started spinning the combo on her locker at the same time as me. I got distracted and had to start over.
Once she had her coat on, Denise shut her locker with a thud.
"See you later," she said, hoisting her backpack over one shoulder
So now she couldn't wait to walk out to our cars together?
Okay then.
I zipped up my jacket a minute later and headed for the student parking lot alone. The moisture on my lashes froze as soon as I stepped outside. Exhaust from idling cars hovered in the stagnant air. Not only was this time of year cold and dark, it turned my stomach inside out.
Once the car stuttered to life, I smacked my mittens together to keep from freezing solid and let the vents do their work unthawing the windshield. After the ice turned to droplets, I swiped the windshield with the wipers. They carved a porthole into the glass and grated against the coarse outer layers of ice.
The roads hadn't thawed, not even with the blast of exhaust pipes and friction of tires running across the polished ice all day. Tires spun in the parking lot. The truck in front of me gunned it and slid sideways onto the road.
College couldn't come soon enough.
I turned the radio on and sung along softly to the lyrics as I passed mounds of snow that had melted during a warm spell the previous week. This week they'd refrozen into white misshapen humps over the landscape.
My tires skid at the first red stoplight. I slid forward four inches. Getting started again took a moment. Too much gas and my tires spun in place.
Once I lived on campus at Notre Dame there would be no more playing slip and slide on the streets. I planned to walk everywhere on solid pavement.
I passed the fast food chains lining the road just blocks from Denali High. On the long straight stretch home I drove on autopilot until business centers turned to neighborhoods. Small gaps of forest arched over the sides of the road. I was almost home when I took the sharpest curve on Jewel Lake Road.
As I rounded the corner a SUV appeared in front of me, speeding around the bend. The car made a horrible skidding sound before sliding into my lane.
Time inched forward.
Tires screeched. I braked, but the car slid out from under me. Light glinted off the SUV's front windshield, and for a moment, I saw the driver - a boy wearing a blue bandana around his forehead. Maybe I would have found him cute if he weren't about to kill us both.
In seconds, he would hit me. And I couldn't do anything. I couldn't brake. I couldn't dodge him. This was it.
I saw the boy's face. I read his lips. "Oh, shit."
We said the words together.
In the event of a catastrophe, one thing is sure. Your life ends on a curse.
Chapter 2 Terms of Revival
Sound returned first. A gurney trundled over the floor. Parchment fluttered. The scratch of pen on paper thundered in my ear, as though someone held a microphone to the tip as they wrote.
Later I heard voices and a horrible metallic scraping. Even with eyes closed the lights glared. The brightness penetrated my eyelids straight to the space in front of my brain. Static pinpricks of light moved inside my forehead.
They wheeled something over. It got closer and closer.
A smooth voice said, "Find me the moment she starts to come around."
Then sound left the room like fire sucking oxygen from a burning building. For a while there was nothing, not even the static in my mind. And then the first traces of feeling returned.
Blood rushed through my veins. My heart began a steady pump. My eyes fluttered. I balled my toes up and released them. The thin bones in my hand moved under my skin like hammers connected to piano keys as my fingers twitched over the sheet.
"How are you feeling, Aurora?"
I lowered my chin and got my first glimpse of the face behind the voice. He was a young man, cleanly shaven, wearing a gray suit.
When our eyes met he smiled. "I am Agent Melcher. Welcome back."
My voice croaked the moment I opened my mouth. "Where am I?"
"You're on Elmendorf Air Force Base and this..." Melcher said looking around the bright enclosure "is our unit's own private ER."
It made sense that I would be in a hospital, but why on base? My family had no ties to the armed forces. Dad was out of the