“I’ll leave my reading glasses at home.”

After considering dozens of different dresses, some satin, some sequined, some silk, Cookie chose a sleeveless brocade cotton dress in cerulean blue.

“Try it on,” Nelly told her. While waiting outside the fitting room, she heard a moan coming from behind the curtain. “What’s wrong, Mom?” she shouted.

“Damn gallbladder again,” Cookie groaned.

“I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

“No, sweetheart. Just give me a minute.” Sixty seconds later, Cookie pulled the curtain open. Except for a pained expression on her pale face, she looked dazzling. “Fits perfectly,” she said.

“I love it. The color is spectacular. Brings out your blue eyes.”

Nelly paid for the dress in cash, and suggested she drive her mother to the emergency room. “There’s nothing they can do,” Cookie said. “Short of getting my gallbladder removed, it’s all about diet. So I’ll watch what I eat for the rest of the day.”

“For the rest of your life,” Nelly added. “Why don’t you call in sick tonight?”

“No can do. We’re short staffed.”

“Then I’ll drive you to the brewery and pick you up in the morning.”

The graveyard shift began at midnight and ended at seven A.M. Nelly dropped her mother off at five minutes to the hour. Then she zoomed home and managed to get a few hours of restful sleep.

She returned to the brewery earlier than necessary—twenty minutes before seven—so she ambled to the second floor lobby and stretched out on the torn, comfortable sofa.

It was approaching the end of Moe Lyons’s double shift. After keeping his tired eyes open for fifteen hours straight, he nodded off at ten minutes to seven. His stocky body fell to the right and landed on a handle that monitored the largest vat in the brewery. The vat ruptured, causing a freakish domino effect in which every other vat succumbed.

A deafening explosion rocked the place—so loud that Nelly instantly covered her ears. A half dozen panicked workers began screeching over one another as if the end of the world was rapidly approaching. Then Nelly saw an image that would remain with her for the rest of her life.

Almost one million gallons of lager beer burst out of their barrels and gushed into the two-story building. The first floor flooded within twenty seconds. On the second floor, beer began to rise so quickly that Nelly needed to swim toward the roof’s entrance while screaming for her mother. Severe hip discomfort slowed her down, but she reached her destination in the nick of time. Maintenance technician Gus Dunham opened the door to the roof and gave Nelly a vigorous push upward, toward safety. Her outstretched fingers gripped the top lip of the building, and she painstakingly pulled herself over the edge onto the roof. She reached down to grab Gus’s hand but it was too late; he was swept away in the current that was as powerful and unyielding as a fierce ocean tide. Horrified, unglued, freaked, Nelly ran to the edge of the building and wailed with every ounce of energy in her. “Help!” she screamed. “Somebody please help!”

The unimaginable accident left twelve people dead, including Cookie Hagen. The headline in the Folding Daily Press read: Nelly Escapes Death One More Time. The article began: “Nelly Eva Hagen, the twenty year-old-manicurist who recently survived uncommon attacks by lightning and a meteorite, narrowly escaped death once again. This time, the ponytailed pixie was seconds away from drowning in a deadly torrent of ale. Now an orphan with no siblings, she is the last Hagen standing.”

Two days later, Camilla “Cookie” Hagen was buried in her new blue dress right next to the tiny resting place of Nicholas, the twin brother of Nelly who had only lived a few precious minutes.