Across the top of the printed form, the faint dot-matrix words read: Hell Induction Report for Goran Metro Spencer. Age 14.

Under "Site of Death" it says: Los Angeles River Detention Center for Violent Juvenile Offenders.

That would explain his hot-pink getup, complete with the prison number sewn to his chest. While somewhat fashion-forward, still not an obvious choice for the moody, imperious Goran I know.

Under "Cause of Death" the report says: Stabbed by fellow inmate during riot.

Under "Reason for Damnation" it says: Manslaughter conviction for the strangulation of Madison Spencer.

XXIII.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Unpleasant as death might seem, the upside is that you only suffer it once. Subsequent to that, the sting is gone. The memory might be enormously traumatic, but that's all it is: a memory. You won't be asked to perform an encore. Unless, just possibly, you're a Hindu.

Probably I shouldn't even tell you this next part. I know how self-righteous alive people are.

Face it, every time you scan the obituary pages in the newspaper and you see somebody younger than yourself who died—especially if the obit features a photograph of them smiling, sitting on some mown lawn beside a golden retriever, wearing shorts—admit it, you feel so damned superior. It could be you also feel a smidgen lucky, but mostly you feel all smug. Everybody alive feels so superior to the dead, even homosexuals and American Indians.

Probably when you read this you'll just laugh and make fun of me, but I remember gasping for breath, choking there on the carpet of the hotel suite. The crown of my head was wedged against the bottom of the television screen, the remains of our room-service banquet arrayed on plates around me. Goran knelt astride my waist, leaning over me, his face looming above my face; his hands gripped the two ends of the Hello Kitty condoms which were knotted around my neck, and he was yanking the noose tight.

The stink of our every exhaled breath hung heavy, clouding the suite with its skunkweed reek.

Towering above me on television, so real she seemed to be standing there, rose the figure of my mother. She seemed to tower up to the distant ceiling of the suite. The full length of her, glowing, radiant in the stage lights. Luminescent in her perfect beauty. A glorious vision. An angel garbed in a designer gown. On the television, my mom stands, gracious and patient in silence, waiting for the applause of her adoring world to subside.

In contrast, my arms and legs flail and thrash, scattering the nearby plates of jumbo prawns. My desperate convulsions upset the bowls of leftover buffalo wings. Spill ranch dressing. Strew old egg rolls.

On television, the cameras cut to show my dad seated in the audience, beaming.

As the applause fades to quiet, my serene, lovely mother, smiling and enigmatic, says, "Before presenting this year's Oscar for best feature film..." She says, "I'd like to wish my dear, sweet daughter, Madison, a happy eighth birthday..."

As of today, the truth is—I'm thirteen. My pulse pounds in my ears, and the condoms cut into the tender skin of my neck. The stars and comets of red and gold and blue begin to fill my vision, obscuring Goran's grim face, obscuring my view of the room's ceiling and my radiant mother. In my school uniform of sweater and skort, I'm sweating. My kiltie tassel loafers, kicked off my feet.

As my vision narrows to a smaller and smaller tunnel, edged by a growing margin of darkness, I can still hear my mother's voice say, "Happy birthday, my dearest baby girl. Your daddy and I love you very, very much." A beat later, muffled and far away, she adds, "Now, good night, and sleep well, my precious love...."

In the hotel suite, I hear panting, gasping, someone drawing great inhales of breath, but it's not me. It's Goran panting with the effort to suffocate me, to strangle me in exactly the manner I'd dictated according to the rules of the French-kissing Game.

By then I'm floating up, my face drifting closer to the painted plaster of the ceiling. My heartbeat, silent. My own breathing, stilled. From the highest point in the room, I turn and look back at Goran. I'm shouting, "Kiss me!" I'm screaming, "Give me the kiss of life!" But nothing makes a sound except for the rush of televised applause for my mother.

Splayed there on the carpet, I'm reduced to the status of the cooling food which surrounds me: my life only partially consumed. Wasted. Soon to be consigned to the garbage. My swollen, livid face and blue lips, they're merely a conglomerate of rancid fats, so like the old onion rings and stale potato chips. My precious life, rendered nothing more than congealing and coagulating liquids. Desiccating proteins. A rich banquet only nibbled at. Barely tasted. Rejected and discarded and alone.

Yes, I know I sound quite cold, insensitive to the pathetic sight of a thirteen-year-old Birthday Girl dead on the floor of a hotel suite, but any other attitude would overwhelm me with self-pity. Floating here, I want nothing more than to go back and to fix this hideous error. In this moment, I've lost both my parents. I've lost Goran. Worst of all, I've lost... myself. In all my romantic scheming, I've ruined everything.

On television, my mom puckers her lips. She presses the fingers of her manicured hand to her lips, then blows me a kiss.

Goran drops the ends of the condom strip and gazes down on my body, a stricken look on his face. He leaps to his feet, dashing into the bedroom, then reemerges wearing his coat. He doesn't take the room key. He doesn't intend to return. Nor does he call 911. My beloved, the object of my romantic affection, simply races from the hotel suite without so much as a single look back.

XXIV.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Ask me the square root of pi. Ask me how many pecks are in a bushel. Ask me anything about the truncated, tragic life of Charlotte Bronte. I can tell you exactly when Joyce Kilmer died in the Second Battle of the Marne. I can tell you the combination of keys, Ctrl+Alt+S or Ctrl+Alt+Q, which will access the security cameras or manipulate the lighting and window treatments of my sealed bedrooms in Copenhagen or Oslo, those rooms my mother has air-conditioned down to meat locker... down to archival temperatures, where the electrostatic air filters prohibit a speck of dust to ever settle, where my clothes and shoes and stuffed animals wait in the darkness, locked away from sun fade and humidity, patient as the alabaster jars and gilded toys which accompanied any boy pharaoh into his eternal tomb. Ask me about the ecology in Fiji and the amusing personal habits of tony Hollywood gadabouts. Ask me to describe the political machinations embedded in the all-girls culture of a très-reserved Swiss boarding school. Just do NOT ask me how I'm feeling. Do not ask if I still miss my parents. Don't ask if I still cry from being so homesick. Of course the dead miss the living.

Personally, I myself miss sipping Twinings English Breakfast Tea and reading Elinor Glyn novels on rainy days. I miss smelling the citrus tang of Bain de Soleil, cheating at backgammon against our Somali maids, and practicing the gavotte and the minuet.

But on a larger scale, to be brutally honest, the dead miss everything.

In my desperation to talk, for the comfort of a little chat therapy, I telephone Canadian Emily, and a woman answers the phone. When she asks my name I tell her that I'm Emily's friend from long distance and ask if Emily can please come talk, just for a minute. Please.