A/N-12/6/14: I said only one short chapter and an epilogue remained. So, I ended up writing one long chapter. My estimate on length is never accurate. When I started, I thought I could get this done in 6,000 words. Now it's run to almost 20,000. I'm very grateful to the fans who stuck with this story, who favorited it, who wrote reviews and encouragement. Thank you all.

This chapter ends the story, it resolves the remaining conflict and clarifies some things between the characters. There's still an epilogue to follow, but I'll keep that short (promises, promises).

CHAPTER 17

My memory got hazy as Miss D. and Tina helped me out of the gym building. What had happened? Did something fall on my head? They and Sue were saying something in urgent tones, but I couldn't hear them. I understood only the words "light" and ". . . . in and bones." My surviving classmates stared at me. Most were too drained by shock to have any expression. Some were awed. A few were terrified. My power slipped away. The last thing I remembered before I blacked out was the gym building collapsing behind us. A storm of choking plaster-dust blotted out the stars.

"Carrie? Carrie White?" The voice was female.
She wakes me up from an important dream to the regular beeping of a heart monitor. I know I'm in a hospital. My head, my eye, my face, my bones and my chest, they all hurt. My stomach feels like it's been squeezed by giant snake. The pains make me swear I will never push telekinesis that far again. I want to shrink away from the voice, the pain, the harsh light, the noise, but my dream fades leaving me stranded.

"Carrie?" says Miss D. Not the person I'd expect to be with me here.
The very memory of my dream bolts from my waking mind like the devil from God, or maybe a vampire from the dawn.

"Tina, get the nurse or the doctor. Tell them Carrie's waking up."

Frustrated, I open my right eye, my left being bandaged. I still have my power. I feel it like one feels a very muscular, injured arm. I know I should let it rest, and I resist the temptation to test it.
Miss D.'s hair is caked with plaster dust, though she has cleaned her face. She wears a gown and gloves. She does her best to smile, but I can see she's scared—of me.

"Where's my mother?"

"I'm sorry, Carrie. She was very upset and and disrupted things. The doctor restricted her to the waiting room at least until you woke up."

I sigh. "Just like Momma." Momma didn't care what anyone thought of her. She had contempt for everyone except loudly she must have prayed over me. What sounds did she make speaking in tongues? What prophecies did she shout?

Could she restrain herself from self-injury? I suppose she did, or they'd have her strapped down.

The curtain gets drawn back. Tina entered with a doctor and nurse. I spot the blue pant leg of a police officer sitting, guarding my cubicle.

The doctor's name tag reads, "Dr. Stephen King," the nurse's name tag says "Tabitha." Their names ring a bell but I can't place them.

"Please wait outside," he says to Ms. D. and Tina.

Of course, I asked the most obvious question first, "Where am I?"

"You're in Lewiston Regional," says Tabitha. "In the Emergency Room."

"What's the last thing you remember?" asks Dr. King.

"The gym collapsing."

The doctor smiled and nodded at the nurse, who went to computer on an upright stand and began to type. "Well that's extraordinary," he said. "I didn't expect you to remember everything up until then."

"Why not?"

"Your unconsciousness might have been due to cardiac arrest. But if there's no evidence of brain damage, so that wasn't the cause. Perhaps it was from your head wound."

"Could be. And exhaustion. So, how am I?"

"You were shot with a rifle bullet. You have a concussion from the graze wound. A neurologist will have to check you, and we also have a specialist coming in examine your eye." He quickly adds, "Just a precaution. The bullet made a six inch scrape on your head. A quarter of an inch closer in and the wound wouldn't have been survivable. You are very lucky girl."

"Yes, lucky. All of Chamberlain was lucky tonight."

He raises his eyebrows, puzzled. "A school shooting isn't every lucky."

"I know, but it could have been so much worse." Nobody else knows how bad this prom almost was. After the bullet touched my head, I saw it; no, I lived it. It was a memory like a nightmare, where relief heals, but unlike a nightmare, it scars.

"How long have you been starving yourself?" he asks.

I pause. "I haven't been."

"Do you purge?"

"No."

After I deny the rest of his questions about eating disorders, he tells me, "You're at least twenty pounds underweight."

I sigh. "Not from under-eating."

