Foreverland Is Dead

nothing.
    Miranda lifts the binoculars, again.
    Kat and Jen are on the front porch, looking at the horizon. A candle warmly lights their faces. Miranda adjusts her focus across the meadow to the sparse trees on the hillside. Cyn has been plundering the kitchen, but if she doesn’t return, things will get worse.
    Our Father, Who Art in Heaven…
    Roc returns to the dinner house.
    Kat and Jen step aside. She nudges them, not bothering to say a word. Not bothering to look to the horizon.
    Miranda tastes something bitter in the back of her throat. She grinds her teeth, wishing the binoculars were attached to a weapon.
    Roc walks through the dinner house, passing both windows on her way to the kitchen. Kat and Jen are watching her through the windows in the front. Several minutes pass.
    The kitchen door bursts open.
    Roc stomps through the garden, dragging one of the empty travel bags behind her. Mad watches from the kitchen. Kat and Jen come around the front. Roc points at them, obscenities streaming out in all directions, no one spared.
    Bile rises in Miranda’s throat.
    The big bad wolf is coming.
    Miranda crawls off the couch, stays close to the floor so that Roc won’t see her. She leans against the front door, pulls her legs against her chest. There’s a box in the hallway half-full of food. She keeps filling it, plans every day to put it in the front yard, but every day she pulls items back out and swaps them with others.
    Sometimes she eats them.
    She just can’t decide. Once her food is gone, she’ll have to leave. They just don’t understand.
    The front window rattles. Miranda jerks toward the sound.
    “The hoarding ends now, Shiny!” Roc shouts. “Time to share or time to burn.”
    Miranda squeezes her legs, tighter. She swears she heard her say “blow your house down” .
    “I know what you’re doing in there. I know you’re sitting around eating all the food. I’m not letting that happen. Get out here.”
    The window rattles with debris, again.
    “Now!”
    Miranda lowers her head. Roc is throwing something at the window. She’ll keep throwing it unless she goes out there. Miranda squeezes her legs until her arms hurt. The back of her head thumps on the door.
    She messes up her hair, pulling her shirt out. She stands, her legs cold and weak.
    Pebbles pepper the front of the house.
    Miranda puts her hand on the doorknob, turns and pulls.
    The door cracks open.
    Roc stands on the fence line. Staring.
    “Fill it up.” She tosses the bag onto the steps. “I’m not playing.”
    “It’s almost ready. There’s not as much food in here as I thought.”
    “Liar.”
    “I’ll bring it out tomorrow. I promise.”
    “You’ll bring it out now.”
    Miranda looks back. “It’s not ready.”
    Roc bends over, picks gravel from the dirt. “You’re a greedy pig.”
    “Stop it. It’s not my fault.”
    “Shower all you want, but you can’t wash the pig off. A pig smells like a pig.” Roc sniffs. “I can smell you from here.”
    “That’s not true.”
    She tosses a pebble. It plinks off the door. “Like a pig in slop.”
    Miranda almost closes the door. She doesn’t stink. If she does, it’s because the house smells. If she does, it’s because there’s something dead, but it’ll wash off. If she could come outside, it would wear off. But she’s stuck.
    The Dagger Queen.
    Another pebble hits the door, bounces across the porch.
    “You should behave yourself.” Miranda yanks the door open. “You need to learn manners; you are acting like a spoiled brat. You! You’re the brat! I come inside the house and I give you all the clothes and you stand out there calling me names, throwing rocks at me… Have you no appreciation? No scruples?”
    “Who the hell do you think you are?” Roc pokes at the rocks in her hand.
    “You’re the bully, Roc. You are. I know more about you than you do. I read something about you. I read that you’re trouble. That you’re dangerous.”
    Miranda glances at Kat and Jen, who are standing not far away.
    “You’re stealing from them. You’re going to hurt them. And when they’re starving and you’re not, I’ll be safe in here. I’ll keep my food; otherwise you’ll take it all from me like you’ll take it all from them. I’m not the pig. You are.”
    Miranda steps onto the porch. The fence protects her—she knows this. But the step is an act of bravery, of defiance. And Roc knows it.
    She’s not hiding anymore.
    “I’ll tear you apart,” Roc