When they got to the door, he revolved back.
"Ally, you really don't have to see this, you know. Not if you'd rather . . . Nothing remotely like this is going to happen to you. They assured me."
What the hell is he talking about?
"On the other hand," he went on, "maybe you should see it. Maybe everybody in the world should see it. It's so astonishing."
He pushed open the door and rolled her in. Then he reached down and lifted her to her feet. Standing wasn't that hard, and somehow he had known that.
The room seemed to be captured in mist, though surely that was her imagination. Everything must be her imagination.
Kristen was in the corner of the room, in a wheelchair, but now her body was shriveled. No, shriveled was not the right word. In fact, there might not be a word to describe the change. Her skin was smooth and flawless. She didn't look like this the last time Ally saw her and now she wondered how long ago that actually was. How many hours, or days?
The bones were the same as always; in her cheeks the underlying structure was sharp and severe and elegant. But there wasn't enough flesh on them. They were reminiscent of what happens at puberty, when the body starts changing in ways that aren't well coordinated.
That was it. Kristen had become a child—it was in her innocent eyes—except that her body was now the flesh of a child over the bone structure of an adult.
It scarcely seemed like the same person from the last time. She had crossed some mystical divide. She was holding a large rag doll—where did she get that? Ally wondered—and humming the tune of the ditty that ended with "Now I know my ABC's. Tell me what you think of me."