"Make a note of that," he says to the nurse.
I realize these two seem to have no inkling what I did at the prom. To them, I was just another patient. "I have many other people I have to treat. You're going to be all right, Carrie. I suggest you close your eye and rest."

"I'd like to talk to my friends and then my mother first. In that order."

"Well, that's . . ."

"Just a short talk, please?"

"Very well, but keep it brief."

He leaves. The nurse finishes up with the notes and does something with the IV. Before she exits, Miss D., Sue, and Tina enter. They seem to stop at an invisible line that their had marked on the floor.

"Hello Sue. Hi Tina. Does my momma know what happened?"

"As much as Tina and I could describe." Sue took a tentative step beyond her terror border. "You're a hero, Carrie."

I take her hand. "I'm sorry about Tommy. Thank you. He was wonderful."

She squeezes it. Tears well up in her eyes. "Thank you for stopping his killers."

I begin to sob myself. "Ow!"

"What is it?" asks Miss D.

"Crying hurts my eye. And I'm sorry about Matt, Tina."

She replied. "Thanks Carrie. I'm apologies for all the trouble I gave you. But I'll make up for it." She winked.

Is she making a move on me? Her and Chris—Of course, she turned against Chris.
"Yeah, I guess," I say. None of her thoughts were coming at me right now. I wasn't going to extend my power.

"Are you afraid of me, Miss Desjardins?" I asked for her by name, but it was directed at all three.

"Call me Rita. Yes, I am afraid."

"At least you're honest.

"And you, Tina?" She had her eyebrows raised at Rita.

"I'm thankful you saved who you did, but yes, I'm afraid of you."

"Why did you decide to turn against Chris?"

"Because Chris used real blood, and she didn't tell me. Where did that blood come from? What did she involve me with?"

"I wonder that, too. I promise you three I'll never hurt you. I'll never hurt any of you no matter how mad I get."

"Thank you," said Sue, "but being with you is still like standing next to a tornado. Even if the tornado's friendly, you can't help standing back."

"Oh. How do I look. Do I still like a . . . " Just what did I look like?

"Here, I'll show you," said Rita. She opened a compact. My visible eye was bloodshot, but human, and green again. My skin no longer looked like marble. The veins no longer bulged out.

"So if you're scared, why did you all come here with me."

Rita glances back and whispers, "Because you saved far more than you killed, you killed only the guilty people, and only you could find all the guilty. But we also thought at the end you might, um . . . "

"Commit suicide?" I say. She nods. "Why?"

"Well," says Tina, "taking a shower in an unstable building was hard to understand."
I add. "And from that you thought I might commit suicide pulling the building down on myself? What could ever gave you that idea?"

They all shrug. "I guess none of us really know," says Rita.

They probably got a glance of my vision. Maybe a lot of people did.

"We just thought you'd been lonely long enough, Carrie," said Sue, "and it was unfair. We were always mean to you." Tina and Rita nod.

"Could you have them send Momma in? I'd like to talk to her—alone."

My gym teacher nods. All three turn to leave.

And afterthought makes me raise my voice, which is painful. "Oh, and Rita?"

"Yes?"

"I forgive you now."
Her face showed puzzlement for a second before comprehension crosses her features. I add, "I forgive all of them, too."

She smiled. "Thank you, Carrie."

Momma looked tense, tired and sad, very sad. Her shoulders were stooped forward as though she carried physical a burden. She held her large black purse. Without even touching her with my power I knew she carried the butcher knife. "Momma."

"Carrietta."

"Um, can my mother and I have some privacy?" I asked Tabitha. She left.

Momma's eyes glistened with tears. "You look so . . . thin. You lost so much weight. Where did it go?"

I don't think I succeeded at smiling. "The power took what it needed."

"They told me you saved everyone. That pillar of fire you created . . ."

"That's not what it was, Momma . . ."

". . . the news said it could be seen from Portland. Are you that proud of your power?"

"I wasn't showing off. I had to squeeze a giant explosion or so many people would have died. . It took a lot more out of me than the stones did."

Momma shudders at the reminder. "Carietta White. With such power, you must be very cautious and never stray. The devil's sly."

"Yes, but God moves in mysterious ways."

"That's not in the Bible."

