Chapter 1

Hope

"Okay, class, everybody settle down, yes, there's a new girl. You can gawk at her after I've humiliated all of you in front of her. Hands up: who actually did the assignment last night?"

Hope looked around her new classroom of twenty-two students and saw only four hands raised up. Two belonged to a pair of geek gods that had the cutest smiles, but she got the feeling that the grins were smug superiority, and Hope was never into that kind of thing from a guy. Bad enough when jocks acted like jerks. When the nerds started it, the whole thing seemed especially petty.

The third guy was a bored looking boy with blue spiked hair which, she was certain, was against the handbook code of conduct, but it looked good on him. Not at all distracting.

The fourth hand belonged to a pretty red-haired girl with green eyes and freckles. Her hand was raised in a lazy way that said she'd just done what she was told, wasn't going to rub anybody's nose in it, and she was more interested in the new girl than she was in the assignment stuff anyway. She caught Hope looking at her and grinned broadly, then waved.

Hope waved back. The girl's smile widened. Hope felt her own mouth turning up in response. Well, day one and so far things didn't look absolutely horrible. Maybe she'd even made a friend. Who knew?

"Uh huh." The teacher looked around the room with one eyebrow up and her hands on her hips. "Okay, you're all dead. Remember the class pizza party?"

A collective groan went up, rapidly followed by random pleas and petitions for leniency. "Nothin' doin'," the teacher said. "You guys blew it."

"Wait." One of the two nerdlings who'd raised his hand sat up straighter and waved at the teacher again. She pointed at him. "What about us four?"

The other eyebrow went up. "What about you four?"

"We did the work!" The boy's nasal-y whining would have turned Hope off to him even if the attitude hadn't killed all chances already. "We shouldn't be punished!"

"Hector," the teacher said patiently, "when one of the football players flunks my class and I have to keep him off the team for six weeks, the entire football team suffers because of his inability to do a good job. I should know. Coach Vaughn has me on his hit list for that reason. So why should it be any different for you?" The teacher crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Hector square in the eye, one foot tapping. "The class is a team. We only work right as a team. Unless you get off your high horse and work to keep the whole team on track, then people will continue to flunk and you get to take it in the shorts with them. I'm not showing you any favoritism over the others, just because you do a good job on your own. You have to think of more than just yourself."

Hector dropped his hand flat and hard on the top of his desk, causing a loud smack that startled Hope. The teacher, undaunted, turned her eyes away from him and pointed to the seat next to the red head. "Ruby, this is Hope. Hope, Ruby. Show Hope around and get her used to everything. She'll be here in home room with you, too, next period."

Ruby smiled as Hope eased into the seat next to her. Hope had her purse and a few school supplies, but no books had been issued to her yet. Her empty hands had nothing to occupy them. She tried folding them, laying them flat, putting them in her lap, and twiddling her thumbs, but none of that made her feel any more comfortable, and the twiddling thing made her wrists hurt. Hope simply was not a twiddler.

She heard Ruby giggle and flashed a glance at the other girl. Since the teacher had launched herself into the Math lecture for the morning, they didn't really have a chance to talk, but Ruby kept glancing at her, and flashing a smile that did more to steady Hope's nerves than her failed attempt at twiddling.

After a moment, a small crumple of paper landed in the middle of Hope's desk. No, not a crumple, a... an origami swan? She glanced at Ruby, who shrugged and gestured to it. "Open me," the paper read. Feeling bad about unfolding the swan, Hope nevertheless did as requested.

You can copy my notes. BTW Hectors trying to look at your boobs, he's a creep.

Hector, Hector… ah, yes, the whining nerdling who had gotten cross with the teacher for ruining his life by denying him pizza. Hope scanned the room until she remembered where he'd been sitting.

He was trying to make out her nipples through her blouse. It wasn't like she was wearing a skin tight outfit or anything, but the temperature in the classroom was about twenty degrees colder than the average classroom temperature, and, well… you know, girls and cold air…

He twisted his head, trying to get a good look. She lowered hers, so that he was looking her in the eye instead. Hector's eyes went very wide before he turned and faced the front, his cheeks burning red.

She managed to stifle a laugh and jotted down on the note, He's not my type. Thnx for the notes. Unable to fold it into a shape as appealing as Ruby's crane, Hope folded it twice in half and passed it to the other girl's hand.

Day one was off to a promising start.

"Holy God," Raph whispered.

Raphael was made of sterner stuff than most people, but even he felt his stomach do a one eighty at the gruesome sight sprawled out practically on their doorstep.

He was vaguely aware of Mike reconsidering his breakfast somewhere in the background. Donnie's voice joined. "Okay, Mikey? You need to throw up again?"

