Chapter 2: Questions Without Answers
The walk home took forever. My waterlogged shoes squelched with every step, and my clothes clung to my skin like a cold, wet prison. But the strangest part wasn't the discomfort—it was how *good* I felt underneath it all.
My ribs didn't hurt. The cut on my lip was gone. Even the chronic ache in my back from sleeping on a lumpy mattress had disappeared completely.
I'd drowned. I was sure of it. The memory was crystal clear: the water filling my lungs, the burning sensation, the darkness closing in. But here I was, walking down Maple Street like nothing had happened.
*What the hell is wrong with me?*
Our trailer sat at the end of the street, looking as run-down as always. The porch light was out again, and I could see the blue glow of the TV through the thin curtains. Mom was probably passed out on the couch with an empty bottle in her hand. She'd stopped asking where I went after school months ago.
I tried to slip in quietly, but the screen door squeaked like a dying animal.
"Alex?" Mom's voice was slurred but alert. "That you, baby?"
"Yeah, Mom. Just me."
She appeared in the doorway to the living room, swaying slightly. Her blonde hair was a mess, and her makeup had smudged under her eyes. She looked older than her thirty-five years.
"You're soaking wet," she said, squinting at me in the dim light. "What happened?"
"Fell in a puddle," I lied smoothly. "I'm gonna shower and go to bed."
She nodded absently, already turning back toward the TV. "There's leftover pizza in the fridge if you want it."
The shower felt amazing against my skin, washing away the river mud and the lingering taste of dirty water. But as I stood under the hot spray, I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened.
I'd died. Actually died. And somehow come back.
This wasn't like the minor healing I'd noticed before. This was something else entirely. Something impossible.
I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror after I dried off. Same brown eyes, same black hair, same average face that girls never looked at twice. But something felt different. I looked... healthier? The dark circles under my eyes were gone, and my skin had a vitality it hadn't possessed in years.
*Maybe I'm going crazy,* I thought. *Maybe I hit my head and imagined the whole thing.*
But the memory was too vivid, too real. I could still feel the water rushing into my lungs, still remember the moment my heart stopped beating.
I barely slept that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the river, drowning all over again. When morning came, I felt exhausted but somehow physically perfect—like my body had reset itself while my mind wrestled with the impossible.
School was going to be hell. Jake and his friends probably thought they'd killed me. What would they do when I showed up alive and unharmed?
*Only one way to find out.*
---
Millbrook High looked the same as always—a cluster of aging brick buildings surrounded by cracked parking lots and dead grass. I kept my hood up as I walked through the front doors, hoping to avoid attention until I figured out what I was going to say.
No such luck.
"Holy shit," I heard Derek whisper to someone near the lockers. "Look who decided to show up."
The hallway fell silent as students noticed me. Whispers started immediately, spreading like wildfire through the crowd.
"Isn't that the kid who fell in the river?"
"I heard they found his backpack downstream."
"My dad's on the volunteer fire department. They called off the search yesterday."
Jake appeared at the end of the hallway, his face pale as he stared at me. Our eyes met across the crowded space, and I saw something I'd never seen in his expression before: fear.
Good. Let him be afraid.
I walked past him without a word, heading for my first period class. But I could feel his eyes on me the entire time, boring into my back like laser beams.
Mrs. Patterson, my English teacher, did a double-take when I walked into her classroom.
"Alex?" She blinked rapidly behind her thick glasses. "I... we were told you were missing. The police came by yesterday asking questions."
"I'm fine," I said simply, taking my usual seat in the back corner.
"But the river... they said you fell in the river."
Every eye in the classroom was on me now. I could feel their stares like physical weight, pressing down on my shoulders. Some looked curious, others suspicious. A few seemed genuinely concerned.
"I got out," I said. "Managed to swim to shore downstream."
It wasn't technically a lie. I had ended up downstream. The swimming part was just... creative interpretation.
Mrs. Patterson looked like she wanted to ask more questions, but the bell rang, saving me from further interrogation. She launched into her lesson about symbolism in literature, but I couldn't focus on her words.
Instead, I found myself thinking about what had happened to me. The drowning was just the latest in a series of incidents where I should have been seriously hurt but somehow wasn't. The chemical explosion in the lab. The time I fell off the roof of the gym. The car accident last month where I walked away without a scratch while the other driver went to the hospital.
I'd always chalked it up to luck. Good reflexes. Divine intervention, maybe.
But now I was starting to see a pattern.
The lunch bell rang, jolting me out of my thoughts. I packed up my things and headed for the cafeteria, my stomach growling. Apparently, coming back from the dead worked up an appetite.
I was halfway through a soggy hamburger when Jake and his crew cornered me.
"We need to talk," Jake said, his voice tight with barely controlled panic.
I looked up at him, chewing slowly. "Do we?"
"You were supposed to..." He glanced around nervously, then leaned closer and lowered his voice. "You were supposed to be dead."
"Sorry to disappoint you."
Derek grabbed my shoulder, his grip tight enough to bruise. "This isn't a joke, freak. We saw you go under. We waited for twenty minutes. Nobody could have survived that."
I looked at his hand on my shoulder, then back at his face. "Take your hand off me, Derek."
"Or what?"
For a moment, something dark flickered in my chest. A cold anger that felt different from anything I'd experienced before. Derek must have seen it in my eyes because he actually took a step back.
"Nothing," I said quietly. "Just... take your hand off me."
He did, his face pale.
Jake was staring at me like I was some kind of alien. "What are you?"
*Good question,* I thought. *I wish I knew.*
"I'm the kid you tried to murder yesterday," I said, loud enough for nearby students to hear. "And I'm still here."
The color drained from Jake's face completely. A few other students had turned to watch our conversation, and I could see the wheels turning in their heads. Jake Morrison, star quarterback, looking terrified of Alex Chen, school punching bag.
"I... we didn't..." Jake stammered.
"Didn't what? Didn't push me into a flooded river? Didn't stand there and watch me drown?" I stood up, and for the first time in my life, Jake actually backed away from me. "Be more careful next time. You might not get so lucky."
I walked away, leaving them standing there in stunned silence. But as I headed for the exit, I caught a glimpse of someone watching me from across the cafeteria.
A woman I'd never seen before. Middle-aged, professional looking, with steel-gray hair and sharp eyes that seemed to see right through me. She was dressed like a teacher, but something about her felt different. Dangerous.
When our eyes met, she smiled—but it wasn't a friendly expression.
It was the smile of a predator who'd just found interesting prey.