It started in April. I'm not sure of the exact date.

My friends and I were ready for school to be out. (I'm just going to clarify: I am not one of the kids with thirty best friends. I have my group of three, and that's enough.)

"So, you ready for the weekend yet?" Nee asked. Nee Coren is my best friend. Her name is Nia, but she prefers Nee.

"Who isn't?" I responded carelessly.

"Cole," she said, jerking her head at a blond kid nearby. He saw us and waved absentmindedly, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "Your boyfriend."

At this point, I had to grab her and pin her against the wall to stop her from saying any more.

"Have you learned anything?" I hissed. "We're friends. You see him every day. Have you ever seen him take his nose out of his encyclopedia for long enough to even see a girl? His idea of a girl is an anatomical drawing and his idea of romance is a dictionary denotation. So yeah, highly unlikely that'll ever happen." I paused. "But of course he's not ready for the weekend. He likes school." Nee laughed, tossing her black bangs out of her eyes.

"And say anything about me dating Cole one more time and I feed you to the Soul Reavers," I added.

Soul Reavers are all-powerful beings. (in our mythology, at least.) They create and destroy life, keeping up the cycle. Think Valkyries, but male and female. They're warriors, charged with defending Heaven.

Backing up. My friend group is almost the perfect stereotype. Nee is the beautiful tomboy. Cole is the genius nerd. I'm the only exception to the stereotype, because I am the jock, even though I'm a girl. (and I hate that stereotype. Girls can be strong!)

And Kel would be the creepy one. He never spoke, he always wears his hood pulled up, he always skulked around. I had never seen his face or heard his voice in my life. No one knows where he came from or what he looks like, and I've never heard anyone else with that name before. We barely know each other. The only reason he's in our group is that he saved my life in the third grade.

Everyone's scared of him, even though he's not a beefed-up jock. (he's really lanky. The only thing he has going for him is his height. [five-foot-eleven.]) He saved me when a bunch of seventh graders had me pinned against the fence and were ready to beat the snot out of me. I was pinned with my face against the chain link, screaming to keep them back, but I remember that suddenly I could hear footsteps. Running footsteps. The seventh graders were running. The biggest kid's hand stopped holding my shirt collar as he bolted. I fell, and I remember Kel helping me up. The only detail I can remember about him then was that his hands were pale, thin and ice cold. It was odd that I actually saw his hands, as he usually wears gloves. He also wears a hooded sweatshirt every day. (at school, anyway. I've never been to his house.)

None of my friends knew about my powers. Yet.

Anyway, tangent over. We were ready for school to be over. It was my last class, and the one I dread. Gym class.

Our last gym teacher was nice. He could play hockey really well and never raised his voice. He had black hair and wasn't the tallest guy around.

Our new gym teacher, Coach Judson, was the classic drill-sergeant stereotype. He's six-foot-three and bald, with a voice like a megaphone used by an elephant.

"AWRIGHT, KIDS! ROLL CALL!"

A kid groaned in the back.

"DROP AND GIVE ME THIRTY!"

The kid groaned again, but he did it. That was the rule. Complain, and you do push-ups. If he's in a good mood. Bad mood, and burpees happen.

The reason he groaned at roll call is that it's an inspection. Wearing something he doesn't like, doing something he doesn't like, being someone he doesn't like, etc. These are the most common offenses, and they'll leave you doing burpees.

"BRITKA!"

"Like, here-sir," Jenny Britka called from the back. She had perfected the art of acting like a stereotypical teenager, even though this was the seventh grade, and she was twelve.

"COREN!"

"Here, sir," Nee called carelessly, picking lint off her red sweatshirt. She always had a handful of test tubes in her front pocket.

"CRETS!"

"H-here, s-sir!" called Albert Crets, a kid who looked like he'd stopped growing at fourth grade. Coach's eyes narrowed.

"DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!"

Albert fell down at ten.

"CUSIR!"

Kel raised his hand.

"ERCH!"

"Here, sir!" Arnold Erch called.

"ESPIK!"

"Here!" I called.

"LEERES!"

"Here, sir," Cole called, face buried in his pocket encyclopedia. Coach's eyes narrowed again, but something odd happened.

Cole snapped his fingers without looking up, and Coach straightened up, then stopped the roll call, even though there was half the class to go. I looked at Cole, who was smirking, oddly enough. At the same time, he shifted, and I could see something bronze shimmering against his chest.