"No, no, 'sokay…" Mike sounded rough. He sounded damn rough, but Raph heard Donnie, so that meant Mike was being taken care of. Good, that meant Raph could focus on the situation at hand.

They had to presume that the remains belonged to a Foot soldier, given the style of the clothing bits scattered about, combined with the blood-splattered Kama sticking out of the near wall. The body had no skin left on it, and chunks of its flesh were missing, giving an excellent view of the bones beneath.

The damn thing was hot.

That freaked Raphael out more than anything. Even though he wasn't inclined to touch a skinless dead body, he still walked carefully around it, avoiding puddles of blood, and even at the distance he kept, he could still feel the heat radiating off of it.

Dead bodies cool at a rate of about a degree and a half per hour. He really didn't want to get close enough to take its temperature, but from what he could tell, it hadn't cooled down much. "Recent death," he murmured.

Leo walked around the other side of the corpse, looking pale and shaken, but he was holding it together a lot better than Mike was. "It almost looks like an apple," the older turtle murmured, "peeled off all at once. I don't see any skin left anywhere."

"Bottoms of the feet're skinned," Raphael noted. "Never seen shit like that before." His tone was detached and clinical. He tried keeping it that way. Raph could feel his stomach churning the longer he looked at the body, and ignored it as best he could.

"Me, neither," Leo said. The older turtle shuddered. "Raph, God, his eyes are gone…"

Another level of messed up. "This ain't how I wanted ta spend my afternoon, bro."

The turtles had always had hazardous lives. They'd come to the conclusion, back when they were teenagers, that they'd never get a chance at a normal life, and had decided to live with it, rather than wallow in self-pity. Not that they didn't have moments of it, anyway, but that was all psychology shit that Donnie kept up with and Raph tried hard not to pay attention to. Let him bust a few heads, and he was fine.

But even with their particular lives, with their own personal hazards, one would think that they'd be able to run out and catch a movie without nearly tripping on a skinned corpse.

Raph fidgeted. The body was still hot, and had no skin. "Leo, how long you think it'd take ta skin a human body?"

His brother frowned over the thought, racking his brain. The elder turtle glanced back at the two still in the shadows. "Donnie, we have a medical question for you."

"Ask it over here. I'm not getting any closer to that thing."

Leo stepped gingerly around several puddles of blood and went to Donnie's side. Raph continued to circle the body.

It was still hot.

Something was seriously messed up here. A skinless corpse with no eyes, you'd think that the damn thing would have started cooling off by now. Maybe whoever killed the guy had finished skinning five minutes before the turtles popped out of the sewers and headed down the alley way, but wouldn't it have started cooling before then, while it was being skinned?

"How the hell would I know!" he heard Donnie snap. Poor Don. Poor Mike, too. Neither of them enjoyed seeing this kind of gruesome display any more than their older sibs did.

Still hot, still hot… He stared at its chest. Oh, no. No, no, no… Aw holy fuck. "Leo, it's still alive!"

"What?"

"What I said! It's breathin'!"

Too much exposed muscle, too much visible bone, too much blood, neither of them knew what to do to even begin helping the body that was still breathing, in spite of its missing eyes and flesh. Raph knelt on one side, Leo hurrying over to kneel on the other.

"Donnie, what –"

"Flaying alive is fatal," Don said. He didn't sound very stable.

Raph wasn't feeling very stable, either, but he had no idea what needed to be done. "Whadda we do ta… help him?"

Don threw his hands up in the air. "How should I know? I don't go studying the various methods of murder and torture! Just, I guess, make him comfortable."

Leo started to say something, but was interrupted. The body suddenly arced, moved, threw its head back, and opened its mouth. It tossed its head around, giving Raph a brief view of its mouth, minus the tongue and skin within. The teeth jiggled loosely in the naked jaw bone.

The body writhed, tensed, and keened out a wail that made Raphael's heart hammer against his chest bone. The pitch increased, reaching the upper ranges, making Raph throw his hands over his ears and wince. Leo had his eyes scrunched closed, his own hands covering his head, so he didn't see, and he was closer than Raphael was. Raph couldn't move fast enough, but even still, he didn't know what was happening until he watched it unfolding in front of him.

One of the living corpse's hands groped blindly beneath the body, drawing a knife they couldn't see without moving him, something they weren't inclined to do. From beneath, the arm grasped, raised, brought the blade down into the bleeding chest, ONE TWO and started for three when the body collapsed, the screaming stopped, the arm fell and the knife clattered to the ground.

Raph could almost feel the body finally starting to cool.

