Just across the way was a girl that was going to die before Lee got a chance to talk to her. Of course, that was the way it was with nearly every girl--in fact, Lee himself would have told you with no small amount of bewilderment that he’d somehow made a few female friends at Campbell High School. They had initiated conversation, of course. Something about the way his dark blue eyes flitted nervously around crowds seemed to trigger some sort of protective instinct in a certain type of adolescent female. Every time, he was just on the brink of jumping into a conversation he knew nothing about when an alien form rose up out of his peripheral vision with a friendly, slightly pitying smile. This would cause his brain to short-circuit while he desperately tried to remember how to interact with girls, remember only the fact that he knew nothing about how to interact with girls, and then collapse in a pile of frayed wires and smoking parts.

“Hey,” she would say.

“Hey,” he would respond. Only then would the last shambles of his subconscious remind him to resume breathing.

But this girl. This girl was more alien than alien, separated even from the rest. Oh sure, she looked normal enough--tumbles of matte ebony hair, caramel-colored skin, unremarkable clothes. But her sheer presence sent out waves of intriguing discomfort that somehow had parted the packed halls like a stone in a stream. She was facing one of those corkboards that cropped up in every hall. From this angle, it was impossible to tell whether she was reading one of the tiny crayon-written notes or analyzing the grainy texture of the cork itself. And that was one more thing that Lee would never know.

Ah, come on, said a voice in his head. Give it a shot. What could you lose?

Lee hated this voice. It had an irritating knack of sounding similar to the voice of reason.

Adventure comes from danger, Lee! Discovery from the unexplored!

Also death, Lee reasoned in return. Death is the other option.

What’s that quote about the weak man living half-lives, Lee?

If you don’t remember it, I won’t remember it either. Because you are just a voice in my head.

I’m the fun one, though, the voice pouted and went silent.

Lee took a deep breath. The endless promenade of students washed past the two still people bound by potentiality.

Then Lee turned away. Some things are just too dangerous to touch. Or get near. Or talk to. He had resisted temptation. His mother would be proud.

Lee allowed himself to be swept away by the currents which led toward the front doors of the school. There, he would wait for the bus while talking video games and cartoons. With men.

The school bus was running late. Lee had exhausted the witty remarks he had spent all day coming up with and had now resorted to merely combing his fingers through his dirty blonde hair, laughing awkwardly whenever there was a pause and nodding vigorously. He turned, not for any particular reason, just to give his spine something to do. Directly behind him was a girl.

The girl.

Her eyes were focused on something not quite in the material plane, her thick eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Lee froze in place, his upper half completely opposite to his lower half. The girl blinked, registering that there was something rather odd in her field of vision. Lee’s mouth, which had been in the middle of another laugh, went dry. Her eyebrows separated, clearing the valleys of deep thought and allowing the eyes underneath to rise upward toward the strange man. Her eyes. Not at all what Lee had been expecting, but if he had been expecting it, it would probably have been something else. Fierce, razor-sharp, almost orange. Like tiger eyes, Lee thought, then immediately wondered if tigers have sharp orange eyes or just sharp orange bodies.

The voice came back, strutting in with smug triumph.

Well, are you going to stand there?

Lee closed his mouth with a faint smack. Suddenly aware of the placement of his feet, he nearly toppled trying to readjust them. He cleared his throat, pulse rate rising with every heartbeat.

An eyebrow cocked itself imperceptibly. Her eyes sharpened.

He cleared his throat again.

“Hey. I’m Lee.”

Lee cringed, waiting for the calamity. It didn’t come. Her knife-eyes merely twisted in amusement. Or was it irritation?

She cocked her head slightly, a lock of dark hair swinging along her face. Her lips parted--Lee hadn’t even noticed her lips. Should he have? He made a mental note to study her nose and ears when his brain stopped trying to posthumously rectify the mistake of speaking.

But then she wasn’t there anymore. She was falling.

One second, she was staring him in the soul. The next, she simply wasn’t there. Her eyes were still there, but the life had left them and they were rolling back in her head. Lee instinctively stepped back in shock, then immediately regretted it when she fell toward him. He stuck his arms out to catch her but only grazed her shoulder on the way down. He blinked. Somebody noticed and gasped aloud, and Lee jumped out of his paralysis. He looked down and saw a mess of black hair on his shoes, which was connected to a head facedown on the sidewalk. He yelled in shock and whipped his feet out from underneath the girl’s hair, which caused her head to clunk onto the sidewalk. His shoes must have blocked the very last part of the fall. Maybe she didn’t break her nose, and Lee would actually know what it looked like--if she was alive, that is.

By now, chaos had erupted around the bus stop. Students were shouting, shoving, screaming, silencing others, or standing stupefied. Lee was the only one close to her, though, and everyone else was keeping it that way. Lee realized that since he was the last one who “talked” to her, and now the last one who touched her, the group was going to hold him responsible for the mess, much like a spilled bag of cat food is going to be blamed on the person in the pet aisle. Lee gulped and kneeled down next to her prone form, saying the only words still rattling in his brain.

“Hey? I’m Lee?”

There was no response, though the girl would be forgiven for ignoring such an idiotic repetition. An agonizing second passed, then another. A sudden thought swam to the forefront of his brain.

She’s unconscious. No one’s helping. You’ve got to be the hero.

I’m not a hero! He thought furiously back.

What’s a hero but the right person in the right place at the right time? You are the guy. And you know what to do.

