Waverly pulls the curtains shut, but she can still feel the fungus-white faces out there, trying to stare right through. She opens them again.

“There are too many of you and you have to go home now,” she says. She’s trying to be kind. “I don’t know where home is for you, I never knew–cemeteries mostly, I guess, you’re so pale and spongy–”

She bites her lip and starts over. “I don’t need all of you,” she says.

“Love us, Waverly!” creaks a half-baked voice from somewhere in the back.

“But I do,” she says helplessly, “I do.”