The sounds of the LSE men walking continued around Liesel as she looked down at the lifeless body of her best friend of four years. The boy with the arrogant tilt to his chin. The boy with the blue eyes that reflected the sky on one of those days when summer was gentle, summer was forgiving, when summer was beautiful-rare in the Molching days from 1940-43. The boy with the grazed knees and dusty clothes and proud eyes staring steadily into Viktor Chemmel's eyes, into Franz Deutscher's eyes, into the eyes of every other bully they had every known. The boy who looked at her with the eager lips and half-scared face and the hair, that hair that was the color of ripe lemons in the farmer's garden the day Arthur Berg's gang went for the apples. The boy who was now dead, who she had somehow carried into the shelter of the trees away from the other bodies-no, other people-so she could say her final farewell alone.

The sound of running feet, of impatient voices, of shovels scraping into rubble continued around her as a scream fought its way up her throat.

They would come for her soon.

Only, she would not leave. She would cling to him and hold him to her chest and beg him to wake up. Rudy, who had always done what she asked of him, would not wake up.

~A Pause~
Allow me to tell you something.
I do not usually listen to pleas, or of the pullings of my own slow pounding heart.
Of course, you probably already know this. If I did, if I abided by the concept of mercy and kindness as humans speak of it, there would be no death. No death with a small "d" and therefore, no Death with a capital "d". No me. But I am here, and I serve my purpose.
As I said, though, there are certain stories I allow myself to be distracted by. And I am never distracted by incomplete stories.

So, there, you know it. That was my reason for why I didn't fully extract Rudy Steiner's soul, why I let it slide back. Or, at least, that was what I told myself as I walked back down Himmel Street, as a girl's gasp and a wildly hopeful "Rudy!" followed me on the thick red air.

I turned back one last time on the corner, though. I turned to see a fifteen year old boy mustering a weak "Saumensch" and a fourteen year old girl laughing aloud with the laughter of someone who has been presented with something they never expected to get again, something they love more dearly than life itself. I have never experienced this, only seen it, but Death cannot afford to be bitter.

I turned to see the girl finally collapsing next to the boy with the temporary obliviousness of her surroundings only youth can possess, with relief, with joy blooming like a flower through a crack on the mayor's front path; and to see her kiss him, this time on hot, breathing lips. I turned to see him kiss her back with feverish love and arms that surged around her with renewed strength; and when they separated to say to her, "I did get that kiss in the end, didn't I, Liesel, Saumensch? Never bank against Rudy Steiner" and to receive a simple laughing "Saukerl" in return.

Perhaps I cheated. But everyone does that once in a while. It is only too much of it that is bad. I did not save Liesel's Papa or Mama or Barbra or any of the other Steiners. Not poor Tommy Muller, certainly not Frau Diller. I left Liesel and Rudy to come out of the few trees and to kneel there and cry and be shocked and numb like they always were, the humans. But then, I left them to love and be strong and go on.