He heard Mike dry-heaving and felt a deep sympathy. His own stomach was about to upend itself.

Leo licked his lips and stood up very slowly. Raph saw his hands shaking. "Donnie, get Mike back down. Raph, you're up. Don't go too far, but see if you can find anything. Stay hidden and for God's sake, don't engage anything! I'm calling the police; I'll catch up with you."

Donnie looked from one to the other. "Don't do anything stupid, either of you."

"We won't," Raph said. He looked away from the dead man and took off, heading up. Up, to the rooftops which were a part of their world, up where he could see but not be seen easily. Up, and as far away from the scene of death that burned into his brain as he could get without his bike and a full tank of gas.

"Finally!" Ruby stretched and was on her feet before the bell finished ringing. Hope stood as well, a little less certainly, but Ruby snatched her hand and half dragged her from the classroom. "Come on, we're in the same home room."

"Yeah, thanks. I have no idea where anything is," Hope admitted.

"You'll get used to it." Ruby flashed her a grin. "If anybody tells you that your class is on the third floor, is down the West hallway, or that you've got Miss Polkoroko for your teacher, don't believe them. Those are fish jokes, but they'll play them on newbies, too."

Hope laughed. She knew all about "fish jokes." Back home in Texas, high school freshmen were fair game. Hope never engaged in those kinds of jokes, and often tried to make corrections whenever she heard the upper classmen try to trick newbies, but in her three years, she'd heard most of them. "You're like me. You like to rescue the drowning fish."

Ruby cocked her head, looking amused. "Can fish drown?"

"On dry land they can, yes."

The red-head laughed. "I guess I never thought about that. I'm glad we've got home room together. I've been dying from curiosity. Don't worry." She lead Hope through the maze that was the upper floor of the campus. "Home room is just where they warehouse us so they can count heads and give us general announcements, and we're supposed to be doing any homework we didn't finish up, but that's a joke. Mostly we play Monopoly."

She pulled Hope through a door into the Social Studies department. There were no real classrooms. Instead, there were sections for different departments – Math, Science, Reading, and so forth – and within those sections, each "classroom" was partitioned off with temporary walls that easily slid on tracks set into the ceiling. It was a lot noisier than the individual classrooms that Hope had grown up with back home, but it did make it easier to switch classes.

Ruby released her hand when they went into their class area and hunted up a pair of chairs in the back right corner, away from the majority of the room. Hope took it as a sign that she wanted to talk privately when she was done with the registration bit. She found the home room teacher and introduced herself.

The home room teacher was a dark haired woman who might have been called young, if the light wasn't too strong. It took her five minutes to sign Hope in, far past the bell, as she hunted for the roll book, then a pencil, then a pencil that could write, and then she had to get all of Hope's information to match up with the stuff that the main office had given the home room teacher.

Once Hope had proved she was a real person and was the person they were waiting for, she collected the books issued to her and carried the stack over to the desks in the corner. "Wow. You could lift weights with these things!"

"Yeah, they're such a waste of time. We don't even use all of them, so a lot of the time your books just sit in the locker and gather dust. Or mold, depending on if you leave your gym socks in there or not."

"Not me." She dropped them onto the desktop with a loud flop and sat down primly. "I've got a very sensitive nose."

The red-head laughed again. Now that they had some time to sit and relax, Hope got a chance to look her new friend over.

Hope stood about five foot four; Ruby was probably a few inches taller, though Ruby wore shoes with a slight heel, so that might have affected things. The red-head fell into the category of "ginger," complete with the freckles and pale skin. She was also more voluptuous than Hope, though like Hope, she wore modest clothing that didn't spark the imaginations of the diverse young men in the room. Ruby's outfit was nice, a pair of black slacks and a black-and-purple dress shirt.

Hope thought she looked very professional, and wondered if Ruby had an after school job. Hope hadn't been in New York City long enough to even start looking for one. She was dressed far more casually, in jeans and a red T-shirt, and her sneakers were about two years old and showed it. But Ruth's face was an open book, with no sign that she thought any less of Hope for being less than fashionable. Besides, Hope looked more like the majority of students in the classroom than Ruby did.

Ruby said, "My nose used to be sensitive, but the lunch room killed it in the tenth grade. So, where're you from?"

"Houston." Hope settled back in her chair and slouched. "We just moved up here about a week ago."

