“But they were her parents! Putting up with all of her crap was their official job - they couldn't wriggle out of it! She tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat. How could they do this to her?”

“Her heart kicked and an itchy burning in her throat made her swallow all her saliva away. She didn't know which way to go.”

“Jenna swallowed the lump in her throat. "Good evening, gentlemen.""You'll be hard pressed to find a gentleman in this bunch," a forty-something guy with close-cropped white hair said, laughing. She walked closer to the group and held out her hands in apology. "Sorry, didn't mean to offend.”

“She wanted to die. She wanted to die. Because then it would be over. All the loss, all the grief, all the pain, the emptiness - over. And she had said nothing then. Nothing. Nor had she crawled into her room and swallowed her mother’s pills, or crawled into her bath and opened up her own wrists. As if death were somehow personal. As if death were somehow an enemy that could be faced and stared down, she would not give it the satisfaction of seeing how badly it had hurt her. Again.”

“Fine,' Aria conceded. 'But *I'll* carry her.' She grabbed the baby seeat from the back. A smell of baby powder wafted up to greet her, bringing a lump in her throat. Her father Byron, and his girlfriend, Meredith, had just had a baby, and she loved Lola with all her heart. If she looked too long at this baby, she might love her just as much.”

“She wanted to have him hold her and tell her all the demons were pretend, that there was no monster in her closet, that everything would be okay. But that was a lie. The demon was in her head, telling her she was too fat. She had to get the demon out. But she couldn't do it by herself.”