CHAPTER 1

now

KPH graduating class of 2029

I adjusted the cap on Jade's head and she ducked away from my nimble fingers, a frown puckering the smooth mocha perfection of her forehead.

"Come on, babe, come here." I reached to scoop her back to me and she huffed. "No, Caleb, you're going to wreck my hair!"

Wreck. The. Hair. Uh-huh.

We couldn't have that. I mean, graduation and all. Monumental.

I couldn't have cared less but this was Jade's day, John's day. The prison doors were opening with a whisper and closing with a clank.

We were free.

"It's hanging crooked," I argued logically. The deep royal blue of the cap contrasted with the naturally black hair that flowed down her back in an artful silken waterfall.

It was a mite distracting as Clyde would say. He had given me a level of vocabulary that even my Grammar-Nazi mom couldn't compete with. I dug that.

Clyde would be here today with Bobbi. He wouldn't miss it.

Jade shrieked as I raced after her, my arms going around her waist and I lifted her as she squealed.

Alex came in and saw the two of us doing a staggering dance of hyperactivity. "What... is this like a porn thing here?"

What? I looked at him, bodily turning around to face him with Jade in my arms.

Her embarrassment was tangible.

I hadn't been thinking that way but now that he mentioned it....

Jade was dying, I noticed, a flush creeping up on her cheeks.

"No man, she won't cooperate with a hat fix," I said, saving the moment.

Alex's eyes shifted to the crooked graduation cap, the tassel swinging in Jade's face like a pendulum gone bad and smiled.

"Yeah, that bad cap. I hear that." Mucho-sarcasm.

I let Jade down and gave a chuckle. Perv-Alex was right on board as usual. Then Randi came up behind him and goosed him in the ass and it was his turn to get embarrassed.

Randi peeked around his big body and looked at Jade. "See how that works?"

Jade nodded, grinning. "I do, yes."

The girls looked at each other smugly and Alex grunted. "The girls have the power man," he said, only half-teasing.

"That's smart that ya just figured that out," I responded and gave him a sly smile, suppressing a girl-worthy eye roll.

"Merranda?" Principal Chen popped her face into the room where many graduates gathered, the talking like a low din of white noise in the background. Her hair was so tightly slicked back from her face she looked like a refugee from a forty MPH wind tunnel.

I blinked and Jade laughed, she'd gotten the full Empath blow by on that. I'd always wondered if she got it like a pulsescreen visual of my thoughts or what? Sometimes I just wanted to own my weirdness with no witnesses.

"You grumpy that I saw that?" Jade whispered, her lips tickling my neck and making me shift my weight. She knew how she affected me. Jade was a walking sexsicle. She knew it, I knew it and she was being evil now.

I glowered at her. "Yeah, now let me fix your hat."

She smiled, giving my neck a soft peck and I turned to capture her lips, giving an internal groan of satisfied bliss.

I completely forgot about Chen. Jade sometimes had that Mind Blanking Effect on me.

"Mr. Hart," she said in a low voice full of warning.

It cut through my fog like a lighthouse beacon.

I swiveled my head and Alex whispered, "Busted."

How could I be busted? I'd be nineteen in a matter of a few months.

Randi made the slicing the neck gesture behind her gestapo mom's back, which clearly said don't blow it, not today, we're this close.

Then something happened that surprised the hell of me. Chen gave me a break.

"Don't do the PDA spectacle when we get out there in the auditorium."

Right. I nodded. "Hey thanks." My surprise must have shown because she gave a low laugh.

"I was eighteen once," she explained.

We all looked at her and she laughed again. "I was... you'll see." She turned to her daughter, dwarfed by my friend the Body. A guy so massive he was his own zip code. Not defined by name but by area.

"I need you to be in your seat before the other students, Merranda."

"Okay, Mom," Randi responded on the barest side of neutral.

I think all of us had about had Enough of Parents.

We filed out, Jade with her crooked hat and perfect hair, me with the I'm-so-glad-this-is-over-I-could-shit-myself look.

I saw that same look on about half the guys and a good number of the girls too. Universal School Scorn.

Nice.

We were alphabetical so my hands fell away from Jade reluctantly when she went to the L section.

It put her really close to Carson Hamilton. There was only a skinny girl still in braces sitting between them.

I felt that familiar anger wash over me, thinking about our senior year. The near misses. The intensity of my anger was barely held in check. I'd just missed getting that probation reinstated. I'd finished my Reactive Management class by the skin of my teeth and I used the skills I'd been taught and barely mastered now.

Our world had become so politically correct that even criminals graduated. Thankfully, Tiff was in the W section.

Jonesy came up behind me and clapped me on the back. He'd grown over the summer between junior and senior year, his frame an inch shy of my almost six feet two. We'd all become tall but Terran and Alex were giants. Alex was all due to the Graysheet cocktail. But Terran was just him. He was six feet five inches of lean mean fighting machine.

John was also the valedictorian. Of course.

"Jade is by Hamilton," Jonesy said, like that little fact would escape my notice.

"Yeah," I responded, my anger deepening. My intellect told me he wouldn't try anything. That primitive beat of guyness was on point all the same. I thought males would always be this way. It was a natural thing.

We stood there contemplating that fun occurrence when Tiff came up and stood between us.

"Well that's a fuckburger," Tiff said casually, eying Jade's seating.

"Language, Weller," Griswold hissed, sans whistle. Tiff lifted a narrow shoulder, the satin of her white gown making a slithering sound against her hair. "Okay," she replied, utterly unruffled. I held in the walrus bark with an effort.

Jonesy didn't, giving a raucous guffaw that made Griswold's brows drop into a unibrow above her eyes.

Griswold stalked off muttering as Gramps walked up to our group. His eyebrows popped as he watched Griswold circle us ruffian teens like a shark on the blood scent trail.

"She a hard charger?" Gramps asked knowingly.

Tiff turned her head to look at him. "Huh?" she asked, giving Griswold the look as she got in someone else's grill.

I instantly translated Old Guy Speak, "She gets 'er done."

"Hell yeah," Jonesy muttered, wiping fake sweat off his forehead and Griswold hissed from across the room, "Language, Jones."

Gramps laughed. "Good hearing too."

He had no idea.

Mia came up with Bry, their hands laced intimately. They'd finally gotten together and the group had given a collective sigh of relief. Although, if Bry didn't get his act together and start to think again we were going to be driven insane.

Mia had graduated last year and was attending today just for us. Bry was here with his one hundred and one siblings en mass. He leaned down, using the tip of his nose to push Mia's hair away from her ear and she tilted her face so he could get better access and smiled in response to something only she could hear.

Gramps looked on and said nothing. His face said so much.

The scars from the beating he'd taken in the sphere world were still on his face and he claimed they were character marks. He had a lot of character then.

Jezebel the Organic hadn't been able to fix him totally and he still limped when the weather turned cool.

It made me feel guilty as hell.

I saw Gramps' hand stray to the pocket of his perfectly pressed shirt. He was itching for a smoke but I knew he was finally trying to quit.

Tiff gave my arm a small squeeze. She was telling me that it sucked ass that Hamilton was by Jade but I consoled myself with the basic fact that it was graduation. He wouldn't try anything stupid.

Right?

They announced my last name and I filed into the auditorium.

I got to be right next to Hamilton who was wearing a smug expression. He'd love to make trouble. He couldn't though; his daddy was sitting and watching.

So were the cops, the sick fucks.

I leaned forward and caught Jade's eye and she winked, the emerald of her eye blinking out of existence for a second and then reappearing like found treasure. She was so brave, sitting not far from Hamilton. Where were all the letters in between? Damn, it figured we were missing a bunch.

John walked on stage and I watched him, my scrutiny probably not unlike his parents'. Out of all of us, he'd fashioned his future. I was proud of him. So was Jonesy, who turned around, no embarrassment over eyes that were shiny with our friend's accomplishments.

Terran opened his mouth to speak, his three by five index cards gripped in long tapered fingers that matched his tall body perfectly. I couldn't help but think of the Guys with Gills as the memory of their physique slid through my mind as an unforgettable memory.

John had that look. He was unfinished, not yet nineteen and too lean by far, but he had that look. Minus the gills.

"I was going to give the perfect speech," John said gazing out at the audience. The sound of crickets was clear in the well of silence that struck the outdoor auditorium. "However, as I look at your faces, I'm going to speak about what really matters instead of what is expected." His pleasant face, framed by hair that had gone to a deep red as he'd gotten older, looked at the sea of faces, his light blue eyes scanning the crowd for a readiness that might or might not be there.

Every eye was trained on him and when he had their full attention he said, "I want to talk about Brett Mason."

Even I sucked in a lungful, and I'm not easily shocked. I would've never thought John would abandon the Perfect Lecture for emotion. But he had. His parents were somewhere using airsick bags as we watched. I just knew it.

I got a sudden image of Joan upchucking in a bag and smiled until my face hurt.

Jonesy turned around and grinned. "This oughta be good," he said with barely contained glee.

Yeah.

"My biggest lesson was not learned through my textbooks. And I am very aware that this should be the time to talk about how fine an education I've received." His icy eyes held the crowd's without rancor but with a purpose.

Maybe Griswold wasn't the only hard charger in the auditorium today.

"I'll leave that for others. My finest lessons came from my friends," he paused, his eyes briefly resting on Jones and me, then restlessly moving on. "They taught me the value of individuality," and his speech halted, a small grin overtaking his face and I knew, just knew, he was thinking of Jonesy. "However, Brett Mason taught me the finest lesson of my life."

The audience held their collective breath.

"Bravery," John said and they stood.

Every cap and gown, every parent, everyone who had legs stood. Even that bastard Hamilton.

Because one of our own had died saving a girl that I loved.

Who, I was certain, would one day be my wife.

Sometimes milestones are not measured by the accomplishments of society, but by those of integrity.

Brett had taught John that.

Hell, he'd taught us all.

I turned to look at Jade as the clapping died down and saw the tears on her face, seeing through the sadness to the joy that lay underneath.

Brett was gone but he was still a part of us.

There would have been no "us" if it had not been for him.

We all understood it.

That's why John had committed himself to a speech about a mundane from a broken family that had been misunderstood.

Though not forgotten.

Never that.

*

I don't know what possessed John's parents to host a humongous reception for the graduates at their house. Obviously, serving a red fruit punch over obscenely white carpeting was nothing short of idiotic. Even if it did have plastic runners bisecting the center.

Especially watching Jonesy doing the hip-swiveling dance with his punch. A la beer pong cup.

He was having fun with that part. He'd flung his arm around Sophie who was making every effort to act like she was indifferent to the attention.

"And here's the thing, Soph... John's mom's doin' quarters baby," his voice dropped to be hidden by the low drone of the mixed voices in the Terran household, filled to bursting with red punch.

Hell, even I was nervous. I watched Terran's eyes dart around like a ping pong ball without a paddle. There were simply too many cups to watch. He gave up, slogging over to my side.