He ignored the voice, knowing that it was right. He had been trained in CPR during summer camp this year. The lifeguard had led them through a long and embarrassing demonstration using a plastic dummy, but Lee had paid close attention. Sometimes being the only teen with a genuine fear of death pays off.

First. Establish whether the victim is conscious. Done.

Second. Check for a pulse.

Lee wrapped his hands around her shoulders and heaved, only barely noticing the softness of her arm muscles. Soon she had been flipped onto her back, and Lee’s anxiety rose by another dozen levels. Her eyes, once illuminated with razor intensity, were clouded over, and her mouth gaped uselessly like a fish’s. Her entire body convulsed with aftershocks. He extended two fingers toward the side of her neck. It was warm, but there was no telltale beating from under the skin. He ripped his eyes away.

“Hey!”

He very nearly said “I’m Lee!” once more.

“I need you,” he pointed at a random kid with an afro, whose cell phone slipped out of his fingers onto the ground, “to call 911! Now!” The kid twitched his fingers once, did a double take, and bent down to grab his cell phone. Lee swept round and selected another kid with the same finger. “Get a teacher! Find a defilli--defibira--heart shock machine! Hurry!”

He returned to the girl spasming on the ground. The most important thing is to keep the victim as not-dead as possible until medical help arrives. If medical help never comes, you had better be really good at keeping people not dead. Which involves trying to push the heart into restarting, or at least keeping the blood circulating in the meantime. Which involves... oh boy.

Lee reminded himself that this was absolutely necessary to save her life, crossing one hand over the other, palms down. He apologized to her under his breath over and over as he laid his hands on the center of her chest. He braced himself and thrust downward, compressing her ribcage and squeezing blood out of her heart. He bounced back up and immediately threw his weight down again, keeping his elbows straight so that all the energy went directly into her heart. The instructor had told them that the song “Stayin’ Alive” was exactly the right beats per minute to time the compressions by, and the frenzied chorus jumped into his head, screaming his exact thoughts. However, the Bee Jees quickly faded into a new song, one he had never heard before, that entered his head without permission.

Lee felt a rib crack under his hands, as easy as one would pop someone’s back. Lee probably would have entered a full-blown panic attack if he hadn’t been hypnotized by the tune. It entranced his brain, guiding his thoughts into alignment. All he could concentrate on was the music.

The strange music ended, and Lee realized that he had hit thirty. Somehow his song perfectly synced up with what he needed. Lee shook his head, deciding to ponder the mysteries of life later when a mystery life wasn’t in the balance. He had tried to coax the heart, now it was time to make sure the brain was okay by keeping it oxygenated.

Which involves... oh boy.

He pinched her nose (regular, a bit snubby, he noted, in case he never saw her alive again) and tilted her head back, lifting her neck off the ground. He used his other hand to squeeze her jaw and part her lips. Lee licked his own nervously. His first kiss, and it would be with a dead girl. He took a deep breath, silently apologized to her again and leaned in, clamping his mouth over hers. He exhaled, watching her chest rise as her lungs filled with secondhand air. He separated briefly, wondering if all first kisses are just as clumsy and filled with terror.

As he went in for the second breathing, the crowd of students that had been watching Lee in awed silence was split by a thundering teacher and her herald. Mrs. Kathleen, normally a rather reserved woman, shoved a backpack and its bearer out of the way, holding a defibrillator aloft. Mrs. K placed a hand on Lee’s shoulder, guiding him away.

“Good work, Lee,” she said, unzipping the red medical package. Lee looked away as Mrs. K ripped the girl’s shirt open and placed the two pads on her chest and side. A canned voice emanated from the central device, advising space from the victim. The circle of students took a few steps backward. Lee joined them, noticing how the hubbub had died down with the arrival of the teacher. Now it almost seemed as they were holding vigil for someone with one foot in the grave.

The device beeped and the girl’s body arched, strained to breaking by the current of electricity tensing her muscles. Then the shock ended and her limp form collapsed again. Another shock. Mrs. K hunched over the girl, a single tear dripping off the end of her nose, wringing her hands. Another shock. Sirens blared as an ambulance peeled into the school parking lot. A team of paramedics piled out of the back with a stretcher just as the final shock was delivered.

The girl screamed, making everyone, including Mrs. K., jump. Her limbs flailed, smacking the pavement and tearing the pads off of her skin. Several paramedics tried to hold her down to administer a shot into her hip through the jeans, but in her sheer panic she almost bucked them off. Lee joined them, pinning her leg to the ground. For a split second, the girl made eye contact with Lee and something like recognition flickered in her face for an instant. Lee felt as though his own heart had stopped. Then she was lifted up on the stretcher and carried into the ambulance, and she was gone.

The entire school stood silent for a long moment. Lee leaned over and whispered to his teacher in a low voice.

“Mrs. Kathleen. Who was that?”

The woman wiped around her face carefully, eyes still fixed on the point where the ambulance had vanished.

“That was Delta Moreno. I’ve known her since she was a little girl.”

“I’ve never seen her before.”

Mrs. Kathleen broke her gaze, meeting Lee’s face. She was just as confused as any of the kids, and that scared Lee more than anything so far that day.

“That’s because she doesn’t go here. She hasn’t woken up in eight years.”

Of all the girls, Lee thought. Of all the girls to talk to, it had to be the one who hadn’t talked in almost a decade.

Well, on the bright side, he thought, at least he didn’t have to worry about her telling everyone how dumb he looked.

Next Chapter: Opening