(Author's note, to vampiregirl2009: you seem to have a pretty good handle on the story you want told. Why don't you take a crack at it? i'd love to see it when it's done. Just send me the link.)

"My first time?" Kit said. "It was with Jennifer Kressner from my math class. We did it in the coat room after class."

"Wow," said Trent. "What about yours, Len?"

"My first time was when we were about sixteen. We were in the garden--"

"In the garden? In front of everyone?"

"Well, no. No one else was there."

"That would have been embarrassing," Kit said.

"Not really. We were taught to always be open about our bodies and our emotions. Everyone already knew about us, so it wasn't a big surprise."

"What was it like?" Trent asked eagerly.

"It was sweet and soft and wonderful."

"Really?"

"What about you?" Kit asked Trent. "What was it like for you?"

"Oh, I, um . . . haven't, yet."

"No way!" Kit was shocked. "You haven't even kissed a girl yet?"

"Not a real kiss."

"Not even to see what it was like?"

"I never got up the courage to ask anyone."

"That's a shame. We'll have to get you set up with someone soon." Kit looked over his shoulder, towards the bedroom. "What do you suppose they're talking about in there?"

"Us," Trent said.

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah. All the things that they hate about us. All the things we do that drive them crazy. All the stuff that they can't stand."

"And you would know this . . . how, exactly?"

"I might have, just by accident, listened in on a few phone conversations. Just for a minute, totally by accident."

"Right," Kit said. "An accident. Totally." His tone suggested that perhaps he was just a little bit skeptical.

"Should we go spy on the girls or what?" Trent seemed very interested in what the girls were up to in the other room.

"Not just yet," Kit said. "I want to hear about what went on in the garden between you and Kase," he said to Len. "How exactly did that come about? What was the moment when you knew she was the one?"

"There wasn't really a moment." Len stared off into the distance as he remembered that long ago time. "Well, maybe there was. We were about sixteen, I think, and one day I just looked up, and . . . she was a girl."

"You never noticed she was a girl before?" Trent asked, an incredulous look on his face. "How could you not notice?"

"It just wasn't an issue, okay? We had other things on our minds."

"Okay! Touchy subject, or what?" Trent looked at Kit with a strange expression. "A school full of guys, and one girl? Must have been like the Smurf village."

"The what?" asked Len.

"You've never heard of the Smurfs?"

"No."

"Remind me to bring over my DVD collection some time. So how come you were the one?" Trent asked. "Out of all the guys she could have picked, why you? Why not one of the others?"

Len shook his head. "Just lucky, I guess."

He thought back to that day in the garden. It had been a quiet Sunday morning in early summer, warm and bright. Just wandering around, for the sheer joy of being in the open air on such a beautiful day, he had come upon Kase practicing the Seven Forms in a grassy patch.

He stood watching her move from First Form to Second to Third, wanting to do more than just watch. But he knew better than to disturb her during her exercises. He waited until she was done, and then he went to her and said, "Great job. You were able to hold yourself up in Fifth Form for longer than I ever could."

"How long were you watching?" she asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"I didn't want to interrupt you," he told her. "I know what happened to the last guy who tried that."

"Well, Chance shouldn't have snuck up on me like that!"

"You didn't have to smack him in the face!"

"I didn't mean to! I just--he just got in the way!"

"Exactly. I didn't want to get in your way."

"You really thought I did okay?" she asked hopefully.

"You did better than okay. You were really great."

"Well, thanks." She smiled at him, and his heart skipped a beat. "We could practice together, if you want. Go ahead and take your shoes off."

So he did. He took a stance about two feet behind her, then began to do some warm-up moves to limber up, all the time keeping his eyes focused on the nearby wall. While he did that, Kase closed her eyes and did some deep breathing to match his own.

When they moved, they were in such perfect sync that they seemed one being. Not until the very end of the sequence did either of them start to deviate from the pattern, and then only by the slimmest margin possible.

They finished at more or less the same moment, and it was a moment before either of them said anything. Then Kase sat down on her mat and said, "Thanks. It's nice to have company sometimes."

"Glad I could help." Len sat on the grass a few feet away from her. And suddenly he felt the desire to be closer to her. He scooted over a bit until he was on the edge of the mat.

"Don't be shy," she said. "Come sit right here. There's room."

So he moved over right next to her. It was a strange sensation. He'd known her for years, had trained with her, hung out with her, drunk "tea" with her. And yet, he'd never felt anything close to what he was feeling right now. He wanted to . . . to touch her, to hold her, to kiss her.

But he couldn't.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked him, and he turned to look at her.

"Nothing."

"Come on, tell me."

"Okay. But don't get mad. I was thinking about . . . kissing you."

He turned away, waiting for her to make the next move. What she did next stunned him. She leaned in, whispered, "What's wrong with that?", and then her lips were on his. They felt so soft. He just sat there for a moment, and then he returned the kiss, hoping that he was doing it right. Not that either of them had much experience to know what the right way was.

After a while, they sort of came apart, looking away from each other as if they had done something wrong. Neither one spoke right away.

Finally Len decided he should say something. "Um, maybe we should go inside. It's gotten cloudy all of a sudden."

She looked up. "Yeah, you're right. We'd better go in."

It was the moment when everything changed, when they went from being friends to being . . . something more. Though they never spoke of the incident, somehow everyone knew. It was obvious just looking at them. They were in love.

***

Meanwhile, the girls were in the bedroom, sharing a bag of fat-free popcorn and talking about pretty much the same thing. They were laughing at the weird stuff that happened in the movie, and then during the boring parts, they criticized the characters' dress sense.

