he supposed—to die. He’d asked the doctor before they left. How long? If things continue they way they are, the doctor said, probably only a little over two weeks.

A number. I need a number.

There isn’t—

Please.

Seventeen days.

The seventeenth day was a Friday, the third week in October. The day he could, for all intents and purposes, die. Death day.

They had looked everywhere. Elaine’s house, her old office. They even, at his suggestion, searched all the handicap bathroom stalls because she used to really enjoy her toilet runs.

In some ways, he was ready for it to be over. There were rare intervals where he didn’t feel much, like now, but there were other times (times that were becoming more and more frequent) that were nearly unbearable. When the first fit of pain hit, his father had taken him to the hospital in Mount Pleasant. They said the same thing as the first doctor. Nothing can be done, we’re so sorry. He was afraid to die, but then the pain would come and he would be afraid he wouldn’t die, that he would have to continue to live in this insufferable state of agony.

A light rain misted outside, drumming a faint pattern on the windshield. Nothing disturbed him.

Until someone knocked on the window. Deep in a reverie of self-pity and despair, he was caught unaware and his head jerked up. A young girl stood outside the car, fidgeting, and smiled bashfully when their eyes met. If she expected a returning smile, she would be sorely disappointed. The idea of someone attempting communication, here in his dying sanctuary, was so unthinkable that he could only stare blankly.

“Excuse me,” she said, barely audible outside in the rain.

He wanted to tell her to get lost. But the thousand nasty insults and threats that sprang automatically into his mind stayed there; why waste his last words with crude dismissals? And yet without them he didn’t know what to do. Indecisiveness paralyzed his vocal chords and, of all things, he shrugged, and then rolled down the window.

Her face was small and heart-shaped, and the cold had turned her skin the color of strawberries. Her hair poked out haphazardly from her knit beanie and she was poorly dressed; sufficiently bundled, at least, but the complete lack of fashion sense was almost embarrassing. She looked healthy, and he hated her for it.

“Jeez,” she whispered, seeing his pallid face without the obstruction of the rain-streaked window.

“What?” he growled.

She winced at his harsh tone. “Are you alright?”

God. He didn’t need some waify college girl pitying him right now. “Fuck off,” he instructed, and began rolling up the window.

“It’s just—“ she cut in hastily, “you look like you need a doctor or something.”

Laughable was what this was. The hysteria rising in him exploded in a strangled cry. “I’m dying!” he snapped, embarrassed at the thick, clogged coating over his voice that sounded like he might burst into sobs at any moment. “Alright? Okay? I’m dying—just—leave me alone.”

He didn’t know what he looked like, couldn’t see the haunting fear that was so blatant in his voice. The girl stared at him, eyes wide and stupid—so stupid, like everything else—and slowly backed away from the car. She turned and ran and Jamie buried his head in his hands.

----------

Why didn’t she say anything? She didn’t even say, I’m sorry. She was, more sorry than he knew, but she didn’t say it, she just turned and walked away from the expensive car.

Back at the apartment, she tore the lid off a marker and scribbled over the third Friday in October, the one she had labeled Jane’s Death Day, completely obliterating the three words. She didn’t know the man’s name, but he would die, he’d be dead. Gone is gone. Over is over. Tomorrow –scholarship or no, Snow College or somewhere else—she wouldn’t be dead. Not gone. Her life wasn’t over.

When she stepped back, the marker fell from her shaking fingers and clattered to the floor. General watched her.

“I wrote five distraught letters to the scholarship office,” he said.

She knelt and picked up the marker, putting the cap on and wiping her nose on her sleeve. Then placing it back in the coffee mug on the desk stand, she turned. “Thank you, General.”

“But everything dealing with Elaine Montgomery has been put on hold for awhile. Her son Sebastian has been here the past week or so, generally making life hell for everybody.”

Jane felt a million things rushing at her at once, a mix of images and sounds—the dying man’s face, Elaine’s casket going into the ground, the note, Don’t give this up for nothing…

When the time comes.

“I think I know him,” she said distantly, then went into her room, where she dumped her fruit roll-up box upside down on her bed. She grabbed the small brown box and tucked it in her pocket. After telling General she’d be back soon and not to kill himself while she was away, she headed toward the Noyes building where Elaine Montgomery’s old office was.

When she got to the muddy construction, she stopped. She opened the box and removed the green vial, curling it in her hand. Feeling a little sick, she licked her lips and hurried on, trying not to think. Mostly because when she did think, it was just a long string of: Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.

Elaine Montgomery’s office was on the third floor of the Noyes building, on the right side. No one noticed Jane as she came in, and she was even less noticeable sitting on a chair in the hallway. Beyond the crystal glass of Elaine’s former door, the shadows of several people danced beside the gold engraving of her name, and muffled shouts filtered into the hallway where Jane sat.

