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exclusive club we are. We were all losers at one time."

  "And you're not now?"

  "What do you think?"

  I thought of the fearless way he handled Kyle in the lunchroom. How he walked around dressed like a character out of Tim Burton's, The Corpse Bride, yet no one said one word to him about it.

  "No, you're not." A question occurred to me. "Why do you go to school? I doubt I'll ever go back again. Who needs it?"

  Zack looked into the fire, his face awash with golden light.

  "I'm five hundred years old. It's fun to do something different. I go for a few years when I get bored. Sometimes I go to a college."

  "How do you get in when you have no legitimate academic background?"

  "I have my ways."

  I knew he used the same powers he used on Mr. Wright. Just got him to look away. Just got the administrators to sign him up for high school or college classes without past records or any form of I.D. Just look away.

  Suddenly pain stabbed my stomach. I doubled over and fell to my knees.

  "Hey, you all right?"

  His voice sounded far away. Dimly, I felt a hand on my back. The searing pain in my gut grew until it felt like it would explode and splatter my other organs with bile and blood. I wrapped my arms around my midsection and squeezed as tight as I could, thinking the compression would stop the intense agony.

  "Is he all right?"

  "What's the matter?"

  "What happened?"

  I heard their voices around me. I opened my eyes and stared at the dirty cement floor I had collapsed on. The smell of ancient gas and oil seeped into my nostrils. Fine. Anything to take my mind off the pain.

  "Hey, E. Are you all right?" Zack shook my shoulder.

  "I don't know," I gasped. "My stomach. Something's wrong."

  A peculiar silence fell over all of them, but I didn't think much of it then. I was too busy trying to breath through the pain. I learned later that it was suspicion that quieted them up. They knew something I didn't.

  Slowly, very slowly the pain began to dissipate. I could finally catch my breath. My stomach settled down and with shaky arms I pushed myself up to a seated position.

  "Better?" Brenda asked, putting a cool hand on my cheek. I looked at her young face and into her lovely light blue eyes and tried not to remember that she drank blood to stay alive. Tried not to think that I did now too.

  "Yes," I answered. "Whew! What the hell was that all about?" I asked no one in particular.

  "C'mon, man," Zack helped me up. "It'll be dawn soon. You should get some rest."

  Bed actually sounded pretty good. The painful episode stole all my energy and a tiredness crashed down on me.

  We parted ways and agreed to meet at the warehouse at midnight the next night.

  For a week I watched the rest of the group fly and laugh and party while I got sick every night. I had to drink the blood to survive, but I spent the next six hours with the shakes and stomach ripping pain. The symptoms seemed to get worse every night. Zack had claimed I would still be able to enjoy all my favorite foods, but on the fourth day, I couldn't eat anymore. Anything that went down felt like sandpaper in my throat and acid in my gut. The contacts hurt my eyes. They, too, felt like orbs of sandpaper in their sockets. I suffered night and day. The worst of it all was I never gained the ability to fly.

  "What's going on with me, Zack?" I finally asked. He became oddly quiet over the course of that week, and I knew he knew something.

  "Tell me," I said when he wouldn't answer. We sat by the fire alone. Everyone else flew above us.

  "It's not good."

  "No shit it's not good. I feel like I'm dying."

  Zack looked at me with a blank expression.

  "Am I? Am I dying?" Funny that the thought didn't fill me with fear.

  "I knew only one other person this happened to. A kid named Michael. The only thing we could figure is it was from some sort of blood disorder he had. I'm not sure that was it, but that was the closest thing we could think of."

  I thought of the blood transfusion I had when I was seven. Could that be it? The anemia from the tapeworm? Could that be it?

  "What happened to him?"

  Zack stared into the fire as if he hadn't heard. I repeated my question and he finally looked me in the eye.

  "He died within two weeks."

  "Is there anything I can do to stop it?"

  His silence was answer enough.

  So now I sit on a bluff that overlooks the mighty Mississippi river. It's autumn so I know the leaves of all those trees are blazing in reds, oranges and yellows. But it all looks gray to me.

  This pain is unbearable.

  Maybe I'll take these retched contacts out. Maybe I'll get a glimpse of those trees before I die.

  I can only hope my luck changes in the afterlife.

  ***

  Thanks, and happy reading.