"Gold shoes with that dress?" Lacey said. "Uh uh! No way!"

"Yeah, that's pretty bad," Maya concurred.

"And what is with that tie he's wearing? It practically glows in the dark!"

"I think it's kind of cute," said Kase.

The other two girls looked at her.

"What? I like the characters! I used to watch that cartoon sometimes!"

"I can't picture you watching cartoons," Maya said.

"Oh, sure. I was always a big cartoon buff. In fact, I never missed a single Bugs Bunny short if I could help it. I loved Porky Pig."

"You don't strike me as a Porky fan," Lacey observed. "I had you pegged for a big anime fan, myself."

"I've never seen any anime, whatever that is."

"Japanese animation," Maya explained. "It evolved after the end of the Second World War, when the Americans left Japan and--"

She would have continued, but her audience were distracted by a brief snatch of conversation from the other room.

"--bad fall, and I nearly split my head open. If Kase hadn't been there--"

Maya looked at Kase. "What happened?"

"He was . . ." She smiled at the memory. "He was getting one of the boys down from the top of the tower--our training equipment. And he fell. We were just learning how to use our healing powers, and I was the only one who was any good at it yet. So they brought him to me."

***

"What happened?"

The kid (Kase couldn't remember his name) was still crying and screaming his head off. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! It's my fault! It's all my--"

"It's okay, Ryan," said Nolan, who was trying to clean the boy up and deal with his relatively minor injuries. "It was an accident. No one's blaming you for what happened."

"He's dead! He's dead, I killed him . . ."

"He's not dead," Kase told him. "He's going to be okay. We'll fix him."

She couldn't look at him. She refused to believe that anything so catastrophic could happen to . . . to someone like Len.

"What happened?" she asked again.

It was Adam, who had seen the whole thing from across the quad, who answered. "Ryan got stuck way up in the top of the tower, up where all the bars connect, and Len climbed up to get him. He was doing all right until he seized up all of a sudden, like he was having a cramp or something, and then he . . . he fell, and . . . there was this big thud . . ."

The boy, not much older than Ryan, began to cry in huge sobs that shook his whole body. Kase wanted to reach out and comfort him, but she was afraid that if she did, she would start crying as well.

"Come here, buddy," said Price. "Give Kase some room to work."

"I can't do this," she said. "Can't Master Eubulon do it?"

"He's not here."

She looked at him in surprise.

"He left this morning on a personal errand. He wouldn't say what it was. And he won't be back till tonight."

"We can't wait that long." She forced herself to look at the massive crater in the side of Len's head. Most of the blood had been cleaned off, but there was still a lot of damage to his delicate skull. If she didn't do this now, he would . . .

No. Don't think of that. Concentrate.

Let the energy flow through you. Don't force it--direct it. Channel it to where you need it to go.

She summoned all her strength and then placed her hands on the sides of his head.

"You can do it," she said, and then she felt it, coming out of her body, a warmth that poured like water into the hole in Len's head. She closed her eyes so she wouldn't be distracted by the few people still in the room. After what felt like an eternity, she opened them again and took a look at her handiwork.

The huge head wound was knitting itself back together. Flesh and bone were repairing themselves as if by magic.

Don't think, don't think . . .

If she thought about it, she might lose it. So she focused on just doing. She was intent on finishing the job--external damage was one thing, but the damage to the brain that she couldn't see had to be serious, and she couldn't leave Len like that. She was still connected to him when the energy began to fade.

No!

She couldn't lose him now! Not when she was so close . . . she shook off her rising panic and redoubled her efforts. Tears in her eyes, she tried to get some kind of response from Len, but there was nothing. The energy started to fade again.

"No, please--"

"Kase," Price said softly. "It's working. You've done it."

"Then why doesn't he wake up?"

"He will. Give him a minute."

It was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do, sit there and wait for him to show signs of life. Every second felt like a thousand years. Every minute was an eternity, and the time it took to finish the healing act seemed to drag out in an endless loop. She felt like she was being tortured . . .

And then she saw Len's eyes began to open, just slightly, and her heart leapt in her chest. And he was looking up at her, and he said, "Hey."

"Hey." She wanted to throw her arms around him and never let go, but she held back until she was sure he was okay. "You scared the life out of all of us."

"Is Ryan okay?"

Kase had to smile at that. "They brought you in here with your head smashed in, and you're worried about Ryan? Yeah, he's fine." She ran a hand through her hair, feeling so tired she could almost drop right on the spot. It was the healing; it had taken more out of her than she had thought. But she wouldn't leave him until she knew he was out of danger.

She put her head down on his chest, and cried tears of relief.

***

"Aw," Maya said. "That's so sweet."

"So what happened next?" asked Lacey.

"What do you mean? That's it." Kase looked up to see that the movie was over already. "Should we back it up to the part we missed?"

The girls looked at each other. "No," Maya said. "We should be going now, anyway."

They went out into the living room, where the guys were watching the end of their own movie. Trent looked up. "Done talking about us already?"

"You wish," said Lacey. "Come on, time to go."

"Just let me see the end of this," he pleaded.

Maya glanced at the screen. "You've seen this a hundred times!"

"And the ending is the best part!"

She sighed. "Five minutes. Then we leave, with or without you."

"Okay, okay!"

Kase sat down on the floor beside Len and wondered what firsts were still to come for them. Was there anything they hadn't done together? What could they look forward to in the coming days?

Little did they know . . . everything was about to change.