Kissing Skulls *Revised*

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Death was like falling.  There was a rush of air and then a slow, tumultuous fall to the ground.  I almost wondered if this was what sky diving felt like?

             Falling…falling, before hitting the ground…in a thud of pain.  Splat!

            “Shit!”

             It was a minute before I realized that the cry wasn’t my own—someone was speaking from above my head.

             Make that a dozen someones, all moving around me as erratically as a herd of stampeding elephants. 

            “I…I think she’s still alive,” someone whispered—they didn’t sound very sure. 

            “You think?  Take her pulse!”  

            That voice I recognized; Dave.  He sounded scared out of his mind—terrified, in a way I’d never heard him sound before. 

            “She has one—she has a pulse!”  That voice was Dustyn’s—who sounded equally as frantic as Dave, but yet firmly in control.

             At his words, I heard a rush of air, as if several people had breathed in relief at once.  I had a feeling that this whole ‘pulse’ and ‘dead’ nonsense, had to do with me…

            I was on my back from what I could tell, with my head resting on something soft, like a pillow.  It felt like I was spread out on the floor, but I couldn’t be sure, seeing as how the rest of me was as painless and numb as if someone had shot my spine full of Novocain.    

            And not in a fun way. 

            “Thank god,” Dave breathed, but his voice shook.  “I’m calling an ambulance.”  

            I could hear him fumble with something, as if pulling his phone from his pocket. 

            “No.  You’re not,” Dustyn said quickly. “They’ll ask too many questions.   A bunch of minors with no legal guardians.  What do you think will happen?”

            He paused for emphasis—because we all already knew the answer.

            “Misty?  Carlos?  They’ll get shipped off to foster care.  Not to mention what will happen to Mary.”

            It was the truth.  Ever since my dad…

            Well, I certainly wasn’t going to let them ship me off to foster care to be shoved into a family with twelve other kids, living on a pig farm in Nebraska—that’s for damn sure. 

I lived under the radar.  With help from the Slayers—namely Dustyn who seemed to have lots of shady connections—I had a fake I.d. and enough legal paperwork that I didn’t go noticed by the feds. 

According to the state of New York, I was an emancipated minor.  For school legalities I paid Andy, a guy who lived across the hall, fifty bucks to pretend to be my dad just to keep up appearances—for open houses, parent-teacher conferences and such. 

            It wasn’t ideal, but it worked for me.  And I knew that most of the others were in the same boat.  In fact, I think Dustyn was the only one with an actual parent left; a real home to go to every night.