"Awfully. I like to talk to strangers. Then I don't feel quite so lonely."
"Oh."
She was quiet for a minute, her eyes friendly, but her trim body stiff against the city.
"Don't let the town get you down, kid." He was giving her advice!
She looked at him wistfully. "Maybe it's not so bad. Only the people who are fitted to live in a world like this keep on living. There are a lot of people who don't see it the way we do."
"Could be." She was a strange girl, he thought, to be talking this way. Young, pretty, and fed up already. "Why do you ride the El at night?" he asked.
She smiled. "I can meet people—other lonely people—who don't know me and don't want to pry. I can talk to people, and learn things. And then I never see them again. I can't talk to people in a crowd."
Through the windows he could see the lights of a sleeping city flash by like speeding fireflies. "Never thought of it that way," he said.
Suddenly, without warning, the hurtling elevated car leaped under him. He was thrown to the floor as the car jumped the tracks and twisted upon itself. George saw the lights go off and heard the girl scream—and then her scream was cut off, sharply, by the grinding, tearing crunch of impact.
Blackness.