I'm probably the only angel who regularly gets phone calls from Hell. I haven't even put my pants on yet this fine Monday morning - not that I should expect that to make a difference. Rolling my eyes, I swipe my thumb across the screen, cutting off the Muse piano riff that's been my ringtone since I don't know when.

"'Morning, bro," I say with an exaggerated yawn.

"You cheeky bastard," answers my brother, the demon. "How's it hanging?"

My roommate, Luca, perks up briefly as he puts on his own Balthazar Academy uniform shirt. "Hey, Gabe," he says, before turning back to the mirror inside our closet door.

"Luca says hi," I say. "All right, what do you wanna sell me today?"

I can almost hear the stupid grin in Gabe's voice as he answers. "I got another great setup for tonight. You get your ass down to the Bridge by five, and just...let the sparks fly."

I sigh in exasperation. "Dude. Not another blind date. I'm not in the mood."

"What kind of mood would that be?"

"Um...blind-date-y?" I move over to the window and peek out beyond the curtain at the pale blue sunrise, trying as always to picture Gabe's school, Castledown, on the hillside across the water. Too bad it's invisible from this side of Coldfire Creek.

Gabe chuckles. "You gotta work on your comebacks. Trust me, Alex, you'll really like this one."

"That's what you said the last ten times you set me up with a Castledown girl." Out of the corner of my eye, I see Luca raise his eyebrow at me.

"It's gotta work sometime," Gabe says. "Unless...?"

"What?" My mind immediately moves into territory I don't really care to chart. "Oh God, no."

Gabe starts laughing uproariously for some reason. "You don't wanna find a nice girl from Balthazar? Really?"

"Is that what you meant?"

"Wh-what did you think I meant?" Gabe stutters as he tries to catch his breath.

I sigh again, this time in a more relieved way. "You know what."

"Well, do you wanna find a girl from your own school?" Gabe asks. "I dunno what passes for hotness with you guys, though, so I can't help you there."

"Pretty much what passes for hotness with you guys, too," I say. "And while we're at it, why is it that you pretty much concentrate on looks? That's not really enough for me. I want a girl who's not only pretty, but smart and cool as well."

"Great," Gabe says, snapping his fingers. "Would you like a short skirt and a long jacket with that?"

"Funny," I say in the least amused tone of voice I can manage.

Gabe laughs again. "In all honesty, dude, you shouldn't be such a straight arrow all the time. Live a little, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah. Sure. Live a little, die a lot."

"Spoilsport." Gabe sighs, but then his voice perks up. "Three Guys, five tonight, bro. Don't be late. I'm telling you, this girl really is the one for you."

"You know I don't believe you, right?"

Gabe hangs up without another word. "Polite, my dear sainted brother is not," I say.

Luca frowns as he takes a small portable brush, the kind my mom keeps in the glove box in her car, to his thick, curly hair. "Hey, he's only trying to help."

"Well, you try getting blind date after blind date with demon girls and then we'll talk," I say, putting my phone to sleep.

I've always wondered how it is that I'm able to get phone calls from Hell, because I'm pretty sure my wireless service wasn't meant to include interdimensional contact. Gabe once told me that there were a lot of phone numbers that had different owners in different worlds, and that every time someone got a wrong number, it was because some idiot demon wasn't concentrating hard enough and connected to Earth instead of Hell. He says that it's happened to him before, when he tries to call me and accidentally calls the human with the same phone number as me. I wouldn't know, because he's always the one who calls me, not the other way around, so I've never really had a chance to figure it out for myself.

As soon as Luca is fully dressed, he closes the closet and approaches the door to the hallway outside. Before opening it up, however, he turns to me and asks, "Does Gabe know? That you've been sleepwalking?"

I shake my head. "I've got enough people worrying about me, thanks."

"You can never have too many people worrying about you, dude," Luca says. "And I'm sorry to ask you again, but are you sure everything's fine?"

"I'm all right," I say. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You, uh, kinda forgot your tie?" Luca hands me my tie - black with thin green stripes, just like his. Which he's remembered to put on.

"Shit, you're right," I mutter. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Luca says as I take the tie.

"Where would I be without you, eh, buddy?"

"Probably in the wrong universe," Luca chuckles. He grabs his laptop from the bedside table while I put my tie on. I could probably do with tying it up a bit more neatly, but then it's still just after seven, an hour and a half before our first class. I have a lot more time to fix it up.

Finally, we leave our room. Other guys shuffle sleepily down the corridor towards the lounge, where we're joined by equally sleepy, shuffly girls. Most of them are wearing their standard Balthazar Academy uniforms - hey, it's a boarding school. At least we're only forced to wear them during class, otherwise I might have blown this Popsicle stand ages ago. Constricting conformism aside, one of the strongest selling points about this place is how many privileges and perks they allow their students - freedom to explore the nearby town of Coldfire Creek every evening and weekend, a monthly allowance of one hundred dollars per student (more if you can get a job somewhere on campus), etc.