A locket?

What boy wears a locket?

Cole, I guess.

Did he have a crush? Besides his encyclopedia, I mean? Someone willing to go out with him? Besides his encyclopedia, I mean?

I ran through the girls in my head.

Me? No.

Jenny Britka? No. She called him a nerd daily.

Amanda McDonald? No. She also considered him a nerd.

Elizabeth Ennie? No. She only had eyes for Richard Fanta, the class clown.

Nee? I turned to look at her. She was staring at Cole with a look of absolute revulsion on her face. I focused on her mind.

A locket? her mind whispered. Who's going out with Cole? I pulled back from her mind, then swept the girls in the room. Few had noticed the locket, and none were thinking about him.

"FOCUS!" Coach bellowed. Half the kids screamed. That half of the kids had to do fifteen burpees.

Why didn't I think of fixing that?! a mental voice hissed nearby. My head jerked up. Who was thinking that they could fix the gym teacher? It seemed like a familiar voice.

"AWRIGHT!" the gym teacher bellowed. "WIND SPRINTS! EVERYBODY LINE UP AGAINST THE WALL!" I could hear a few muffled, but still audible groans, and about twenty mental groans. I turned to Nee to give her some sympathy, but she was doing something odd.

She had something held to her mouth like she was drinking it.

Then she saw me and shoved it into her shirt pocket as fast as possible. It looked like one of the test tubes she usually kept in there. She walked over to me, pulling it back out and handing it to me.

"Liyz," she said. "Drink. It'll help." The liquid inside was pink. I stared at it.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Never mind," she said, pulling it back. She put it back in her pocket, and I could feel a flash of strong irritation from her mind.

We lined up against the wall. The whistle blew, and we went flying.

I managed about five sprints down the gym before I began to slow. Cole and Albert didn't make it past two before Coach told them to go sit against the wall. If you got out before five, he made you write a two-page essay on why you were a weenie. It drove kids like Jenny and Albert crazy. I had no doubt, however, that Cole would worm his way out of it. He often did, and no one knew how.

I made it to ten before going out. Kel had gotten out on seven. Most of the class got out before ten. However, in the end, Arnold and Nee were still going strong. At fifteen, Arnold was beginning to look winded. Nee didn't even look tired.

How is she doing this? I thought.

At twenty-five, Arnold passed out on the floor. Nee ran to twenty-seven, then walked over to me. I was stunned. Nobody ended theirs voluntarily. Coach yelled that they were a wuss and told them to get off the floor.

"I'm going to pay for that," Nee confided to me. "But it was so worth it."

"What did you do?" I asked. "Your record is twelve!" She didn't answer.

After school, I made plans to go to Nee's house over the weekend, hung out with her, Cole and Kel, then left for car pickup with Cole. Kel walked home, and Nee rode the bus. Cole still had his nose in his book, so I had to slap him on the back before he would speak to me.

"COLE!" I yelled for the fifth time. "PAY ATTENTION!"

"Whuzza?" he yelped.

"What's the deal with your locket?" I asked. He looked confused, then his hand went to the locket.

"Oh," he said. "This." He fumbled with the clasp, then opened it. I looked inside, expecting to see sappy pictures of him with a girl in our class.

It was a watch. A watch on a chain. It looked pretty cool, actually. It was copper and bronze, although maybe the manufacturer was an idiot or something because there was a fourth hand that just kept sweeping around.

And around and around...

And around...

I felt so tired all of a sudden.

He saw me slump and shut the watch so fast I was surprised it didn't take off my nose.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah..." I said dizzily. "Must not have gotten enough sleep last night." I saw my dad pull up, then went to hop in the car. "See you tomorrow!"

I got home around 4:00. My dad went to work on his project-of-the-week, which left me with the twins. Ally and Larie were identical, each with dirty blond hair and deep blue eyes, both four years old. I went to work on my art project on the history of animation.

At 4:30, there was a knock on the door. I went to open it.

I gasped.

There was a girl standing there, maybe seventeen or eighteen, wearing bashed battle armor. Her hair stuck straight back like it was made of crystal. Her eyes were amber, with slightly vertical pupils. She had a curved sword in a sheath at her hip. Straighter than a scythe but longer than a khopesh.

"Oh, God," I murmured. "Are you - are you a Soul Reaver?"

She grinned weakly.

"Yes," she said. "And I'm begging for help."