The song started out with a few stark notes that rang out and echoed then cascaded into a melody that mirrored itself. The hypnotic phrases ran into each other and hung in my head, yearning and empty. His hands faltered and the notes grew faint, but even that sounded right. I was stunned.

"Dude, that's incredible."

He poked at a note, moving away from the keys. "Do you play?"

"Nope."

He nodded. "Ah. Then you're easily impressed."

Noah gave a short laugh. "No, he isn't."

I assumed I knew everything that was interesting about people because I could see what they would become. Then again, Kyle broke all the rules. He wasn't supposed to have a future.

"Posters and markers are in here, but I'll bring them in the kitchen," Kyle was saying as he walked through a set of French doors into another room.

"Bring your laptop," Noah called out to Kyle, taking me to the kitchen. He hopped up to a bar stool at a high counter in the kitchen, his lanky legs wrapping around the legs of the stool. I sat next to him, putting my elbows on the dark granite counter.

Kyle came back with a few blank posters rolled up under his arm and a box of markers and his laptop in the other, padding across the floor in his socks. He put it all down and Noah opened up the laptop and hit a key to bring it to life. It was a Mac, of course.

The song Kyle had written echoed in my head as Noah pulled up some pictures. Kyle found a picture of Noah on his Facebook and pasted it on the body of a squirrel.

Noah responded by finding a picture of Lady Gaga and pasting Kyle's head on it.

We printed out a bunch of flyers on Kyle's laser printer with the seemingly endless supply of ink. Gaga didn't make it, which was a shame.

I realized we were nearly finished and I hadn't even begun to talk about Kyle's problem. I could swear he didn't even have one. Maybe I didn't have to.

Kyle went to the fridge and asked us if he wanted anything, taking out a soda. Leaning against the refrigerator was his Yurei, staring at me with an expectant look on his face.

Noah and I declined, taking a seat on the stools at the counter.

I needed to say something. What would I say? Kyle opened the soda and closed the fridge, the door touching his Yurei, who faded out and reappeared, leaning against the sink.

"So MacKenzie said you saw Derek," I said and Noah threw me a warning glance, his eyebrows drawn together.

Kyle finished swallowing his Coke and leaned against the counter, facing us, his eyes cautious. "Yeah."

"He's probably going to be okay. There's a good chance he's coming out of it," I said. Don't ask me to explain how I know that, I prayed.

He twisted the metal tab off his can, his fingers shaking, his head down. "Really? That's good. Do they know when?"

Now I had to lie. I didn't know when. I only knew he would. "In a week, they think."

That threw him, I could tell. Whatever doomsday scenario he had going, I was breaking through it. How determined was he to kill himself? Would this be enough?

"Is he going to be okay?" he asked, still looking down, and tossing the tab on the counter. Noah shifted on the bar stool, rearranging his long legs and looked at me, and I could see he was afraid I would say the wrong thing.

"They don't know. He'll probably be fine, though."

"He was hurt pretty bad," he said, reaching over flick the soda tab. It spun around and fell on the tiled floor by Noah, who picked it up and slid it back to him.

Kyle spun it again without looking up, his hair over his eyes, and said, "When I had the accident...I didn't see him. And I was paying attention but I couldn't stop fast enough."

I looked over at his Yurei. He was calm, and watching Kyle.

"It was an accident," Noah said. "It could have happened any of us sitting here."

Kyle put his head in his hands and dug his palms into his eyes. He didn't speak for a long while. Noah grabbed his shoulder.

"Sometimes things just happen. You can't control the universe, you know? And it isn't going to help anyone if you keep beating yourself up." Noah sounded a lot like his Yurei. I thought about what was going to happen to him in a few years. He was going to be as strong as he was now. Maybe that's why he would make it through.

Kyle pulled his hands away from his eyes and Noah let go of him. Kyle put the cap back on the Coke. "I can't stop thinking about it."

"It isn't your fault. Even MacKenzie would tell you that," Noah said.

Kyle shook his head. "She wasn't there. No one was. It was just me and Derek, and he probably doesn't remember it. But I do. I can't forget it."

Noah stared back at him. "I know."

Kyle stood up and sighed, his shoulders sagging. "I'd like to be alone right now. Is that okay?"

