No Exit

But the etching was finished already. The Scotch tape peeled off the stone, one corner at a time. Then the paper moved away, exposing the engraved letters: maya belleange thorne.

“What did you mean?” Jay asked. “When I asked you if you loved each other, and you just said, ‘It’s complicated’?”

Darby rolled the rice paper into a cardboard tube and stood up from her mother’s grave, squeezing Jay’s shoulder.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Jay whispered something.

“What’d you say?”

“I said thank you.”

Jay blurred, then doubled. Now there were two Jaybirds staring back at him, and both of them set down their twin copies of the pistol that had killed him.

Ashley tried to speak again, this time slower, his tongue carefully enunciating: “Nice shooting, Jaybird,” and he heard it come out as a single groaned syllable, slurred by Novocain lips. It was his voice—yes, it came from his own lungs and airway—but it was spoken by a drooling retard he didn’t recognize. This was the single most terrifying sensation he’d ever felt.

“Let’s not,” Darby said, pulling the trigger.

CRACK.

A hollow click.

What?

“Don’t miss.”

“I won’t,” Darby said.

Then she turned back to face Ashley.

I won’t.

“I counted the shots. I know you have an empty gun.”

“Want to know his last words?”

“You better be lying—”

“He cried your name before I killed him.”

Darby held on—knowing it was still useful