WARNINGS: self-injury and child abuse ahead...

Chapter One
…Never Seems to End…

It fell from the sky. A brilliant mass of pure white light that seemed to spread across the entire city, flashing into every dark street corner and dilapidated apartment in the city. It was so perfect—so immaculate—that it could have only been something sent from Heaven…

But, like yesterday and the day before, she seemed to be the only one to notice it. The busy people who passed her on the street went on with their hectic days as if nothing had ever happened. They talked into their cell phones in quick hushed voices and cursed at her for standing in the middle of the sidewalk and blocking their ways. She was nothing but an annoyance to them, but their words barely registered in her mind. She stood with a look of amazement on her face as her eyes watched the comet-like light streak across the sky.

In less than two minutes, it was gone. The light didn’t flicker or fade away; it just disappeared without a trace, like it had never existed. And maybe it really didn’t exist. Those who passed her on the street never noticed or acknowledged the light… Maybe she was finally beginning to go crazy. She couldn’t be sure, but somewhere in her gut she knew that the light was real. She wasn’t crazy.

Sighing, she tore her eyes from the sky and returned them to the sidewalk where they had started and picked up on her walk home. She didn’t have to walk with her head up anymore to know when the comet was coming. It came on the same time everyday. She didn’t even need to check her watch for the time anymore. Almost as if it were on instinct, her head would lift and her eyes would watch the bright light dance across the sky before it vanished without a trace.

The rest of her walk passed with no excitement. Her feet led the way while she wandered through a different world, one that was far away from the planet Earth and all of its inhabitants. And when she slept at night, she dreamt of a world where she was free to do as she wished. A handsome raven-haired angel was always there to keep her company, pain shining in his brilliant emerald eyes.

“I’m home,” she muttered as she walked through the front door.

Her mother looked around the corner from the kitchen with a broad smile on her face. “Raegan, honey! How was your day?” She walked out into the entryway of our home with her arms held before her and embraced her daughter.

Raegan didn’t make the effort to hug her back. She kept her arms limp at her sides and stared ahead at the wall as her mother squeezed her tightly. The woman sensed her standoffishness after a couple of seconds and let her go, giving her a small half-hearted smile.

“Well. I hope that your day was good, sweetie. Supper’s on the stove so I’ll call you when it’s done, alright?”

“Sure.” Raegan stepped out of her shoes and walked past her mother with the barest of glances as she made her way up the staircase with her backpack thrown haphazardly over her shoulder.

She collapsed onto her bed the second she was alone in her bedroom and buried her face into a pillow, her thoughts circling around everything and nothing all at the same time.

She was beginning to grow tired with everyday life. Each day she was forced to wander the world was Hell. Each day she was forced to watch the people around her live in happiness was Hell. There was only one person who she could ever trust, and he was increasingly harder and harder to find, spending almost every waking moment with his girlfriend.

Loren was her best friend and had been since I could remember. They had met on their first day of kindergarten, and she had immediately wanted to make the blonde her friend. She didn’t know why. There was just this undeniable attraction between the two of them. He was always smiling and his eyes always sparkled with happiness, until his parents died and he had been forced into foster home after foster home.

It had just been the two of them for years. Then, Michelle had come along and Loren had distanced himself from Raegan, not that she really minded his pretty girlfriend. It was just that she missed the private conversations she and Loren always had about everything that was happening around them. The only time they were ever alone anymore was on their walks to and from school. But she knew that Michelle wasn’t forcing Loren to spend every second with her. That was just the way that Loren was: quiet, full of angst…and completely devoted to those he cared about the most.

Raegan sighed and rolled onto her back so she could stare at the ceiling and breathe a little easier.

Life was just too troublesome. There were many days when she thought about suicide as an escape from the things she constantly had to deal with, but she was too weak to go through with her plans. Sometime while she was gathering the guts to go through with it, there was always the smallest flicker of her mom’s smile and Loren’s sad face when he found out what she had done. She couldn’t do it to them. It would be the epitome of unfairness, no matter how much pain she was in.

So, she went along with life and the things that were deemed necessary to throw at her, waiting until the moment when no one would care. When that time came—when she was finally alone—Raegan would do what needed to be done and erase her existence from the world.