While we pass through the lounge, I stop to look at the couch on which I woke up. Like all the other furniture in the room, it's dark green and squishy with age and continuous usage. The place looks like it could be a Hogwarts common room - it's got the color scheme of Slytherin, and the inviting atmosphere of Gryffindor.

Still, though, almost nobody sleeps in here. Unless they're pulling an all-nighter, like a pair of brainy sophomores I spot in a pair of armchairs in the corner, snoozing with their lethally large, throw-it-with-great-force calculus books splayed open on their laps. Poor guys.

A few minutes later, we're downstairs and coming up to the dining hall. Luca detours into the door leading up to the booth over the entrance, where the mealtime soundtracks are provided. Normally, the DJ plays the sort of awful, overplayed pop crap I hate - Maroon 5, Katy Perry, and Sam Smith are particular favorites. But every Monday at breakfast time, they have someone else step into the booth as a guest DJ, and these are most often the sort of people who don't want to adhere to the music industry's status quo. Fellow fans of zone, as we angels (and demons) call the music known to humans as "alternative." I've signed myself up to be a guest DJ, but the waiting list is about two months long. My time will come next week, supposedly.

This week, though, it's Luca's turn, and as soon as he gets into the booth, he plugs his laptop into the sound equipment and starts playing his first pick of the morning - an old favorite of mine, "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies" by Panic! At The Disco. Feeling a little cheered up, I step into line to collect breakfast from the buffet, choosing waffles topped with raspberries. Behind me, a pair of senior girls pick out pancakes and drown them in syrup, then take their seats at the next table and look up at the DJ booth hopefully. Upon seeing who's up there today, the taller of the two blinks in surprise, then her face falls with perfect comic precision.

I should've known this would be Luca's mission. He's got a major crush on Dani Cabrera, and it's only gotten stronger since he saw her practicing basketball in the gym by herself a week ago. I've seen the video footage he shot of their encounter - everything all cool until Dani realized she was being filmed while doing a bunch of slam dunks in a row. Without flying. He and I both agree that she's got mad skills, but given how pissed she was when she learned she was being watched, I suggested he leave her alone for a while, give her time to cool off. I think my words have gone in one brain and out the other, though.

When the Panic! song ends, Luca grabs the mike and starts speaking into it. I can almost see the gleam in his wide brown eyes as he animatedly chatters away while swiping the mouse pad on his laptop so he can pick his next song.

"Hey, hey, Balthazar, this is Luca Scagliotti. Some of you might know me, others not so much. But no matter. Happy Monday to all of you, and if you're still asleep, too bad, because I'm gonna keep you on your toes this morning. I have no plans for the soundtrack to your breakfast, other than shuffling my iTunes library and playing it in whatever order I like!" He pauses and looks at the screen. "This one goes out to the one I love - even though it's not that particular song. Whatever. Hope you like it, babe! Enjoy!"

Luca presses play on his second song of the day. Again, it's something I like (which gets me wondering, is this meant to appeal to Dani or to me?) Strangely, it's one of the few popular songs I like, so everyone else around me seems much more enthused about the song choice this time. Still, though, it seems a tad bit...inappropriate for school.

I overhear Dani's friend, a bespectacled brunette whose name I don't really know, as she voices this exact same sentiment. Was she listening in on my thoughts? I wonder. Dani gives an incoherent, noncommittal grunt in reply. She also raises her eyebrows, which look pretty impressive because they're dark brown, entirely at odds with her dirty blonde pixie cut. Then, as soon as Pink starts singing the chorus line, she obeys her command and raises her glass - then her middle finger - at Luca. I suspect he's watching the crowd to see her reaction, and since we all sit at tables grouped by class (by choice, not by design), it shouldn't take him too long to find her. Lo and behold, he does, and right away he responds with what can only be described as the most sickening "Oh golly gee!" gesture this side of a Disney movie.

"Is he trying to be funny?" Dani asks in sheer exasperation, her voice somehow carrying over to where I'm sitting.

"And here I thought we'd be able to make it through breakfast without talking about the boy, but whatevs," her friend says. "Admit it already, you like Luca. And why not? He's cute, he's funny-"

"Hah! Funny? In what messed-up universe?"

I don't hear any more of this conversation, because by this point I've gotten up, left my plate with the other dirty dishes in the corner, and crammed the last pieces of my last waffle all the way into my mouth. I leave the room just as Pink's song ends and another begins - "Lonely Boy," by the Black Keys. Your personal theme song, Luca? I think, even though he can't possibly hear my thoughts through the wall. Can he?