She waited a long time, rocking gently. The last piece of the puzzle was missing, but she had the feeling it would fall into place on its own, so she tried not to think of the lack of answer she’d have if anyone asked what the hell she was doing. The vial grew warm beneath her fingers as they clenched and unclenched around it.

At last, three people burst from Elaine’s old office, faces flushed and eyes flashing as they passed Jane. The door was left open and she slipped inside.

The six foot scowl had been leaning back on the grand oak desk, his hands pushed into his thinning gray hair, but he straightened at the sound of the door clicking shut and saw Jane standing there, her fist clutched in front of her chest. His eyes were full of ugly accusation, though she’d said nothing.

“Who are you?” he asked. The dying man had told her to fuck off with more warmth.

“My name is Jane Flagg,” she said. “I saw you yesterday at the library, in the women’s bathroom. I think I might have what you’re looking for.” She fished the box from her pocket and held it out in her hand—before she could blink, Sebastian had snatched it up.

“What the hell is this?” he said, looking at the nonexistent contents. “Get out.”

Her hand tightened around the vial. “Maybe I’ve seen it.”

She saw a photograph on the bookshelf behind him. Three men stood on either side of Elaine Montgomery as she sat in her wheelchair, all in black suits; Sebastian, who looked considerably different with a smile on his face, a teenager—highly out of place in his rocker outfit and a young man, his face bright and yet the slanted grin had an air of arrogance. The dying man, she realized with a strike of recognition that was almost painful.

“That’s Jamie,” Sebastian said, following her gaze. His voice had changed so abruptly; it was now low, and strangely lifeless. “Smart. Smartest damn kid you’ve ever seen. Ambitious. Guess she didn’t like that.” His face contorted into something beyond rage, something inhuman— almost animalistic in its agony. “And— she— killed— him. He isn’t like me, you rotting bitch—” Jane got the feeling he wasn’t ranting at her anymore. He overturned the desk; papers and books flew across the floor, followed by the crash of the heavy wood.

Jane was scared, scared out of her brain, because the last piece of the puzzle had slid into place, and all she could think was, Don’t give this up for nothing.

“Set up a scholarship fund with the money she left you. Set up a fund and I’ll give it to you.”

Sebastian froze, and the only sound in the room was his labored breathing. “Give me what?” he asked finally in a dangerous voice, almost a whisper.

She held the vial up. “The antidote to the poison.”

He sucked in a sharp breath and took a lunging step toward her. “The hell I will,” he rasped. “You give me that injection, girl, or I will tear your life apart piece by piece.”

For a moment, Jane was floored. In her head, now was when he fell to his knees, singing her praises, saying, ‘Yes, yes, anything you want!’

“I’ll break it!” she threatened, cringing to hear her voice raise to the terrified pitch that it did, holding the antidote high over her head. Bad— bad thing to say. She wouldn’t break anything, she knew she wouldn’t. The vial shook in her hand; dizziness swirled the room.

“If you break that vial, I’ll kill you,” Sebastian said.

He didn’t even need to say it, she could see it in his eyes, all lightless and freezing cold. Death Day for sure. Without another thought, she yanked open the door and tore into the hallway. She heard his shout of outrage behind her, but she didn‘t look to see if he was running after her or if he was faster than his thick middle and gray hair suggested. She took the stairs four at a time, stumbling and banging into the wall a few times with uncontrolled momentum.

The cool air of outside slapped her face as she sprinted toward the shiny red car still parked in front of the Noyes building. She pounded on the window of the passenger side so hard, she was surprised it didn’t shatter. Jamie rolled down the window, looking much worse than she’d last seen him and actually a little frightened of the panting girl frantically dancing from foot to foot. She attempted to stab his shoulder with the injection needle, but he caught her wrist.

“What are you, stupid? Don’t put it in my shoulder— find a vein!” He grabbed the antidote from her quivering hand. Yanking his sleeve up, he undid the plug on the needle with his teeth (it was like two inches long, holy crap, holy crap) and plunged it deep into his forearm. The yellow-green liquid shrank and then disappeared entirely. He pulled the empty vial free. Neither spoke; both breathing heavy.

And then, a hint of warm color splayed across his cheeks, and his eyes (nearly black only a minute before) cleared and brightened.

“That was… the antidote,” he said after a moment.

“What… w-what did you think it was?” Jane demanded. Her voice had acquired a high-pitched, shaking quality that bordered on hysterical.

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly, and started laughing, “I just thought… ‘what the hell? I’m dying anyway.’”

She almost punched him in the face. For some reason, his laughing grated on her raw nerves worse than anything. “Listen,” she said, taking hold of his collar. “Use your grandmother’s money to set up a scholarship fund.”

He stared at her.

“Scholarship fund,” she repeated desperately, willing him to understand. “I can’t afford to go to school. I only need a little of that money. You’re alive! You.. are a lucky… moron. Please, just—“

Sebastian Montgomery was bellowing, lumbering down the steps of the Noyes building. Jamie glanced at him, then back to Jane.

“Please,” she added one last time, and then she ran.