But, until that day came Raegan was happy with the minor relief from her pain that she got by hurting herself. It had first happened as an accident, a skinned knee on the sidewalk after tripping over her own clumsy feet, but had quickly escalated to something more. As she had watched the blood well up in the wound and spill over, she was filled with a sense of freedom that she had never felt before. It was empty, pure, numb…bliss… She couldn’t get enough of it. Her secret addiction had almost spun out of control two months later, but she had somehow managed to regain the control before she was found out. It had been a close call and she had been careful with it ever since then. Nothing good would come out of being caught.

Raegan sighed for what felt like the hundredth time that day and pushed herself up from her bed. She dug around in her closet for a clean pair of pajamas and grabbed her CD case from her desk on the way out the door. She debated on shouting to her mom that she was taking a shower but decided against it. She would hear the water running.

She closed herself in the bathroom and started a lukewarm shower. She dropped her clean clothes on the side of the sink and threw a towel from under the sink on top of the toilet. Before she shed her clothes, she unzipped her CDs and flipped the case open to the middle where she hid her blades, bandages, and antiseptic cream from prying eyes. She pulled a particularly sharp Exact-O knife from the plastic and set it on the edge of the bathtub. Only then did she pull off her clothes and climb into the tub.

The spray of water felt amazing against her tensed muscles. Raegan sighed as she stuck her head beneath the water and washed her hair thoroughly. She washed the rest of herself quickly, making sure to get all those special places a mom listed off before their child took their first bath or shower alone. When she was finished, she slid down the back wall of the shower and quickly found her favorite spot. The water kept her warm and wet but it didn’t get in her eyes and blind her.

Raegan rested the back of her head against the wall and let her eyes drift closed, her hand reaching out blindly to the side of the bathtub until it closed around the cold handle of the Exact-O knife. She pulled it into the shower and, without bothering to open her eyes, pressed the cool tip of the blade against the skin at the inside of her arm. With a deep outtake of air, she pressed down and dragged it across her arm, the barest of hisses slipping past her clenched teeth.

The relief came almost immediately, stealing over her senses and leaving her in an almost incapacitated state. For the first time that day her breathing evened out and the muscles the water hadn’t worked on loosened. She was calm, but she wouldn’t say that she was collected.

Her eyes opened and she watched the small stream of red tinged water as it ran down her arm and to the drain. It hadn’t been a very deep cut so the blood flow under the water didn’t last for very long. She wanted oh-so-badly to do it again, but knew that there would be no turning back if she did it. One cut was never enough. She always wanted more. But she was so afraid of losing control after her last incident that she fought the urge to give into her masochistic addiction.

Raegan turned the water off with her foot and sat in the bottom of the bathtub until she felt like an ice cube. She dried herself with the towel and pulled on her clean underwear, pajama pants, and T-shirt before drying the Exact-O knife and stuffing it back into the CD case. When she made sure that everything was decent, she left the bathroom, flicking the light switch off when she left.

“Supper’s ready, Raegan!” She heard her mom shout from the kitchen.

She groaned as she dropped her things off in her room, but went straight downstairs. Though Raegan knew her mother really didn’t care for her, she had never been able to deny her mother anything since her father’s death three years before. Someone in this house deserved to have at least a shred of happiness, and it wasn’t her.

Raegan trudged into the kitchen and took her place at the table, giving her mom a bare hint of a smile when she looked up at her. She took a long, deep drink from her glass of water before diving into her spaghetti. The way she saw it, the sooner this dinner was over, the better. That light was shining in her mom’s eyes again and she wanted to get away before it exploded.

Raegan stared angrily at her reflection, the water she had splashed on her face dripping from her chin to splash across the faux marble countertop. Her eyes were still slightly bloodshot from crying and her hair was still mused from falling asleep. She fingered the small cut on her right cheek with gentle fingers, using her eyes to take notice of every new bruise. She sighed when she was done counting. Thirteen. Well, it definitely hadn’t been her worst night.

As Raegan had predicted she would, her mom lashed out at her when dinner was finished. She was at the sink and she was feeding Ellie, their black Lab, when a glass had smashed against the wall not six inches from her head. Raegan jumped and turned just in time to have her mother’s hands clamp around her throat, but she didn’t flinch. She stared her straight in the eye, daring her to go further. In response, her mother had released her hands and slapped Raegan so hard she fell over. The side of her face hit the corner of the kitchen counter, cutting her and sending her into a half unconscious state.

