WHEN CATALINA WOKE, SHE KNEW THAT TODAY WOULD BE DIFFERENT. Her bare feet—her socks had come off, as they often did, during the night—touched the cold floor, causing her to quickly retract them from the ice-like surface. When she was younger, she’d begged her mother to let her get carpeted flooring, but Mrs. Rosales wouldn’t hear it, saying that it was too expensive and time-consuming to do.

    As she got ready for school that morning, Catalina felt a strange sort of enthusiasm for the day that was to come, as if there was some grand adventure waiting for her. She couldn’t understand it, but, then again, she could never explain her feelings. They were always too all over the place.

    She spent the morning and afternoon in school, learning things that would either be forgotten that summer or remembered for the rest of her life. By the time lunch came, she was exasperated by school and wanted to escape, but she still had another class to sit through.

    Sitting with her friends outside, the spring sunlight shining down on them, Catalina felt the urge to say something inspiring, something that historians and authors alike would quote for centuries after she disappeared. This was nothing new for Catalina—her friends called her “the strange poet girl” for a reason—and as she took a deep breath, her friends fell silent, waiting in both anticipation and exasperation for her to speak. When she did, even she was surprised by the words that came out of her mouth:

    “I’m not afraid.”

    Her friends remained silent, as if they were waiting for her to continue. She didn’t, and when they realized that she had said all that she meant to, Addy asked quietly, “Of what?”

    Catalina shrugged, no explanation coming to mind. Simon rolled his eyes, used to her peculiarity, even more so than their two other friends.

    Simon and Catalina had been neighbors since they were first learning how to walk, after the Lucero family moved next door. In the beginning of their relationship, they’d hated each other. Simon’s parents had a tendency to pick out Catalina’s positive traits and try to force them upon Simon, and Catalina’s parents were no better. When Catalina’s essay won an award, Simon’s parents asked why he didn’t place. When Simon won second place in their seventh grade math meet, Catalina’s parents asked why she hadn’t been chosen to go. It had taken their parents years to realize that their children had talents of their own that didn’t correlate with the other’s. It had taken a few months longer for Catalina to approach Simon and ask for help with math homework—and the rest, as the romantics and the poets say, was history.

    Except, it wasn’t. Catalina and Simon had only been friends for two years, and Simon still wasn’t a fan of Catalina’s “pretentious, unnecessarily deep way with words.” He would constantly disparage her talents, claiming that there was no way she could make a career out of writing or philosophy. Catalina would always argue that if she didn’t love what she was doing, she simply wouldn’t do it. Perhaps it was a selfish and naïve point of view, but she could not be shaken from it. That was when Simon would roll his eyes and walk away, thus ending the argument—until, of course, it came back up the next day.

    “Well, let me tell you, I’m definitely afraid,” Nathan said, scribbling the answer to a math problem onto the homework he’d forgotten to do the night before. “I’m afraid of graduation, of moving out, of going to college.”

    “So, the future?” Addy snorted. She hummed thoughtfully for a moment before saying, “I’m afraid of a lot of things. Like bugs, heights, Nathan before his morning coffee—”

    “It was one time, Addy!”

    Simon watched the two friends bicker, visibly disinterested in their conversation. Catalina turned her face toward him, and she could almost hear his internal groan. “What are you afraid of, Simon?”

    He shrugged. “I don’t know. Normal stuff, I guess?” Catalina stared at him, silently prompting him to go on. “Like, I don’t know, serial killers, car accidents, being mauled by a wild animal. Stuff like that.”

    “So, death?”

    Catalina’s question caused a hush to fall over the group of friends, and even Nathan looked up from his homework. Had anyone else asked the question, they wouldn’t have reacted like that. But this was Catalina. There was always a deeper meaning to her words.

    The friends all looked at each other. “Isn’t everyone afraid of death?” Addy asked, her voice soft.

    They all thought about the question in mutual silence, a bond connecting the four of them as they considered Addy’s question. Finally, Simon shrugged and said, “Yeah.”

