Worlds Collide — Max Salt

Psychologically damaged and tormented by the memory of an attack on her and her family when she was fifteen, Shailene Campbell lives her life by two rules: Avoid violence, and Be ready if it comes for her anyway. Rule one has held for nine and a half years, but that's about to change. Facing another long, lonely Saturday afternoon, she goes to the mall to escape her one-room apartment, but while shopping for something to read she experiences a painful flashback to her rape. This has happened before, and she thinks she knows what triggers it. Her first impulse is to get home as fast as possible and lock herself in, but refusing to be ruled by fear she instead goes looking for the flashback's trigger. This decision puts her on a collision course with her worst nightmares, the criminally negligent God she suspects might actually exist after all, and herself.