Raegan couldn’t remember what had happened after that, just that she had woken a while later and somehow managed to make it back to her room. Once there, she had collapsed onto her bed and cried herself to sleep.

Shaking her head to rid it of the memory, she splashed another handful of water on her face and patted it dry. She dug around in the drawer until she found my other stash of blades. She unzipped the small, faux leather manicure pouch and pulled out an industrial razor blade. Raegan smiled at her fuzzy reflection on the blade before closing her eyes and taking it to her arm fifteen times; one for every bruise, two for every cut.

She quickly cleaned the wounds with cold water, not bothering to cover them with bandages, and replaced the blade in the pouch and shoved it back into its hiding spot at the back of the drawer. She cast one last glance back at her reflection before flicking off the light and leaving the bathroom in darkness, returning to her bedroom.

She was greeted Ellie, her tail wagging a hundred miles a minute like it always did. Raegan smiled at her and patted her head gently as she closed and locked the door behind her, the only way to keep her mother away from her for just a little while.

Raegan flopped backwards on to her bed, staring at the rays of light from passing cars that managed to sneak past her shades and pulled curtains. Ellie jumped on to the bed and curled into a small ball at her side, taking up more than half of the bed with her bulk. The loud sound of the chorus to Raegan’s favorite song violently pulled her out of her small moment of peace. She sighed and grabbed the phone from its place on her bedside table. She groaned when she checked the caller ID but answered anyway.

“What, Loren?”

“Am I not allowed to call my best friend anymore?” His voice was like hers—dry and stoic—yet he had more going for him than she could ever dream.

Raegan sighed and checked the clock. “Not at two-thirty in the morning, you’re not. I need my beauty sleep, remember?”

Loren laughed quietly. Yes, they were so alike it was scary. They had the same interests in everything, had the same personality, had the same birthday… There was only one difference between them and it was something only Raegan could point out. Loren’s happiness was genuine. Hers was a façade, a wall built up to keep him and others from worrying about her or turning her into the school counselor.

“I was just worried,” he muttered. “You said that you’d call me when you got home but you never did.”

“I’m a big boy, Loren. I can walk home from work by myself,” she said with a heavy sigh. “One day without you there to hold my hand wasn’t going to kill me.”

“Could you stop being an ass and take me seriously?” he growled. “Geez, Rae. You’re acting like I asked you to kill someone or something.”

“Could you stop being a mother hen and live a day without worrying about me?”

He laughed. “When you prove to me that I don’t have to worry, that’s the day that I’ll stop.”

“I’m going back to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning, and I’ll make sure to wait so you can hold my hand when we cross the street, Mommy.”

“Asshole,” Raegan heard him growl before she snapped her phone closed and turned it off so he couldn’t call back. She had learned all of his tricks by now, as she was sure he had learned most of hers, and she wasn’t going to let him wake her up.

Sighing, she snuggled down into my blankets and closed her eyes, letting sleep overcome her and carry her off to the one place she felt she belonged.

Morning was the same old routine. Raegan grumbled curses under her breath as she climbed out of bed five minutes after her alarm had woken her up and gathered some clean clothes so she could take a quick shower. She pulled her clothes on slowly when she was finished, not leaving the bathroom until she heard the front door close as her mom left for work. Then, she snuck back to her bedroom and stared at her reflection on her vanity mirror for as long as she could without flinching away.

She had been born with the plainest of appearances. Brown hair, blue eyes; both inherited from her mother. There really wasn’t anything out of the norm about her. And she didn’t think that she was the least bit attractive, either. She was too thin, too short, and looked too young.

The only odd and slightly interesting thing about her (and Loren, if she really thought about it) was that she had been born on February twenty-ninth. The way her body was built made her look like she was eighteen, but she was really only four. Yet, in the early morning sunlight, her eyes reflected the pain and suffering of the years she carried. And through those years, she’d managed to hide that pain well when she was in the company of others.