    “I’m not,” Catalina said. She hadn’t meant for it to sound snobbish or pretentious, but she couldn’t help it sometimes. “I don’t think it’s even death itself that frightens people. I think it’s the fact that no one knows what happens after you die—at least, there’s no concrete evidence. There’s no solid, undeniable proof that Heaven and Hell exists.” It was ironic, in a way; the dreamer, talking about concrete evidence as if it mattered to her. In this case, maybe it did. “Maybe they do exist, maybe they don’t. We can’t know for sure. Maybe when you die, you just sort of disappear; or maybe you’re stuck in between this world and whatever else is out there.”

    “So, you’re not afraid of death?” Nathan asked. “Come on, you’re lying. Aren’t you afraid of it hurting?”

    Catalina shook her head. “I’m not afraid. Yeah, there’s a chance that death will hurt, but there’s no guarantee. It could be super painful, like a car crash or a fire; or it could be peaceful, like dying in your sleep. A lot of things in life hurt. What makes death any different?”

    “It’s the end,” Simon deadpanned. “You’re honestly telling us that if you died today, you’d be okay with it?”

    Catalina thought about the question for a moment. “I wouldn’t be okay with it, per se. I’d be sad to leave my family and friends; but I wouldn’t be afraid.”

    Before any of them could say anything else, the bell rang, startling them out of their own little world where talk of death was normal and where girls with dark hair and dark eyes were unafraid of it. Nathan shut his math book with a loud smack, laughing obnoxiously when Addy jumped and scowled at him. Simon rolled his eyes—a prominent expression of emotion for him—and gathered his stuff, leaving with Addy to go to their last class of the day.

    As Nathan and Catalina made their way to math class, which was in a different building than Addy and Simon’s Spanish class, Nathan asked hesitantly, “You really aren’t afraid of dying?”

    Catalina nodded. “As I kid I was, but now… I don’t know. Lately, whenever I think of death—which isn’t often, I promise—I feel something, but it isn’t fear. I’m not sure what it is.”

    Nathan stared at her for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You’re weird, Catalina,” he concluded.

    She grinned his way. “I never said I wasn’t.”

* * * * * *

    After school was over, Catalina got into her car and started the ten-minute drive to her house. Normally, she would have Simon in the passenger seat, complaining or humming or doing something that was equally annoying, but he had baseball practice today, so his dad would be picking him up later. Simon still had a few weeks left to get his license, since he got his permit a few months after his fifteenth birthday, while Catalina had had her license for about a year.

    She drove down the backroads that led to her neighborhood, preferring the isolated roads to the busy main highway. She wasn’t a bad driver by any means, but she was still a bit nervous behind the wheel, and traffic just multiplied that anxiety by a hundred. Humming softly to herself—it wasn’t annoying when it was her humming—Catalina fiddled with the radio, trying to find a decent station.

    As she drove, she admired the flowers that lined the street on either side—there were wild daises, poppies, and, strangely enough, roses. There was a young couple that lived near the backroads, and the wife had planted rose bushes along the road to celebrate moving into a new house. That was one of the other reasons that Catalina liked to take the backroads; she liked admiring the roses while she was driving.

    She was halfway to her house when she saw a figure standing in the middle of her lane. Swerving toward the side of the road, Catalina managed to miss the person. She pulled over to the side of the road, surprised that the figure hadn’t reacted to her near-collision with them. Stepping out of her car, she reached for the pepper-spray in her hoodie pocket, making sure that she could grab it quickly in case the person was a serial killer. Perhaps it was stupid to approach a stranger who was standing in the middle of the road, but if there was any way she could help, Catalina wanted to try. It wasn’t her fault; her mother had raised her that way.

    Slowly, Catalina began to walk toward the figure. Their shoulders were broad, and they were tall—at least, taller than her. She could only see their back, but as she got closer, she realized that it was a man, with his head bent toward the ground, as if he was either praying or crying.

    As she approached him, she felt a strange sense of calm wash over her. She knew somehow that he wouldn’t hurt her. It was unexplainable. Her gut felt that she was safer with the stranger than she was alone on the backroads, which should have been impossible. Then again, her gut had never proved her wrong. Not yet, at least.

    “Do you need help?” Catalina asked, standing at the side of the road as she stared at the man. “I can call someone if you need me to.”

    She had expected him to jump at the sudden sound of her voice, but instead, he raised his head slowly, his gaze finding hers almost instantly. He wasn’t crying. Catalina took a step back, shocked at the sight of his face—he wasn’t a man at all, but a boy. He looked only a year or two older than her, and his face had a youthfulness that surprised Catalina.