"But it's in one of your favorite hymns, so I know you believe it. You still think I'm a witch?"

"I don't know. I do know that God doesn't give gifts lightly. 'Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.'"

"I have and I will."

"You need help so you won't stray and bring the punishment of the Lord down on yourself, as King David did. And you're a woman, so you're weaker."

I shake my head. "There's something I must tell you, Momma. When the bullet knocked me out, I had a vision. But not just a vision. I lived it. Within that other world, everything was the same right up to my becoming prom queen. Then a girl played a cruel prank on me, and I called up my power to kill all my classmates, and then destroy the town that spawned them. Then when I accomplished that, I turned to you for kindness, to have you pray with me so I could find God again and be forgiven. But when I was at my weakest . . . instead of bringing me back to God, you stabbed me in the back. Literally."

Her eyebrows raised in fear.
"That's what you planned to do when I came home, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but only if I was certain you were evil."

"I learned something from that vision. Sometimes I thought I was God's smiting angel, destroying the sinners, and then I became a demon brought up from Hell to make death and misery while God turned His back on his flock, His responsibility. It made no difference. Either way I was still a furious, vengeful, hateful thing who never learned mercy or forgiveness from you."

"The devil is confusing you, Carrie."

"No, Momma. A God that doesn't have compassion and doesn't forgive people is no better than Satan."

"That's blasphemous . . ."

"I do have a gift. I must find out from who or why, but you will do nothing but mislead me."

"Carietta, Why would I? I love you?"

"I know you do. And that just makes what you did to me even more painful. If you were only hateful, I could hate you back. But you loved me and did despicable things to me. How does a child deal with that?"

"Despicable? Like what?"

"You knew I was being tormented at school for years and did nothing to help."

"I thought my trying would make them treat you worse."

"No! You never gave me a word of sympathy. You let them go because you thought my suffering would build character, give me a cross to bear, strengthen me."

"I gave you Christ's teaching. You needed nothing else if only you had kept yourself pure."

"And you didn't want me to have friends among the heathens."

"And I was right. After only one night they led you from the path. Look at you now."

I inhale through my teeth with a hiss. This hurt so much. "If we stay together, neither of us will be safe. I'm not in your religion anymore. When they release me from here, I'm moving out."

Her eyes almost crossed. She looked like she'd been punched. "No . . ."

"Yes, your congregation is abandoning you. I'm done."

"You can't! The world is not safe from you unless you have spiritual guidance."

"I'll find guidance somewhere, but not from you."

"Then goodbye Carietta." She weeps and turns, a feint that makes her look like she's leaving, but I'm not fooled. She spins back around with the knife in her raised hand. Her stab is aimed at my heart.

Flex! (Ouch!)

I fling the knife from her hand with enough sudden force to break her fingers. For effect, I send the blade into the ceiling, where it sticks. Her hand stops and inch from my chest and I hold it there squeezing the wrist, free-handed. I admire that she doesn't cry out.

"This is still your solution? I'm not going to let you destroy both of us, Momma."

Then she surprises me. I read her mind an instant before disaster. Out of my sight, she's grabbed a pistol from her purse, Daddy's old one, and levels at my head. But it's in her wrong hand; her finger gropes for the trigger.

Flex.

She fires.

I stop the bullet in the chamber. The gun backfires. The noise stabs my ear.

Not again!

When I open my eyes, the gun lies on the floor in front of Momma, who's doubled over. Her mangled index finger lay in front of her. Two police officers come in right away. Dr. King is on their heels.

"What happened?" One officer yells.

Then knife falls from the ceiling coming point down right between Momma's shoulders.

I didn't flex! Was that my power?

I get out of bed, fall on my belly and reach my mother. "Momma, I'm sorry. I swear I didn't do that!"

"Carrie . . ." she whispers. "Beware . . . the dark . . . m . . ." Her eyes close. Her voice rattles.

I grab for the knife, the doctor says, "Don't! It will only cause more hemorrhaging! Let me help her. Need nurses in here STAT! Code blue!" he yells.

I picture her heart and can see the blade impaling it almost cutting it in half.

Flex!

I try to seal the heart wound, and move the blood through her veins, but telekinesis inside a body is so hard, and I'm too weak. I swoon.

When I next awaken, they tell me she died.