The Girl at the End of the World Read Online Free PDF

the deaths of Harmon Kirby and the other baggage handlers. We do not yet have an ID on this victim, but there is video from the scene.” The newscaster was a middle-aged man with perfect hair and a perfect voice, but right now he looked like he’d just bitten into a clove of garlic or a whole lemon. His face lost that measured composure he and others like him always had. Now he paused for a beat and then said, “I’m told this is raw video just received in our newsroom and is extremely graphic. But we’re going to show you the scene.”
    Video filled the screen, showing a familiar enough scene for LA. Several people jostled against each other outside of a nightclub for a second or two, smiles on their faces. Then a commotion began at the edges of the crowd. Some people screamed; others just looked confused and alarmed. Within seconds, people scattered. The person holding the cell phone camera took a few steps backward and stopped as others ran past. And then the camera focused on a woman lying on the sidewalk just outside the velvet rope that had kept would-be clubbers on the street.
    I knew what was going to happen to her but still winced at the image.
    No one approached the woman as she lay there twitching.
    They know , I thought. Everyone’s been watching the video from the stadium. They know what’s going to happen as well as I do.
    And then it did. The woman’s face, far from the camera and not clearly focused, suddenly turned into a red blotch. People in the crowd screamed, and the man holding the camera swore loudly.
    My mother gasped. I’d forgotten for a second that she was still on the phone.
    “Now the stalks,” I said.
    As though on cue, the white stalks popped out of the red mass that was the woman’s face, curling up into the air and looking like stop-action film of flowers growing. Up they shot, extraordinarily fast, and when they stopped I knew the little bulbs would be at the top.
    “She’s dead?” Mom asked, her voice trembling.
    “Yes.”
    I want to say I felt something as I said it, but I didn’t. Maybe I was still in shock, or filled with disbelief. I can’t really say. All I know for sure is I was numb to that woman’s suffering.
    Seconds later, just like at the stadium, the little bulbs burst and the air around the dead woman shimmered for several seconds as though a cloud of glitter had been loosed, only to be captured by the dozens of cameras all trained on the spectacle. I heard more shouts from the crowd, and more people ran to get away from the little cloud, but it dispersed almost immediately, the dust from the bulbs so fine that even the motion of people running caused enough disturbance in the air to send the particles this way and that way until it wasn’t a cloud anymore, just a memory burned into my mind.
    The image switched back to the newscaster, clearly as shaken by what he’d just shown as anybody would have been from watching it on TV. “I’m being told we have audio from a telephone interview conducted with a young man who was at the scene we have just shown you. He wishes to remain anonymous.”
    A still image of the woman lying on the ground, her face still intact, filled the screen as the interview played over it. A man’s voice, high pitched, came from the television speakers. He sounded like he’d been crying.
    “I don’t want to say her name, but I knew her. I was here with her and some friends. She seemed fine, and then she just started talking about her dog, how she had to get back to her dog, how it needed to be walked. We all thought she was just fooling around, but then…”
    A woman’s voice, probably someone at the TV station, said, “Do you know if the deceased woman had any connection to Los Angeles International Airport, or to the baggage handlers there who have died under similar circumstances?”
    “No. No, but…”
    “Yes?”
    “She was at the Dodger game today. She saw what happened. That’s why we took her out…to get her mind off