I don't own the Everlost trilogy or any of Neal Shusterman's characters.

Josephine Walters, known to all as Josie, stared out the window of her eleventh-story bedroom. Her worst fears had been confirmed: the test was positive. Her hands, one still holding the test, shook at the thought of her parents' reaction. They would be angry, and then so disappointed. Josie couldn't bear the idea of facing them, because she wouldn't be their perfect little girl anymore. Not once they learned she was pregnant.

An escape occurred to her, enhanced by her desperation. If she jumped... her parents would never know. They would never know of her pregnancy, or the secret boyfriend she sneaked off to see in the dead of night. They would remember their perfect little girl, and that thought would comfort them when they discovered Josie's body.

Josie raised the window with shaking hands, taking one last look around the room she'd had for nearly sixteen years. Her eyes rested on her grandmother's mirror. Her face was pale, deathly pale, making the freckles across her nose stand out. They matched the brown flecks in her light blue eyes, eyes her mother had always said that she loved...

No. Josie needed to stop thinking about her parents, and about her ailing grandmother. They would recover and move on. It would be better this way, better than ever knowing what she had done. She climbed onto the narrow ledge, shut her eyes, and jumped.

She hit the ground hard. The tunnel formed before her, and Josie felt herself drawn toward the light. She fought against it, though. Josie was sure that judgment awaited her, and she wasn't ready for that day. It was a hard battle, but eventually the universe gave in. Josie crashed through the tunnel walls and drifted off to sleep.

Josie pushed herself into a sitting position, unable to feel anything but shock. How could she have survived that fall? She looked around. Apparently nobody had noticed her yet; even the grandmother-type women weren't looking. That was odd.

Even odder was the realization that, though she had definitely fallen eleven stories, Josie didn't seem to have any injuries. She wasn't even scraped. In fact, the only sign she had fallen at all was the gravel imbedded in her side.

That's when Josie realized that one person was looking at her: a boy about her age. The boy looked somehow more vivid than the rest of the background, even surrounded by more brightly-dressed people. He smiled and stood up, then crossed the street without even looking. Josie winced at how close he came to death by taxi.

"Hi," the boy said when he reached her, offering a hand. Josie took it, standing gingerly, but it didn't hurt. She didn't seem to have any wounds.

"Hi," Josie answered, picking at the gravel that clung to her light pink tank top.

"I'm Nick," the boy said, smiling. "What's your name?"

"Josie," Josie told him, still trying to work the gravel out of her top and cutoffs.

Nick produced a piece of paper and a pencil from the pocket of his leather jacket. "You might want to write that down," he said, handing them to her.

Josie started to ask why, then thought better of it and just did so. She handed the pencil and paper back to Nick, who then said, "Let's see if you have a coin in your pocket."

She reached into her pocket, and pulled out... the pregnancy test. Josie stared at it for a moment, then hurled it as far away as she could. She thought she saw it sink into the sidewalk, but that must have been a trick of the light.

"Try the other pockets," Nick told her. Josie complied, though she knew they were empty. To her surprise, she found a coin in her back pocket.

Nick smiled, holding out the paper. "I know a place where you can have your own apartment, for free."

Josie frowned. "What's the catch?"

"There isn't one," he replied. "You just have to do something different every day, and your rent only lasts a month."

"What about-"

"After the month," Nick said before she could finish, "you try this coin. When you're ready, it'll take you 'uptown'."

Something told Josie that she should accept his offer, so she did. "Okay."


A/N: I've split the first chapter so that I'm not alternating POV's, and I plan on keeping it that way.

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