Audrey King was so grateful to Simon Hobbs for driving her to school that she'd thanked him at least eight times over the course of the subsequent week. She hadn't realized that she'd been repetitive; her redundancy came from a true desire to show her appreciation and not out of a purposeful wish to annoy him.

Audrey was seventeen and relatively new to her school. She had been private-schooled for some time, and it was only within the last year—her junior year—that her father had decided he couldn't afford private school anymore and sent her to public. Audrey hadn't minded; she'd looked forward to wearing what she wanted and to making new friends. She was certain kids at public school would be more accepting and interested in talking to her, and overall, she'd been correct in that assumption. In general, everyone she'd met had been quite nice. Still, it was difficult to suddenly be forced into a group of people who'd known one another for years. By the time that she'd get to really know people well enough to feel they were her friends, it would be time to graduate. Audrey was, consequently, glad to have Simon around.

She'd lived in the same apartment complex with her father for nearly six years, even when she'd attended private school. After her parents' divorce, her mother had moved out of state and Audrey's father had been unable to keep their nice suburban home as well as pay for his daughter's private education with his job; he owned his own art gallery, but it didn't make much money. First, they'd given up the home and moved into the city; recently, Audrey had had to give up her private schooling as well.

Simon Hobbs was the only person Audrey knew when she began her new school, because she'd seen him around the apartment complex where they lived. They'd never spoken much, but there was some friendliness about him that had given her the impression he'd never resent speaking to her . . . or driving her to school.

Audrey was average height for a seventeen-year-old girl, but she was quite a bit larger than she would have liked to be. Her weight had been a problem for years, ever since she was a little girl, and her parents' divorce hadn't helped her eating habits. She considered herself chubby—not quite fat—but chubby. At least twenty pounds overweight. Her facial features were striking, though: deep blue eyes, a smile that lit up her round face, and hair that was long and blonde. Had she weighed a little less, she might have been considered pretty. As she was, she really didn't like herself at all. Her personality she liked all right, but nobody saw a personality at first glance; they saw her appearance. Whenever someone looked at her in what she perceived to be a different way, whenever she thought she heard whispers, whenever she felt some tremor of rejection—Audrey chalked it up to her physical appearance. Her lack of confidence was considerable, but one would never know it by spending time with her. Audrey smiled at everyone, and she clearly meant to please when speaking with others. She never denied a conversation with another person, and she always participated in her classes. To all outsiders, Audrey King was a perfectly average albeit slightly overweight seventeen-year-old, but to her inside self, she was grossly deficient. She felt the hole of it often, usually when she was alone, at home, at night.

Simon had been so nice to drive her to school early in the morning. There was something about Simon Hobbs that Audrey really liked. It wasn't his appearance: though affable, he was odd-looking; he was gangly and reminded her of a dark spider with a long angular face and glasses. His appearance should have caused revulsion more than comfort. Yet, as it seemed most people did, Audrey felt comfortable around him. When she wasn't with him, however, the thought of him made her nervous. She wasn't quite certain why. Maybe it had to do with the uncanny sense that he could tell what she was thinking. The few times Audrey had been with Simon, he had betrayed no sign of reading her thoughts or of even attempting to figure out what she was thinking, and yet, she had felt as if, behind his very casual, ordinary words, he had been able to see clear through her skull and penetrate the dark little corners of her mind.

Not that she had very dark corners, she thought somewhat abstractly to herself as she sat in her physics class. Her thoughts were rarely centered on more than what each day would bring and how she could avoid any potential problems as it ran its course. Constant focus on flexibility in case of some embarrassing event was quite stressful and left little time for schoolwork.

Simon sat several rows in front of Audrey. She stared at his back. He was hunched over because he was so tall, and he appeared to be writing—note-taking—from the way his shoulder trembled. Audrey wondered what he thought about. She'd never given him much consideration except when she'd needed a ride, or when she'd been directly exposed to him, and even at those times, her thoughts had been more about her own comfort level than what he was thinking. He certainly was an odd person. There was no better way to describe him. He was just odd. Now that she thought about it, Audrey was amazed that someone so obviously strange could be liked by everyone—shunned by no one. If only she could get people to appreciate her the way they appreciated him. Audrey was, for the most part, a loner, and that was really the most painful predicament of all for someone her age.

It was Friday. When she left school, Audrey decided to walk the several blocks to the metro train. In the mornings, her father took her to school (except on the rare occasion that he had to work early and she got rides from someone else), but in the afternoons, she had to fend for herself. There was a bus that picked up outside the high school and ran right to the train station where she caught her ride back to her neighborhood, but she just didn't feel like taking it that day. She needed some cold air against her cheeks and the chance to stretch her legs. The opportunity to be out walking through the city yet in a world of her own thoughts at the same time was appealing.