Noah stood up to leave, glancing over at me with a resigned look, but Kyle's Yurei was shaking his head at me. He didn't want us to leave Kyle.

"No," I said.

Kyle and Noah stared at me, but with different expressions. Noah was relieved and Kyle was angry.

It was awkward. Very awkward. I was basically refusing to leave his house.

I boldly continued, "Not until you admit you can't deal with this on your own. You shouldn't be trying to sort this out alone. I couldn't do it."

"Are you serious?" Kyle looked over at Noah, like he wanted help getting rid of me.

Noah started bouncing his leg on the stool, but he didn't say anything.

"Yes," I said.

He was really angry now, his eyes burning. "Let me get this straight. You won't leave my house until I agree to...what? See a school counselor or something?"

I sighed. "Okay, I will leave if you want me to. But I know that you're..." I couldn't say it. How could I say this? "You're thinking about suicide."

His eyes were wide with disbelief and he backed away from the counter and held out his arms. "Are you kidding me?"

Noah put his hand out, in case Kyle was going to hit me, I guess. "Okay, calm down. No one is saying you're thinking about that. He's just worried about you."

"You don't even know me!" he said, his voice echoing off the walls of his enormous house.

Suddenly I realized I didn't have tell him I could see the future, I could tell the truth about the present. The truth right now was that he mattered to other people...people he didn't want to hurt anymore. He wouldn't save himself for his own survival, but he would for Derek.

"MacKenzie is worried," I said.

He stopped, her name sinking in. No matter how he tried to pretend that he was all right, MacKenzie and Derek would always be his weakness. He couldn't even try to pretend they didn't matter to him.

"What do you mean?" Fear filled his eyes.

"She's afraid you can't deal with this."

"Why?"

"She's scared for you. If you care about Derek's family at all, you need to think about getting help. Do it for them. You're not the only one hurting. Don't do this to them right now. "

He turned around, running his fingers through his hair. "Do they think I'm crazy?" he said it so low I could barely hear.

"No. And I don't either...whatever crazy means. You aren't thinking right, but that's no crime. It's okay to fall apart. Just don't give up. You don't know how quickly things could change. Derek might wake up tomorrow. He might wake up tonight. You wouldn't want to miss that. It would be such a waste if you didn't stick this through and find out it's all right. You shouldn't be alone right now, for one thing. Even if you don't feel like being around people. You need to be."

Noah was still, watching from his perch on the chair. We could almost feel Kyle changing his mind, and we held our breaths.

"My mom isn't coming home tonight and my Dad is in New York. I can't help it tonight." Kyle said, talking as if he agreed with me. It might just be for today, but maybe it was all the time he needed to think it out.

"You can stay at my house. It's loud. It has lots of people," Noah said. "We're having meatloaf, though."

Kyle turned away from us and Noah stood up, looking over at me. Were we losing our fragile chance with him?

"I don't want to need help." Kyle's voice broke on the words. Tears watered his eyes and he swallowed.

Noah shrugged. "No offense, but it's got to be better than what you're doing now. You can keep going on with this, or you take charge. I personally think you should take control."

Flicking the soda tab off the counter Kyle watched it spin across the kitchen floor and into a corner.

" I'll get my stuff."

"Great," Noah said.

We walked out of his house, the rain still pouring down in the dark, gray afternoon. The sky was nearly black, the clouds pressing down on the earth, shutting out all the light. I remembered the time my family flew to see my grandmother last summer in Japan. It was a long flight, and sometimes we would fly over dark clouds. I couldn't get over how bright the world was when you could see it from above the rain. I hoped tonight was like the rain for Kyle. If he could see past the heavy darkness that surrounded him right now, he'd see it wasn't always that way. Away from the clouds the true color of the sky was blue. And he'd remember it when the darkness came again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

Kyle The meatloaf was tasty. Anything you can put ketchup on is tasty. At first I thought Noah's parents wouldn't want me to spend the night on a school night. They might wonder what the big deal was. Noah was cool about it, though. He just told them my parents weren't home and they were immediately sympathetic. We didn't tell them my parents were always gone.

Noah and I slept on the couches in the living room because he shares his room with his two little brothers. Before bed we watched TV and his little sisters kept jumping on us and trying to do our hair for like, two hours before they had to go to bed.