    After a few minutes of tolerating the boy’s silent staring, she cleared her throat and asked again, “Is there anything I can do for you? You look lost.”

    The boy blinked, his eyes staying fixated on her. His eyes were dark, even darker than her own, as if they were closer to black than brown. The longer she looked, the clearer his features became. He had a straight nose and tan skin, with a small scar just above his left eyebrow. His lips were parted slightly as he watched her, a look that was a cross between curiosity and pity—why pity?—on his face. It took him a moment, but eventually he said, “You’re Catalina Rosales?”

    Unnerved by the fact that the stranger knew her name, Catalina took a step back toward her car. Still, that blanket of peace covered her, causing the unease to fade for the most part. She couldn’t speak—and probably shouldn’t—because she was too caught in his dark, haunting eyes. Breaking all of the rules her mother had made about stranger danger, Catalina nodded.

    He closed his eyes for a moment, and the pity in his expression seemed to swell for a moment before he hid it behind an indifferent mask that reminded Catalina of Simon after one conversation with her. “Then I’m not lost.”

    Catalina’s brow furrowed as she stared at the boy with confusion in her eyes. Is he… hitting on me? Was that a pickup line? Instead of voicing one of those questions, Catalina asked, “How do you know my name?”

    The boy didn’t smile; his face remained passive as he told her softly, “I know many things about you, Catalina.”

    Okay, Catalina thought. That’s my cue to go. She moved to take a step back, but she found that she didn’t want to; at least, not as much as she wanted to stay and figure the boy out. Catalina had always been a curious girl, which often got her into trouble. This, it seemed, was another one of those times.

    “What’s your name?” she asked.

    “It doesn’t matter,” the boy said, staring into her eyes with an intensity that shouldn’t have belonged to someone almost as young as her. “It used to, but it doesn’t anymore.” Catalina felt the urge to roll her eyes at the eccentricity of his answer. Is this how my friends feel when I talk?

    The boy took a step toward her, and Catalina found that she wasn’t afraid of him. She didn’t move. He continued to walk toward her until he was within arms’ reach of her. When he finally stood in front of her, he held out his hands and looked into her eyes, wordlessly telling her to take his hands.

    She did. She didn’t understand why, but she did.

    As she placed her hands in his, she saw that where there should have been fingernails, there were claws—black and pointed, like a bird’s. Still, Catalina’s heart beat a steady rhythm in her chest. His hands were cold, but Catalina barely felt it.

    She should have been afraid. Every atom in her body should have been on high alert, should have urged her to get into her car and speed home, leaving the stranger behind. Why didn’t I just keep driving? she asked herself. What’s wrong with me?

    The skin of her wrists was soft, contrasting drastically with the boy’s calloused fingertips. His sharp claws traced her veins slowly, almost to the rhythm of a melody that only he could hear. Just the slightest pressure and he could draw blood; but, still, Catalina wasn’t afraid. She should have been, she knew—but she wasn’t.

    He was beautiful, Catalina realized as she looked up at him. His beauty, however, was not the pure, expected beauty of a handsome boy—it was the dark, ominous beauty of a creature that had existed for centuries, perhaps even longer. He was both ancient and timeless. Catalina would never have expected to meet someone who could embody such conflicting ideas; but, there he stood, holding her hands.

    “Are you a demon?” She should have sounded frightened, but she didn’t. Her voice was calm and steady, as was the beat of her heart. It was as if the boy’s presence had covered up her emotions or pushed them to the back of her mind, whether they were negative or not. If her feelings hadn’t been suppressed, she might have been frightened.

    In another story, Catalina would have expected him to smirk, showing off the pointed teeth that he would use to tear her apart. In this story, though, he grimaced. “Why would you assume I’m a demon, Catalina?”

    Catalina raised her eyes, meeting his gaze and staring into the blackness of it. She would have thought that such haunting eyes belonged in horror movies, or in an Edgar Allan Poe story. Nevertheless, here they were, staring at her with both everything and nothing in their depths. “Your eyes,” she answered. “Your claws. Your words.”

