Pulse

like she was toying with him. For Faith, it was Wade’s light-blue eyes and the curl of his lips. She could imagine staring into that face for hours just for the pleasure of looking at it.
    “Cool,” said Hawk, like he and Wade were having a conversation they clearly were not having. “I’m good. I’m really good. This is Faith. She’s new.”
    Wade’s sister, the other half of the Twins, arrived beside him. She was almost as tall as he was, and gorgeous. She had surprisingly short hair that focused gawkers on her athletic, chiseled face. And her long, lean body offered plenty of curves, too.
    “Holy shit, you’re tall,” said Faith. It was rare for her to encounter a girl this much taller than she was. Clara Quinn had to be six feet two.
    “Thank you,” Clara said, studying Faith from top to bottom. “I think.”
    She nudged Wade on the shoulder to get him moving, and the two of them continued down the nearly empty corridor. Wade turned back.
    “Nice pants.”
    And then he was gone around a corner.
    Hawk glanced behind Faith, checking out the pants.
    “Those are definitely nice. Did you order them from the Western State? I can get things a lot cheaper from the Eastern State. I know; it doesn’t make any sense, right? Which is why it makes sense.”
    “Yeah, okay, I’ll see you later then.”
    Faith started walking away in a love-crush daze, searching for her next class, and Hawk called after her.
    “Be careful, Faith. The Twins are pretty intense. Better to stay off their radar.”
    But it was too late for Faith Daniels.
    She’d only been at Old Park Hill for two hours, and she’d already fallen under Wade Quinn’s spell.

Chapter 2
Grade School Break-in
    Faith lived in Bridgeport Commons, which at one time had been an upscale place to raise a family. There were hundreds of houses and complexes surrounding a man-made lake in the middle, and Faith lived in one of the narrow, three-story units at the edge of a tree-lined sidewalk. The development included paths for running and walking, a pool, and even a grade school at the far end where all the little kids could get an education safely without venturing very far into the world outside. If she walked out of Bridgeport Commons and took a left, the mall where Faith had sat and purchased a song was only ten minutes away.
    By the time Faith was born, Bridgeport Commons had been mostly vacated. A man lived alone at the end of the block, but otherwise the twelve-unit building Faith called home was empty. She didn’t know for sure, because she hadn’t grown up there, but she had a sense that the neighborhood had once been home to a thousand or more people. Now there were maybe a dozen, scattered around the lake, unwilling to move to the Western State until they were forced inside for good. The ones who remained were mostly cleanup crew, preparing new space for the ever-expanding Western State. But for the most part, the people who remained outside the Western State did so at their own peril. They were off grid, on their own, living day-to-day on what they could find. Food was scarce, and medical services were nonexistent. The idea was not to force people into the States, but to wear them down. Sooner or later almost everyone gave up, and then the State system would swoop in and take anyone who wanted right into the comforting arms of modern living.
    The lake had been taken over by about a million weird-looking black birds with oversized web feet and white beaks. They were like prehistoric animals, slow and not very smart, barely able to fly. Once when Faith was six, she’d watched as a black car drove into the neighborhood and one of the birds had run, flapping its lame wings, across the street. The bird was two feet off the ground and moving fast when the car hit it with its grille. Faith never forgot the sound it made, a terrible thunk , and the way the bird flopped forward in slow motion, landing on the pavement like a bag of sand. She had been surprised to see the car keep going around the corner and out of sight.
    Faith was thinking of the strange, dead bird as she walked along the lakefront with Liz, the two of them holding hands as they sometimes did. It was Liz who had first taken Faith’s hand on one of their walks at night, and it had felt tingly and dangerous that first time. Faith didn’t know for certain why they kept doing it, but she thought it was because they were both afraid. Afraid of being alone, of leaving, of waking up one