I walk back through the lounge and go back to my room for my notebooks. But then I get distracted, because I think I've put off my therapy long enough. It's called the writing bug - and it strikes me pretty much any time my journal, which I keep under my pillow most of the time, comes into visual range. Especially when strange shit happens. I swear, a better term for it would be the "writing drug." They say "write what you know," but does that still apply when the only interesting thing in your life is an occasional tendency to sleepwalk? Not that it's stopping me from dramatizing the shit out of it. Like so:

The worst time of the week is exactly the one you've always heard it was - early Monday morning. I think it was around quarter to seven or so when I woke up to serious numbness in my back. You probably don't know this, but we angels don't normally sleep on our backs. And I definitely don't sleep on the couch in the lounge, but then there I was. I only figured this out when I rolled over and fell off the couch with a loud thud. If that didn't wake up everyone in school...

And, adding to the strangeness of the situation, I was wearing yesterday's jeans. Which I could have sworn I'd taken off last night before going under the covers of my bed. In my dorm room.

I scrambled to my feet, getting instant head rush. As I sat down, I felt that numbness again, and I realized I was sitting on my wings. They were unfurled, but hanging limply out of the bottom of my Pac-Man T-shirt. I sat up again and retracted my wings before stretching them again. They passed through the long slits in the back of my shirt, reaching their full thirteen-foot span. Pulling them back into place on either side of my spine, I sat on the couch, then leaned down to pick up a stray dark-brown feather, which I carried with me back into the boys' dorm hall.

I tried to get back into my room quickly and quietly without waking up Luca. No such luck. He caught sight of me and whispered, "Did it happen again?"

I could've just passed it off as me going to the bathroom, but it was too early, and I was too tired to lie coherently. "Yep," I said with a deep sigh.

He frowned at me, looking concerned. "That's the second time in a week, isn't it?"

I sat on the edge of my bed. "Third, actually. Either way, sleepwalking's no fun."

"I only counted two," Luca says.

"Saturday morning," I say. "I got back to the room before you woke up, though."

I peeled off my shirt and pants, tossed them onto my pillow, and went into the closet to grab my pale blue uniform shirt. In the meantime, wearing nothing but boxers, I was shivering. It's cold up here in the mountains this early on October 27th. It doesn't help that I was born and bred in the Bay Area, in a town only known for being home to Kristi Yamaguchi, Len Wiseman, and the filming of Terminator 2. So I'm not quite used to the idea of frigid winters.

Even though you've spent most of the last two years up here? Luca thought.

Yep, I thought back. I'm not really meant for the polar weather, even with my name being "Snow." Before putting on my shirt, I extended my wings a bit, examining my reflection in the mirror on the inside of the closet door. I've always liked the way my wings catch the light. They're dark brown, just like my hair, but every four or five feathers I get one that's a lighter color, closer to the olive shade of my skin.

"Alex?" Luca stood next to me, waving his hand in front of my face. "You kinda zoned out for a moment there. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Hmm?" I looked around, startled, and realized I was blocking the way to the closet. "Oh. Sorry." I edged aside so Luca can go in and get his own uniform. Then I put my shirt on and was about to do the same with the rest of my uniform - black slacks, shoes, and blazer - when I got my daily phone call from Hell.

There. Dramatizing the shit out of my morning, check. Editing said opening sequence for sleepy-eyed grammar and spelling mistakes, check. Only about eighty thousand words to go, and I'd have a full-blown YA novel on my hands. I put the journal back in its place - I've learned the hard way that if I take it to class with me, I'd pay attention to it instead of, say, my history lecture. And it's impossible to ignore Ms. Guidace's caffeinated, high-energy lectures, but considering this is the same subject my mom teaches back home in Spellman, I tend to zone out anyway because I know a lot about it already. Like Peter Parker in science class.

Stopping by the mirror to adjust my tie, I stare at my reflection again. My eyes are bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. I've been really worried lately because of my recent sleepwalking issues. Mom says I used to do it when I was younger, but not since I was eight. I think I somehow made myself stop after the time I got up late at night, mistook the new CD player Gabe and I had just gotten for our birthday for a toilet, and pissed on it.

Right now, though, I have no easy way to explain my problem. No unnecessary schoolwork stress - I'm doing a pretty good job keeping up with all my classes and maintaining a three-point-something GPA. No relationship issues, since I'm still single, despite Gabe's best efforts.

So what's wrong with me? Is it something hiding in my subconscious?

Before I can think too much about it, though, my watch alarm goes off, snapping me back to reality. Shutting it off, I quickly use my hands to try and brush some of my hair out of my eyes. I really should get a haircut soon. The school doesn't make us guys have any kind of super-short regulation haircut - for which I'm grateful, because I don't like the way short hair looks on me - but after letting it grow for six months, my hair's become really messy and shaggy. Which is also wreaking havoc with my skin - I'm getting some forehead acne issues coming on - but let's not go there.