    The boy stared at her curiously, his head tilting a bit to the sound, as if he was trying to figure her out. It was an act, of course, and Catalina knew that. He had seen all of her secrets, all of her thoughts, all of her hidden emotions. This knowledge did not frighten her as it should have.

    “I’ve taken many forms,” the boy told her, “each catering to the expectations of those who see me.” He continued tracing the veins in her wrists, and she saw that her skin was more translucent than before, her veins more visible beneath her skin. Was this his doing? “Catalina Rosales,” the boy murmured, her name a curse and a prayer on his tongue. “The girl who was not afraid.”

    I’m not afraid.

    Finally, it dawned on her. She understood now why she’d said those three words to her friends, in place of three other, much kinder and simpler words. She’d known since that morning, maybe even before that. Maybe she had always known, but had pushed it away until the time came.

    I’m not afraid.

    Of course the boy knew her name. Why wouldn’t he know? Why wouldn’t he call her by name?

    “I’m afraid,” she whispered, as if to disprove her earlier words. For the first time since she’d laid eyes upon the boy, there was something in her voice. It was not fear, though. Never fear.

    “No,” the boy murmured, his eyes suddenly kinder, his voice suddenly gentler. “No, you aren’t.” He let go of her wrists, and a breeze flowed over them, causing a chill to run through Catalina’s body. As he stared at her, his gaze nowhere near threatening or sinister, Catalina wished that he was wrong. Fear would have been easy to understand, easy to display. This—whatever this was—was not.

    “You are ready,” he said.

    Catalina knew without clarification what he meant. She shook her head, her thoughts filled with images of her mother, of her baby brother, of Simon and Addy and Nathan. “No,” she whispered, her eyes stinging with tears. “No.” I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

    “You are ready,” the boy repeated. “Even if others are not.”

    “I can’t leave them,” she whimpered, every emotion he’d covered up rushing back to the forefront of her mind. “My mother, she still needs me. My brother needs me. The world needs me—I know it! I can’t leave yet!”

    The boy’s held sympathy in them as he whispered, “You already have.”

    He took her hand again, turning his eyes to the car. Catalina followed his gaze, and the image of her car began to flicker, as if it was being displayed on an old television.

    Then she saw it.

    There was an ambulance, its lights still flashing on the side of the road. Caution tape blocked off the scene, and there was a stretcher and a grim-faced paramedic. Her car was completely destroyed, and there was a body being placed onto the stretcher. It didn’t move, didn’t react at all. The paramedic placed a white sheet over the body, but Catalina didn’t have to see the face to know who it was.

    Catalina looked down at her arms, at her hands. Cuts and bruises began to appear, painting her skin black and blue and red. She shook her head, her vision blurring with tears. Even as she tried to deny it, to pretend that this was all a horrible nightmare that she would wake up from, she knew that the boy had shown her the truth.

    He was no demon, nor was he an angel. He was a ghost—a spirit meant to guide her.

    He was a ghost, and so was she.

    I’m not afraid.

    Catalina looked up, meeting the boy’s empathic face. She understood now why there had been pity in his expression—why he’d looked as if he understood the trauma she was facing. He had faced it as well, with another spirit, in another time.

    “I’m dead.” It wasn’t a question.

    “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t an answer.

    She imagined her mother, holding little Isaac tight, both of them crying their hearts out as Catalina’s casket was lowered into the ground. She imagined her friends, haunted by the last words she’d spoken to them as a whole. She imagined the world, still beating on without her. To the world, she meant nothing. But to the people who made up Catalina’s world, who made her world bright and wonderful, she meant everything.

    “What do I do now?” Catalina’s voice was no louder than a whisper. “Where do I go from here?”

    The boy held out his hand. He was just a kid, like her. Would she be in his shoes one day? Would she have to break the news to another kid, another ghost, that they were dead? Was this all just an endless cycle?

    “Let’s see,” he murmured, his hand outstretched, waiting for her to take. She hesitated only a moment before placing her hand in his. It was soft, and cold. So cold. The claws were no longer claws—they were just fingernails, and his eyes were just eyes, and his voice was the voice of a boy who had been in her place once upon a time. He was just a boy, and she was just a girl; and they were dead.

    She met the boy’s gaze a final time, unafraid. “Take me home.”