I see Death as the part of us that knows all the time that we're going to die, reminding us to live properly.

For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words--their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?

The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.

What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me! But you're far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it's here. It's now. I have to go through with this, considering the cost at every turn. Nothing will be the same.

So I saw that there was only me. There was only me who could worry about what was happening here, inside these walls of my life. Other people had their own worlds to worry about, and in the end, they had to fend for themselves, just like us.

The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.

I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor.