Harrison the Articulate Sneezer raises his hand. I thank Mrs. Savage and make my way toward the empty seat nearest the group while Mrs. Savage explains the assignment, which is to work with our group to represent an interest group, then debate its side of the argument as if we were trying to draft the legislation surrounding resurrection rights. No resurrection history is included in any school curriculum until eighth grade. I used to be excited to finally get to study it when I was younger. It seemed so grown-up.
Now I can’t think about resurrections without thinking of Matt and the promise my parents made him only a week ago. I’d been the one to find him. Blood had been seeping out of his mouth, running down from the corners. It dribbled down his chin. He’d tried to bite through his own tongue to choke, a tactic he’d seen in a movie that Dad let him watch when Mom left to get her hair cut.
“Alexis Angel,” the girl named Maya says to the two boys. The group is turning their desks to face one another. She ignores me entirely, instead staying busy punching buttons into her phone, as I push my skateboard under one of the desks and rest my saddle oxfords on it. “Too pretty. Too perfect. Guarantee it,” she says without looking up.
Harrison rolls his eyes. “You’re just jealous. Lead singer of Dante’s Playground.”
Peng throws an eraser at Harrison and hits him squarely between the eyes. “Come on, everyone knows that one. All his fans are death groupies.”
“I’ve heard he’s actually not.” Maya glances up. “He’s just saying he is to push his image. Oh!” She leans forward. “Somebody told me, I can’t tell you who, that Principal Nazari is.”
Harrison guffaws. “But he’s so…feeble.” He does a crooked, bent-over impression of an old man walking.
Maya raises her eyebrows and shrugs, pushing her thumb hard into her phone screen many times over.
“Um.” I sit up and give a small wave. “What exactly are we doing?”
“Sorry, hi.” Maya shakes her head like she’s a little embarrassed. She sets down her phone. “I just programmed a cheat code to this new game and I’m ob-sessed.” I make sure to look impressed, given that I can hardly save contacts to my phone without getting frustrated. “Anyway, we were just guessing resurrecteds—who is, who isn’t. Potter Goodwin. What do you think?”
“I…” My eyes shift around for somewhere to land. “I don’t know who that is.”
Maya smacks her tongue to the roof of her mouth impatiently. “You know, that congressman, the one who is all, no resurrections, they’re a sin against God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?”
“Yeah.” I use the toes of my shoes to roll the skateboard underneath me. “I guess so.” The name did sound familiar.
“Sorry, it’s not important. What’s important is you. You’re the first new kid we’ve had since sixth grade,” she says. “It’s super strange.”
Harrison flips his notebook closed. Not a promising sign for our group project. “Yeah, but that was Michael Glaser and he’s weird and definitely not hot.”
“Yeah, Michael’s a real boner killer.” Peng snickers.
“So.” Wanting to steer clear of all topics involving male anatomy and my relative hotness and do something other than stutter, I click open a pen and make a show of preparing to jot down some notes. “What interest group have we been assigned?”
Maya scrapes a paperclip on her desk. “Resurrecteds.” She points around the room at the different clumps of students. “They’re pharmaceutical companies, and they’re the naturalists. Personally I think we got the best one. Peng even suggested we could dress up like commune members in white linen on the day of.” She shrugs like she doesn’t care one way or the other. I’ve seen the eerily serene members of one of the nearby communes only once before. They were gathered for a peaceful protest in support of resurrected rights, dressed head to toe in their creepy white linen. I can’t imagine that if I got a second chance at life, I’d want to live it tilling the earth and without Sephora. The commune members, though, are a small but substantial subset of resurrected people who feel they’ve been spiritually enlightened as a result of having died and come back to life. I don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but it’s at least easy fodder for the late-night talk-show hosts.
I write the word Resurrecteds at the top of my page.
Harrison leans over his desk toward me. “I’m a lifeguard, you know.” I’m getting the picture that schoolwork is not going to be a top priority here.
“No, I didn’t know that.” I scribble another note on the paper. “Seeing as I only met you twelve seconds ago.” I mumble that last part. I hear a snort of laughter behind me and turn to see a girl with hair so blond, it’s nearly white, covering a grin with her fist. I turn back to Harrison.
“Yeah. Over at Miller Beach,” he continues. “A bunch of us go out there and drink in the lifeguard stands on Friday nights. You should come.”
“And feel free to bring any of your hot friends,” Peng adds, tapping his pen on the desk. He reaches across with his other fist and bumps knuckles with Harrison.
“A generous offer.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes at someone on my first day, and then, out of nowhere, I suddenly have this giant pang of longing for Family Feud nights with Matt and my mom and dad and for the giant bowls of popcorn that accompanied them and for the times when my brother and I chucked pieces of popcorn into each other’s mouths because, like, it’d be one thing if I was going home to that.
But Harrison leans back in his chair and gives me an appraising once-over. “Just trying to be hospitable.”
There’s a screech of a chair behind me. Then I look up to see that I’ve been flanked by the lithe girl with the nearly white-blond hair and piercing green eyes.
“Hello, Harry.” The girl with the angel hair pats Harrison congenially on the shoulder. “I see you’ve met my old friend, Lake.” She flashes me a grin. Her mouth is pink, like she’s been eating strawberries all day. “Our moms were close when we were young. We lost touch a bit when Lake went to a different school.”
Peng clears his throat. “We were just inviting Lake to the lifeguard shack this weekend. You know there’s always room for you, Penny.” He clears his throat. “On my lap.” He scoots back his chair and splays his legs wide and vulgar.
Penny. She stays cool as an ocean breeze. She tilts her body toward me, looks down, and subtly lifts her blond eyebrows. I shake my head a tiny fraction of a degree. No, please, no. She glances over my shoulder. “Do you want to ask your boyfriend if he wants to go?” she asks. “Will?”
I follow her gaze to where it lands behind me. On a boy with a tan so golden, it glows, and shaggy surfer hair that reminds me of a beach at sunrise. “Sorry, Harry, my boy,” he says, and tilts his chin, a cocky, self-assured gesture that makes me feel ten instead of fourteen, and continues reading from the open notebook on his desk. “We’ve already got plans on Friday.” Then there’s one quick flash. He looks up at me and, well, not all boys can pull off the wink, but I’m here to report that Will Whose-Last-Name-I-Don’t-Know can.