"Samantha, please. Somewhere inside I know you remember me and Wendell and Rebecca and little Molly and everyone else on Eternity. We love you. Come home with us. Please."
"I'm not going anywhere with you. Joseph and I are going to start a new life. We're going to be free." Samantha raised her hand to strike again, but something held her back. The fat girl's face looked so miserable, tears running down her cheeks to wash away the blood. "You wouldn't understand what we feel."
To Samantha's surprise, the fat girl laughed. "I didn't used to know what love felt like, but now I do. I know it means caring about someone so much you'd do anything for him. Do you think Joseph loves you? Really loves you?"
This time Samantha punched the fat girl in the left eye, where Joseph had struck Samantha. Where Joseph had hit her. She reached up to touch her eye. "He loves me," she said more to herself than the fat girl. "I know Joe loves me."
"What's he done for you, other than make you rob a bank?"
"He made me beautiful," Samantha said.
"On the outside maybe, but he's made you ugly on the inside. Don't you understand that? He gave you a new body, but he took away what made you special."
"You're lying. He gave me everything. A new life." She found the pair of wire cutters lying on the ground and picked them up. Her eyes clouded up with tears, her mind swirled with confusion. Joseph loved her. He made her pretty. The memory of that night came back to her. He took the bottle of perfume and squirted her in the face. He squirted her. He hit her. He forced her to rob this bank.
"Samantha, you were never ugly to the people who really care about you. We love you no matter what," the fat girl said. Prudence. Her name was Prudence. She and Samantha had known each other since they were little girls. The wire cutters trembled in Samantha's hand and then clattered to the pavement.
"Oh God, what have I done?" Samantha said. She collapsed, sobbing, onto Prudence. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"It'll be all right," Prudence said. "We can fix everything. Wendell's made a potion that should turn you and Joseph back to normal. We just have to make him swallow it."
"How?" Samantha asked.
"I should have known you'd fuck this up," Joseph said from behind her. Samantha rolled off Prudence and got to her feet. She saw the same trembling rage in Joseph as the night he'd punched her. "I never could count on you for anything."