When they left I had to take three yellow bird barrettes, three green clickety-clack things and some rubber bands with plastic balls on them out of my hair. Noah had a harder job because his hair was shorter. They put little rubber bands all over his head in spiky pony tails. He almost cried trying to pull them out. There was some minor pile-driving when his little brothers attacked us after the girls left.

I was pummeled, pushed, hugged and sat on all night. I hadn't been this swarmed with human bodies since this summer when I went to a party and we tried to stuff ten people in a closet.

Noah was right, his house was loud with lots of people. Surprisingly, I was kind of in the mood for it.

When the lights went out I couldn't sleep. I was nervous, wondering if his family knew I was insane. Or MacKenzie's family. Ren definitely knew, although I'm not sure how. I don't believe in intuition or psychics but he was creepy enough to change my mind.

I thought about the garage at home. I imagined what it would have been like if I wasn't at Noah's.

I would have gone into the garage without turning on the lights so the neighbors wouldn't notice. I would have sat in the car, maybe waited for a while trying to decide if I was really going to do it. And then I would have turned the engine on. I could almost feel the key in my hands and the sound the engine made. I wondered if I would suffocate right away. Was it slow? I heard you just fell asleep. No one would know until one of my parents came home the next day. The car would have run out of gas.

A low hum startled me out of my thoughts. The heater or the fridge or something. I realized I was laying in the dark in Noah's house on his couch, his family sleeping all around me, and I was thinking about suicide. That's seriously screwed up.

I didn't want to be this way. I didn't know how to fix myself, but I was going to have to do something. As clearly as I could see myself in the garage with the car running, I could see Noah trying to explain to his little sisters that I couldn't come over anymore.

Would he even say why? I didn't want Noah's little brothers and sisters to have to hear that I'd killed myself. They were too little to understand that.

And I could see the hospital room where Derek's parents sat next to his bed. Is that where they would be when MacKenzie told them I'd killed myself? They might not care. They didn't know me, but something told me they would. MacKenzie would. What would it be like for her every day in homeroom to sit in front my empty chair, still waiting for her brother to wake up?

My parents. I didn't want to think about that. I didn't want my parents to know I was like this. I might have to tell them. They'd probably freak out. They'd freak out a lot less about a psychiatrist than they would about finding my body in the garage, though.

Was I crazy? Maybe. But maybe I could get better. I wanted to be like Noah, sleeping on the couch with nothing else on his mind other than eating sugar pops for breakfast. Someday I might be like that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

MacKenzie Derek came out of his coma two weeks later, to our relief. My mom texted me right in the middle of class and I started crying. Mr. Leitner thought it was bad news because I was crying, but I told him it was okay.

I don't know why I cried. Maybe even though Ren told me my brother was going to wake up I didn't really believe the nightmare would be over. Dad picked me and James up from school. I couldn't wait to see Derek awake.

On the way to the hospital, Dad told us that Derek was having trouble remembering stuff, like he had some kind of amnesia. He couldn't talk very well-he was a lot like he was before the coma, except this time he couldn't remember us.

I was worried about that, but Dad told us Derek would probably get a lot of it back, it might take time.

Dad was really happy-the drive to the hospital felt surreal, like the time Mom and I drove from the mall to the hospital when Derek first got hurt, only this time it was good. It made me think that anything was possible, that any good thing could happen.

It was starting to snow and I knew soon the whole world would be pure and white. It seemed right. We stepped out of the car onto the parking lot, our feet making footprints in the almost transparent snow on the black asphalt.

The hospital was so familiar to me now that I began to notice how lost other visitors looked, holding vases of flowers and stuffed animals and talking about what floor they were going to. I felt a bond with them. This was where we all went to hope for something better.

We walked in the room, and I felt like stepping carefully so I didn't break the dream. Today was going to be different, even though the room looked the same, it wasn't. The curtains were open to show the snow coming down on the roof of the hospital wing below us. The eerie, white light of snowfall washed over the blankets on Derek's bed.

He wasn't sitting up in bed like I thought he would, he was still lying down, but his eyes were open, the gold-brown of his open gaze the most beautiful color ever invented.

He watched the three of us as we came in, looking at Dad a little longer. When he met my eyes, I smiled at him. "Hey, Derek."