Grumbling quietly to herself, Raegan grabbed her tube of concealer from the table in front of her and started to dab the make-up onto the bruise around her throat that her mother had caused the night before. She almost took a second to feel pity for herself when she realized how much of a routine it was starting to become, but didn’t waste her breath. For some reason, she had managed to convince herself that she deserved the punishment she received from her mother.

Once the bruise was covered well enough, she swiped some black eyeliner and mascara onto her eyes before she grabbed her backpack and begrudgingly made her way downstairs.

She let Ellie out the back door so the Lab could play while she was at school, then grabbed a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and headed for the front door. Loren would be there any minute. She slipped into her most comfortable pair of Adios and shrugged on her jacket just as he knocked on the door. She sighed and ran a hand back through her long brown hair and pulled open the door.

Loren stood there with a half-frown, half-smile on his face, like usual. His blonde hair was gelled back in messy spikes and his blue eyes were cold but soft, as they always were, Raegan had noticed, when he looked at her.

“G’Morning, Sunshine.”

Raegan rolled her eyes and pulled the door closed behind her. Loren watched her in silence as she locked the door and kept his silence as they started their daily walk to school, but it didn’t last for long.

“Sorry I called you so late,” he muttered.

Raegan shrugged. “Whatever. It’s cool. I wasn’t asleep anyway.”

He chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Did you sleep after I called? You don’t look too good.”

She shrugged again. “Off and on. I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a while, you know that.”

“I never hurts to ask.”

She rolled my eyes and shoved her hands deep into her pockets, searching her mind for a change of topic. She seized the change when it came to her. “How’s Kendra doing? I haven’t been over in a while.”

“She’s the same as always. Loud and obnoxious, but she’s been working a lot lately so I haven’t seen her much.”

“…and you’ve been spending your every waking moment with Michelle.” He glared at her and she smiled. “Tell me something. How did you convince her to give you the freedom to walk with me in the mornings and afternoons?”

“She doesn’t have control over what I do, Raegan. Michelle’s not that kind of person. You should know that.”

Raegan shrugged. “Sometimes it seems like she does.”

“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes and got serious. “Forget that. How have things been with you lately? Have you…you know…seen anything lately?”

Raegan laughed. Another thing she couldn’t help but love about Loren. Though the things that she saw and the things that tended to happen around her were completely unbelievable, he had found a place in his heart to not judge her because of it. He may not believe in what happened, but he never told her to shut up and let it go like everyone else had, either.

Among many other things, she had confided in Loren about the comet she saw in the sky at twilight everyday on her way home from work. She swore that she saw something flash in his eyes when she had brought it up, but she never mentioned it to him, blaming the sight on a trick of the light or something instead. But he had never denied nor admitted that he’d seen the comet. It really made a girl wonder sometimes.

“People around us die everyday, Loren. Of course I’ve seen things.”

He rolled his eyes. “I meant out of the ordinary.”

“Nothing’s out of the ordinary for me anymore.” Raegan sighed. “What’s it matter to you anyway? Are you bored and looking for some action? Don’t come to me if that’s the case ‘cause I won’t help you.”

“I was just wondering,” he grumbled under his breath.

She shook her head and released a deep sigh as they stepped onto school grounds. 3…2…1…

“Loren!” Seemingly out of nowhere, Michelle latched onto the blonde’s arm and planted a kiss on his cheek.

He sighed and grumbled something under his breath, giving Raegan a look of desperation. She shrugged and offered him a small smile in return to his glare as Michelle dragged him away.

“See you in English, Rae!” he shouted, and then he was gone. And she was alone again.

Raegan ran a hand back through her hair and wove her way through the crowd of people who were unloading from the school buses until she was inside. The hallways weren’t quite deserted but they were quieter than the world beyond the school walls where the kids gathered until the bell rang that forced them inside. Those who wandered the halls around Raegan complained to one another about having to get up so early to go to school, as if it they would enjoy school more if they were able to go at a later time. She tried her hardest to ignore them.

She was the kind of person who didn’t like school, but didn’t hate it either. It aggravated her that she had to get up so early, but she would much rather be in school than home alone. When she was alone, she started to think, so she liked the constant bustle of school because it kept her mind busy. A constant distraction… And being able to spend time with Loren was a plus. She never would have met him if it hadn’t been for school.