"Really? Wow. How come you left the south?" Ruby's green eyes glistened with the romance of the Old West. Hope knew that look from hundreds of visitors to her home town. "It must be beautiful out there! Lots of trees and prairies…"

"Lots of trees, yeah, but not so many prairies. Houston's a big urban town, like New York, except that right outside of downtown there's lots of flat space open and you can see cows and horses grazing all over the place." The melting look on Ruby's face made Hope laugh again. "Don't get all misty about it. It's a land grant thing. You can hold on to land and either sell it later or build on it yourself, but you have to pay taxes on it if you're not doing anything with it. Stick some cows or horses on it and call it grazing land for livestock, you pay reduced taxes."

"Still, it sounds romantic."

"It's more funny than romantic. Mama used to work in a hotel restaurant, and one night a calf from a neighboring pasture got loose in the parking lot. It was a trip watching them try to wrangle the calf back into its pen."

Ruby appreciated the story enough to laugh, even though Hope found it less amusing and more worrisome. When one grows up around livestock, one learns quickly how dangerous animals really are.

"I like animals," Hope admitted then. "I'm thinking of being a livestock vet."

"That sounds like a fun job." Ruby made a face. "My family's big on business. I guess I'm going to take business classes or maybe go to law school next year."

Hope blinked. "Next year? I thought you were a junior."

"Nope, I'm a senior. Some of the classes are junior/senior, so you get a mixed group. Like, you can either go down the algebra path, like we are, or you can go into financial math."

"If you're thinking of getting a degree in, what? Business? Something like that. Well, why didn't you get into financial math instead of algebra?"

Ruby's green eyes unfocused slightly, and she looked somewhere over Hope's left shoulder, which Hope thought only showed a blank wall. "I like numbers. You like animals, I like numbers. I'm good at math. You don't hear too many girls say that, but I am, and I'd rather do something important than just sit in a cube all day and waste away. Sometimes I think about it, and I think I'd like to get into chemistry or biology, but what I'd really like to do is work for NASA!"

Well, that was interesting. Hope wouldn't have pinned Ruby for a science buff, and this explained her fascination with Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center. "So, what would you have to do to get into NASA?"

That broke Ruby's daydream. She made a face and met Hope's eyes again. "Probably have to go into the military or something. I wouldn't be a bad soldier, I don't think, but I don't really like the idea of getting up at five in the morning and starting my day with a long run before breakfast."

"Yeah."

The problem with trying to make friends, Hope thought, was dealing with that awkward phase where you were just starting to get to know someone, and trying not to seem like a freak, but still wanting to share some of yourself with the person, without going too far. Her Mama always talked about some kind of formula to meeting a person and getting to know him; Mama had used it extensively on the Internet, particularly in chat rooms.

The trouble with face-to-face, though, was that you didn't have the anonymity of a screen name to hide behind, and you ended up being more honest, because you had to talk to someone, not stop a moment to think of something interesting to say, while blaming your pauses on the cat or something.

Hope didn't do so well on the Internet, either. Mama blamed it on the fact that she was usually shy and quiet, and preferred to have her nose in a book to hanging out with her classmates. She'd joked her daughter had been born with a book in her hands. Hope found books to be very useful, good friends, and a great distraction from daily life.

Kids, on the other hand, were usually complicated bundles of hormones that wanted to whine about boyfriends and talk about clothes and all those things that Hope didn't have a clue what to do with.

She'd never had a boyfriend, and wasn't especially interested in one, even if she did like looking occasionally. And as for clothes, well, jeans were so much more practical than the stuff Ruby was wearing, even if she did look great in her outfit. Humidity around Houston made trying to tame her nut brown hair impossible; she usually yanked it back into a tail. Sneakers were better if you wanted to go walk around in the woods near her old house. High heels weren't her thing. The one time Hope wore heels in public, she'd taken a header down a flight of stairs.

Mama had gotten on her case this morning, starting her first day of school. "Look, baby, just try to keep your head up and your nose out of a book, okay? Go meet people, have fun, find a boy to flirt with. Do something different. I'm getting tired of you moping around the house all the time, and you're driving Freddy nuts."

Unfortunately, nowhere in there did Mama mention how Hope was supposed to handle the whole "meet people" part. At least Ruby had taken control of the situation and dragged her into a conversation. Now they were winding down the early stuff and had no idea where to go next.

Hope looked around idly. Ruby studied her polished fingernails.

"Wow," Hope said, "this conversation dried up fast."

Ruby laughed, bringing the fun back. "Want to play Monopoly? We've still got fifteen minutes."

Hope was surprised. "Can you play Monopoly in fifteen minutes?" The way Hope played, it usually took several hours and involved a lot of gloating, sneaking money from the bank, and bargaining dishes duty for a week in exchange for mortgaged properties. She and her mother didn't always play by the official rules.

Ruby grinned and headed to a cupboard. "It's as easy as drowning a fish."