She walked through the parking lot, watching the students who had cars pile into them and crank up their music. She wished she was one of them, laughing and raving over weekend plans to shop and date and gossip. As much as Audrey tried to convince herself that she didn't care about being on her own, she really did.

The day was bright. The sun was out and the sky was blue with wisps of clouds gracing it, but the air was quite cold. Audrey reluctantly began to regret her decision to walk after about ten minutes of shivering. Despite her scarf, gloves, wool coat, and hat, she was freezing. To take her mind off the cold, Audrey attempted to focus on concrete subjects. As a junior, she was at a point in her young life where she had to make some serious decisions. She'd made a list of several colleges she wanted to prepare to apply for, and she was awaiting the results of her ACT and SAT testing. She knew that it was still a little early to begin worrying about college, but in the back of her mind, she was hoping that someone would just find her and fish her out of the pools of students and beg her to attend their college. She just wanted to skip all the application procedures and essay writings and "get found." But she had come to the point of disillusionment, and its ramifications were daily making themselves known. Audrey had lost the belief that her parents could save her from anything. She'd come to realize that there really wasn't any sense to life, no matter how one tried to give events reason. And she knew, now, that dreams rarely came true. Still, there were voices in the back of her mind—little nagging, sugar-coated ones that seemed a cruel curse more than anything else—that rattled off ridiculous hopes and encouraged her to trust in them. It was as if the little girl in her was comfortable with its residence and unwilling to make room for the more rational adult attempting to emerge. Audrey felt that, as a teen, she battled more with herself than with her peers or father. It was horribly frustrating and unfair, because there was no one she could go to for answers, seeing as the problem was within her.

This was doing no good—this thinking. It really wasn't taking her mind off of the cold. In fact, her big toes were entirely numb. As she walked, she noticed they felt nothing but a little pressure. Her shoulders began to shake violently, more so because she was trying so hard to keep them from shaking. That was one of the rules of the human body: it tended to do exactly what you tried to keep it from doing when you focused on the issue. She decided to cross the street and wait at the adjacent corner, where the bus she could've picked up from school made its third stop. Her little walk had proven a waste of energy and body heat. The idea of an intriguing walk—something different and refreshing . . . a walk on which she'd perhaps meet someone interesting—was merely another disillusionment.

The bus stop was out in the open, just a bench. Audrey knew if she sat, she'd become more cold. Or, at least, she'd have the opportunity to think about her sedate body and the fact that she wasn't adding any heat to it by just sitting there. If she stood, she might be able to hop back and forth, foot to foot, and shake her mind off her stiffening limbs.

There was one other person at the stop—an older black man. Not too old, although she couldn't quite tell from the way his head was all bundled up. He was sitting on the bench with a briefcase at his side, and he was stock still. So still that he might have been a statue except for the fact that little clouds of breath puffed out from between his scarves every few seconds. Audrey didn't give him too much of a thought. She was concerned more with her own comfort, which she couldn't seem to recover and, at the time, doubted she'd ever be able to regain. The bus was taking its time, too. Cars puttered past, engines making their best attempts to stay running. There were quite a few bundled people out walking, despite the cold, and Audrey suddenly felt like a wimp for giving up on her own trek. Still, she wasn't going to change her mind now. She'd given up.

"Come on, bus," she muttered to herself as a sharp wind bit her face, trying to keep her lips from going numb. She was facing the direction from which the bus would come, and she was paying little attention to anything else around her until she heard a dull thud—as if someone had dropped a heavy grocery bag—from behind. It wasn't too weird of a noise, and Audrey didn't want to jerk around and have that man on the bench think she was looking at him, but she was curious. So, slowly, casually, as if she was surveying the street absent-mindedly, she turned her body back toward the stop. What she saw caused her to gasp: the man on the bench had fallen off, onto the concrete, and was lying there motionless.

Audrey forgot the cold and darted to him, immediately dropping to hands and knees. She shook the man's shoulders. "Sir! Sir! Are you all right?" But he clearly wasn't. No more clouds of breath were coming out from between his scarves. His eyes were closed and he was entirely unresponsive.

The girl fumbled through her purse and whipped out her cell phone. Within seconds, she'd dialed an emergency number. A small crowd began to gather, and she told them all to get back—that she'd called an ambulance—and her voice sounded as if it belonged to someone else.