Raegan sighed as she reached her locker and put in her combination. She pulled open the door and threw in her backpack, dropping her books into the bottom. She was usually a more organized person but today she didn’t care. When the hall around her started to fill with loud people, she grabbed the books for her first hour class and left. She may have liked the distraction, but he didn’t enjoy the noise one bit. It annoyed her… People annoyed her.

She was in a different world when she walked to class, her mind reeling around things that were more important than the world around her. Before she knew it, she was in her seat at the back of the classroom with her book open in front of her. No matter how many times it happened, things like that made her jump and set her heart racing. It was almost like she had had no control over the situation. She could have killed someone! Alright, over-exaggeration, but it still scared her a bit.

“G’Morning, Rae!”

Raegan mentally groaned at the sound of that voice. That oh-so-annoying voice that seemed to follow her everywhere. She put on her best fake smile and looked up.

“Hey, Jess. Good morning.”

The redhead giggled and plopped down into the seat in front of her. She kept her smile on her lips and faced her.

“How was your night? Anything interesting happen?”

“All I did was work and you go to spend that joyous time with me.”

“Oh yeah!” she giggled.

Raegan groaned. Yes, she went to school and worked everyday with that. But that was an overexaggeration too. She usually wasn’t quite that bad. She was a girl. Well, she was too, but she was different. She was a normal girl; one of the girls who giggled, smiled all the time, and thought they were your best friend just because you talked to them in class. Unfortunately, she had never told Raegan where she worked before she got a job at the restaurant she had now worked at for two years.

Jessica really was a nice girl; too nice sometimes. But Raegan had also had the joy of witnessing her angry side. Thankfully, she hadn’t been on the receiving end of that bout of anger because it had been ugly. She had made the poor guy break down and run away. To be honest, Raegan had laughed at him and been the one to calm Jessica down. It had been quite comical.

The classroom around them gradually began to fill with students, shattering the semi-silence that had settled around Raegan. The other students slouched down into their seats and pulled out their books before breaking into loud chatter.

“Have you seen the new seniors yet, Rae?”

She blinked and turned her attention back onto Jessica. “Hm…?”

“The new seniors. Have you seen them yet?”

“Nuh-uh,” she said, shaking my head. “Should I have?”

Jessica giggled quietly and a pretty pink blush bloomed across her cheeks. “I dunno. I just figured I would ask since it’s what everyone’s talking about. But you never pay attention to everyone else, do you?”

Raegan shook her head. “They bore me.”

“Well these new kids seem rather interesting,” she said with a frown, turning into the Jessica Raegan managed to like most of the time.

“If you think pretty and creepy is interesting…”

Raegan looked to her right just as two guys took their seats in the desks beside them. Edward and Peyton were identical twins and were two of Loren’s friends. It seemed that they thought their connection with Raegan’s best friend immediately made them her friends too, and she didn’t have the heart to tell them otherwise.

“Top of the mornin’ to ya, Raegan,” Edward said with a little wave.

She rolled my eyes. “What do you mean by ‘pretty and creepy’? Are they really?”

He shrugged and slouched down in his chair. “They’re both pretty. One has long, spikey bright red hair and looks like a cat. The other’s hair is black and long and he looks like a girl. And the way that they carry themselves is just creepy. It’ll send a shiver down your spine when you see ‘em, trust me.”

Jessica made a small scoffing noise and pulled Raegan’s attention back to her. “They’re not that creepy looking, Ed. Over-dramtic, much?”

He snorted. “Overbearing much?”

The girl growled under her breath and turned away from Edward haughtily. Raegan would say that the two hated each other, but she thought there was something more to it. At least she hoped that there was something more to it, especially if it would get Jessica off her back for a while.

Raegan laughed. “So you think they’re creepy because of their hair?” She laughed again. “Oookay. I guess it makes sense coming from someone with such plain hair as you, right?”

Edward scowled at me and turned to face the board as the teacher came strolling into the classroom fifteen minutes late, running a self-conscious hand back through his brown hair as he did. The class came to a screeching quiet. It happened so fast that Raegan could hear it ringing in her ears.

“Good morning, guys! Ready for another grand day at Salem High?!”

Everyone around Raegan groaned. She laughed and received several incredulous looks in the process. The teacher chuckled and clapped to draw the attention back onto him.

