" And to those nearby, and finally to Beans himself, it became clear that even now, even this close, still—still—she would not look at him.

And then she did it.

She spoke.

But the person she spoke to was not Beans. It was Palmer LaRue. She took one step back from Beans and walked straight over to Palmer and stood squarely in front of him and said, “Why are you doing this to me?”

And just like that, the girl in the red coat and floppy hat was no longer a target. She was Dorothy, there were tears in her eyes, and she was saying to him, not to anyone else, but to him, to Palmer, “Why are you doing this to me?” And he knew that through these last weeks she had been hurting after all, and that it had been himself, not Beans, who had hurt her the most. "

― Jerry Spinelli , Wringer