Daydream Nation -

"No," Jade said, and she blew on the spark.

But on the back seat, where there had been nothing but a torn copy of Infinite Jest and a hoodie, there now sat a single, unbroken vinyl copy of the album. The cover was no longer a candle. It was a photograph of a girl with two blue eyes, standing in front of a silver sphere, smiling. Daydream Nation

"You can't destroy us," Jenny hissed, her chrome eye cracking. "We are the end of every brilliant teenager who settles for less." "No," Jade said, and she blew on the spark

She popped the cassette of Daydream Nation into the Cutlass's crackling stereo. The first distorted chord of "Teen Age Riot" ripped through the silence. It didn't sound like noise anymore. It sounded like a promise. It was a photograph of a girl with

It didn't explode. It sang . A chord so pure and so dissonant at the same time—the guitar solo from "Trilogy"—it shattered the false sky of the sphere. The television skyscrapers crumbled into harmless dust. The vinyl streets melted into a placid black river. The mannequins collapsed into heaps of ordinary, forgotten trash.

She snapped her fingers. The frozen mannequins twitched. Their static-filled eyes flickered to life. They began to shamble toward Jade, arms outstretched. Not to hurt—to beg.