“At least I know that someone in here has a sense of humor.” He laughed and winked jokingly at Raegan. “Anyway, if you all have your papers on the social myth you picked, please pass them forward so I can collect them. If not, then don’t give me excuses and bring it tomorrow for a dropped letter grade.”

Raegan groaned as the rest of the class started to dig through their folders for their papers. She had completely forgotten about the assignment…again. Great. She was already failing the class. Jessica turned to her with her paper in her hand, holding her free one out for Raegan’s paper.

“Forget about it,” she said with a small smile.

Jessica frowned and shook her head, giving Raegan her “We’ll talk about this later” look. She sighed when Jessica turned back to face the front of the room. Raegan didn’t want to sit through yet another speech from Jessica about how important it was for her to get through school with good grades so she could get into a good college when the next year came around. She really didn’t care about it either way.

Raegan sighed again and flipped open to the first clean page in her notebook as the teacher began to talk again. It wasn’t long before her concentration waned and she was doodling in the margins of the page. If she came up with a good enough excuse, Jessica would make her a copy of her notes on their way to lunch, anyway, so why pay attention?

She absentmindedly traced over her drawing for the third time. It was a face…the angel from her dreams with long black hair and beautiful green eyes. The one person who understood and didn’t judge her because of the things she did and saw. She only wished he was real…

Lunch. For most kids in school, the sound of the bell ringing that set them free for that glorious half an hour was like hearing a hundred angels singing in Paradise. For those who haven’t learned it yet, Raegan wasn’t like most kids in school. She hated lunch. She hated standing in the line for twenty of those thirty minutes of freedom. She hated being asked questions for five minutes after she finally got her food and sat down at the table. She hated having to shovel her food down in breakneck speed before the bell rang. She hated pushing her way through the crowd that rushed to the trash cans to dump their trays. She hated having to go back to class. She hated lunch…in high school, anyway.

But today, by some random miracle, she and Loren had made it to the cafeteria before the rush came in. They were only in line for ten minutes before they got their food and settled down at their table, shoveling down their French fries bathed in ketchup and cheese pizza that tasted exactly the way that it looked, like a piece of cardboard with glue slathered across the top.

Raegan was done before Loren, like usual. She never had to eat much before she was full. She built a Lincoln Log-esque house out of her French fries while she waited for Loren to take that last bite of pizza and wash it down with a mouth full of Mountain Dew. He sighed when he was finished and wiped stray pizza sauce from the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

“How can you eat that shit?” Raegan muttered, barely glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as she continued building her cabin.

He chuckled. “All I have to do is imagine that it’s a piece of Papa John’s pizza and it’s all good. But the aftertaste gives it away.” He licked the roof of his mouth and frowned in disgust, taking a long drink from his Mountain Dew.

Raegan shook her head. “You’re insane, you know that, right?”

He shrugged and smiled. “You wouldn’t like me if I wasn’t. Normal people bore you, remember?”

“People in general bore me. You know that.”

He chuckled. “You’re a piece of work.”

Raegan shrugged and continued building her house. It was going rather well and she was almost to the point of attempting a roof when someone rammed into the table and sent the fries spilling across the table. She growled and looked up to see who she was going to have to kill and immediately froze when their eyes made contact.

It was him…the angel from her dreams. He was there. He was…real. Raegan shook her head and blinked a couple of times to clear her head, but no…he was still there. Long, shining black hair and brilliant green eyes that were the color of the ocean. There was no denying the resemblance. But something was off. Something about this person was different than the kind person she saw in her dreams. Something in his eyes was different. They were colder, darker…meaner. His gaze made Raegan shiver.

Her dream friend’s doppelganger smirked and continued on his way past the table. Raegan watched his back as he walked, her eyes slowly narrowing to slits as her anger increased. He sat down at a table with another guy with fire engine red hair. The redhead glanced in Raegan’s direction and smirked before turning to the raven-haired guy and talking to him.

Hatred surged through Raegan’s veins, and it scared her a little bit. She hated these two people and she didn’t even know their names? It wasn’t like her to be so irrational. Maybe he had just run into the table on accident. And it wasn’t like she had been building something important, really… But, no. Whether she was building a French fry cabin or scale model of the Eiffel Tower, he had run into the table on purpose. That smirk he had given her was proof enough of that.

