On her nightstand, untouched by blood, lay a paperback book. I picked it up with stiff fingers and saw that she’d been halfway through the book before she died. Somehow that bothered me more than the strewn glass and the overturned furniture. More than the stains and streaks on the splintered floorboards.

It bothered me because the book was her - unfinished and incomplete. There was to be no neat ending. No answers. No denouement for the tall, lanky girl with the jet black hair and wildly gesticulating arms and perfect teeth and lip fuzz she staunchly refused to wax. She would never know if her gambles and risks paid off. If her leaps were landed. If her heart stayed full.

I tucked the book into my purse, and despite my personal feelings for Stephen King, I read it cover to cover over the next couple of days. And in my own small way, I gave Anisa an ending.