Hey, maybe that's my problem, I think to myself as I head back out. I'm sleepwalking 'cause I look like a friggin' wolf-man. And it's messing with my self-esteem, so it makes me-

My thoughts stop as I hear a short but loud, almost girlish scream coming from a nearby open door. Walking faster, I stop to check the name tag on the door - "M. Scagliotti/S. Walker."

"Marco?" I call out, poking my head around the door. "What's up?"

Luca's older brother Marco whirls around, his face pale. "Oh, hey, Snow," he says, looking more than a bit flustered. "Uh, it's nothing. Just got, uh, one of those, you know, jump-scare videos from Steve."

"Really?" I ask. "Could I see it? Maybe it's the same one my brother sent me the other day."

Marco looks around, realizing too late that his phone is actually sitting on the bedside table, well out of his reach. "Yeah, you got me. But Steve did scare me for real."

"Did he?" I ask, taking a quick look around the room. There's no sign of Marco's roommate - unless you count the sight of a model of his head sitting on his bed, cushioned by a pile of gym clothes. "Whoa," I say, bending down to pick it up. "That's gross."

"I know, right?" Marco says. "They've really outdone themselves on this one."

Steve Walker's family owns a movie makeup business down in LA, and they make really lifelike stuff for the school to use as Halloween decorations each year. Marco's right - this model has to be their best creation yet. But it's disturbingly realistic, maybe even more so than usual. It's got so much attention to detail. Like the freckles on his nose, the tiny blackheads on his chin, and the fragments of blackened skin hanging in thin tatters from the bottom, as if Steve really did get his head cut off by a lightsaber or a flaming axe or something.

Marco shakes his head as he looks at the fake head again. "I'm gonna need to give him a piece of my mind."

"Anything to save your reputation, right?" I laugh, clapping Marco on the shoulder. "Don't worry, though. If it gets out that you scream like a girl, it won't be 'cause I told anyone."

"Especially not Luca, right?" Marco asks me.

I give him a comically-serious nod. "Of course I won't tell Luca. But I'm sure he already knows. He's had to live with you all his life, hasn't he?"

Marco laughs wryly. "Good point, Snow. Now, where's the box this thing came in...?" He kicks around the bedspreads on both his and Steve's beds before looking underneath them, then pokes into the closet. "Huh. No box. And that's really weird, too, that he'd just leave it under his shorts like that."

I look at the nest of gym clothes. "Does he usually leave his clothes laying around? I can't imagine you'd tolerate any roommate of yours doing that."

"I can barely tolerate it from Luca at home," Marco says. "But only 'cause he's my brother."

"Someone say my name?" Luca asks, sticking his head through the door.

"It's, uh, it's nothing," Marco says hurriedly, moving to the side so he can block the fake head from view.

Luca, of course, has no trouble spotting a lie from his brother. Raising his eyebrow at Marco, he peers around him and sees the head. "Whoa! Get a load of that!" He laughs, pointing at the head, then turns to Marco and asks, "You screamed like a girl, didn't you? When Steve showed you?"

"He didn't show me," Marco says, crossing his arms. "I just found it there."

"Yeah, no wonder you screamed," Luca says, holding his laptop to his chest and trying to contain his bursts of laughter. "Come on, Alex, we gotta get to History."

"What? Oh yeah. I totally forgot. See you later, Marco."

"See you, Snow." Marco smiles and waves as Luca and I leave the dorm wing.

"Isn't forgetfulness a sign of sleep deprivation or something?" Luca asks.

The snicker he adds after finishing his sentence makes it sound like he's not totally serious at the moment, so I decide to run with that when I say, "Shit, I dunno. Ask me again after I take Psych next year."

"I won't have to," Luca says as we go into the main hallway and make tracks for our US History class, which is on the other side of the third floor. As we bypass the big staircase (it's not quite big enough to be called "grand"), he adds, "I thought I'd take it with you."

"Why didn't you take it this year again?" I ask, even though I already know the answer.

Luca, who's fond of explaining this story at any opportunity, grins and says, "'Cause if I did, I'd end up in the same class as Marco, and he'd show me up and make me look like a dumbass every day."

I laugh along with him, then add a friendly barb to make this conversation different from the hundred or so times we've run through it before. "Hey, just 'cause you can't beat him at Jeopardy!..."

"I've got my strength," Luca says, flexing his biceps, "and Marco's got his."

"True." Luca doesn't hear me, though - the bell rings just as I say that last word. Which means we now have to really hustle to Guidace's class.

Damn you, Steve. Damn you and your creepy-ass severed head.