“Asshole,” Raegan muttered under my breath.

“His name is Jesse Bradshaw, and the guy with him is Joel Bradshaw. They’re in my English class.”

Raegan blinked and turned her attention back to Loren. “They’re…brothers?”

He shrugged and took a sip from his Mountain Dew. “Who knows? One of them is probably adopted, but it’s not like we can just ask, right? That would be just a little rude.”

“Like him running into the table and knocking over my cabin wasn’t rude…”

Loren laughed. “So that’s what you were building.”

Raegan growled quietly and glared at him. “What the hell did you think I was building? The Tahj Mahal or something? I mean gods…”

She let her sentence trail off and her eyes roamed back across the cafeteria to where Jesse and Joel sat in conversation. Joel was gesturing wildly about something while Jesse just shook his head. She swore she saw Joel’s eyes flick over to her in the briefest of gestures—felt her muscles stiffen like she had been shocked—but she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that she hated them both. But she hated Jesse and his pretty hair more.

“Do you know Jesse? You looked like you recognized him at first,” Loren asked.

Raegan shrugged. “He just looks like someone I used to know,” she muttered. “But I was wrong. It’s not him. They’re completely different people.”

Loren sighed and nodded and they fell into silence. Raegan blinked and checked the clock that hung between the entrances to the two separate lunch lines. Five minutes were left to go and there was still a line of people who were waiting to eat. She felt sorry for their poor souls, though eating nothing was probably better than stomaching the nasty dough and cheese concoction the school considered pizza.

Just then, she noticed that something was missing. She could have smacked herself for not noticing the absence of the annoyance sooner.

“Where’s Michelle? Did she skip lunch today or something?”

Loren shrugged. “She left during English. Said something about not feeling well or something.” He shrugged again. “I’ll call her later tonight. She’s probably just having female problems or something like that.”

She snorted and shook her head. “Yeah…hopefully…”

Raegan set to the task of picking up the scattered fries, munching on a few here and there as she gathered them. The bell signaling the end of lunch rang soon after she was finished. She and Loren gathered their trays and pushed and shoved their ways to the trash cans to dump them off. They then managed to squeeze out of the crowd and push through the double doors to the lobby without a scratch.

The hallways were crowded with people rushing to their lockers to get their books and to their fourth hour class before the second bell rang and they would be late. Raegan didn’t care, and neither did Loren. They took their sweet time getting to their lockers and gathering their books, and didn’t spend any time worrying about being late on their walk to class. The bell rang while they were still in the hall, but they didn’t run. It didn’t matter.

They slipped into their fourth hour AP chemistry class five minutes late, but the teacher wasn’t even there yet. Raegan groaned as she noticed the lab stations around the room were set up with beakers, flasks and test tubes. She had forgotten that they were going to be doing a lab. She hated labs. She understood the mathematical work we had to do in class, but when it came to labs she always drew a blank. That’s where she relied on Loren as the brains. And thankfully he seemed to have plenty to go around.

Loren elbowed her in the side and directed her attention toward their seats with a nod of his head. Raegan’s eyes almost fell out of her head when she saw Jesse and Joel sitting in the back row of the class, in the seats right beside where she and Loren sat. And, of course, Jesse had to be in the seat next to her. And, of course again, their lab partners were always broken into rows, which meant that Jesse and Joel would be joining she and Loren in their magical chemistry experience for the day…and every day that followed for the rest of the school year.

Raegan wanted to beat her head against a wall.

Instead, she obeyed Loren’s nudge in her back and led the way to their seats, doing her best to ignore Jesse as she settled down into her seat. Even after she was sitting, she kept her eyes locked on the board and refused to talk to Loren, which annoyed the blonde quite a bit. Her day hadn’t really been that great to begin with, but now it was officially dead.

The teacher waltzed into the room five minutes later with a Diet Coke in his hand and a smile on his face. Raegan couldn’t help but to glare at him. Bastard. Not really, though. Her AP chemistry teacher was one of three teachers that she actually liked out of the seven she had daily. He was lenient and had a dry sense of humor. He also liked to play video games and didn’t care about who knew it. That was a total plus in her book.

“’Afternoon, guys,” he said as he settled into his chair in the front of the class. “For those of you who didn’t remember because you didn’t do your lab write-up, you have a lab to do today. All the chemicals are in the usual places. I’ve already set out the materials you’ll need.”

Everyone started to get up from their seats so they could start their work. Loren and Raegan froze when he called their names. “Rae, Loren…you’ll be working with Jesse and Joel. Be nice.” He looked at Raegan in particular. “Now go… And don’t forget to wear your goggles.”

Raegan rolled her eyes and grabbed her lab book and notebook from her desk before trudging over to their lab station, Loren following her closely behind. She was thoroughly annoyed. No. She was beyond annoyed. This was bullshit! It was like the gods were rebelling against her for something she didn’t do. What could she have possibly done to deserve this?

“Let’s get this over with,” Loren muttered and flipped his lab book open to the page with the instructions for what they were supposed to do.

Someone in the vicinity of Jesse and Joel chuckled, and Loren glared at them, his eyes like ice.

“You two could do something useful instead of acting like complete assholes,” he spat.

“Watch your language, Loren!” the teacher muttered.

Jesse chuckled and smirked at the blonde. Raegan saw something flash behind Loren’s eyes, but it was covered up with hatred too quickly for her to name it.

“Come on, Rae. I’ll get the chemicals if you clean the flasks out.” Loren grabbed a couple of beakers and a pair of goggles and headed toward the station laden with chemicals.

Raegan checked the book and grabbed the three Erlenmeyer flasks they would be needing so she could clean them out. The water from the faucet was so cold that it made her hiss, but the soap smelled good. She swirled the water around in the flasks until she was sure they were clean. Then, she dumped the water and filled them with distilled water to rinse the soap and any other impurities out.

“You know your stuff…”

She growled under her breath at the sound of that damned voice. There was a quiet laugh and a hot gust of air brushed past her ear. Raegan jumped and dropped the flask she had been holding in her hand. It shattered across the table.

“Raegan!” the teacher shouted. “Watch what you’re doing!”

“Sorry,” she muttered under her breath and glared at Jesse.

He smiled at her and shrugged. “Having some problems? You should let me handle that before you break anything else.”

“Fuck you!” she growled.

“Raegan…” the teacher warned.

She turned on her heel and stormed out of the classroom without a word, ignoring Loren’s pleas for her to stay. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t work with someone who pissed her off so badly. But that wasn’t the only reason. There was something about him that made her knees weak and her breathing difficult. It could have been his resemblance to the angel in her dreams, but she couldn’t be too sure. He was more like the angel from her nightmares than anything else.

Jesse and Joel… They were just too cool. The way they carried themselves and how they looked down upon others caused them to radiate a sort of authority, and everyone else seemed to listen. They wouldn’t be so freakin’ pompous of they didn’t listen to them.

But that wasn’t it either. It wasn’t because Jesse was cool or the fact that he looked like Raegan’s dream angel. No… It was something completely different, and somewhere deep down inside, she knew what it was, but something else in her kept it hidden.

‘Fuck you, Jesse. Fuck you and your pretty black hair and green eyes.’ She stormed into an empty classroom and kicked the nearest wall. ‘Fuck you and…’ She growled loudly. ‘I’ll never forgive you for what you did to me!’

Raegan slid down the wall and buried her head in her hands. For some reason, she was crying. Painful sobs were ripped from her chest as she slid sideways down the wall to lie on the floor, her cheek pressing against the rough carpet.

“Raegan!”

Quick footsteps tapped across the floor and she was lifted into someone’s arms. Raegan opened her eyes to see Loren above her, a concerned look on his face.

“Rae…are you okay? You…you don’t remember, do you?”

Raegan choked on a sob when she tried to speak so she just shook her head. No, she didn’t remember. She didn’t know anything either, and it was driving her insane. Why was she filled with so much hatred when she looked at Jesse? And why did he make her melt inside at the same time? It was completely illogical. It didn’t make any sense! She didn’t understand!

Loren made a quiet, consoling noise and ran a gentle hand through Reagan’s hair while she continued her crying. She must have fallen asleep sometime after that because the next thing she met was the face of her angel. He was smiling, but his eyes were like ice.

Her dream-self sighed. “Jesse…”