And then everything happened so fast and there was a twist and a turn of a hideous shape; a thumping noise, horrible, wet, and loud, reverberating around her head; something unthinkable following the phone; and the car’s wheels, still moving, engine still revving, and the even harder cracking noise as the huge, unthinkable shape hit the ground, lay there, twisted, misshapen. Lissa couldn’t actually believe what she was looking at, that it could not—absolutely could not—be Kai, and she lifted her eyes and found herself staring straight into the face of the driver, whose mouth was drawn back in a snarl, or a leer, or something; something, thought Lissa, through her incomprehension, through her panic, that she couldn’t figure out, not at all, as it screamed something about “staying out of Leaf Field”—and then the car revved and sped on.

THERE WAS A moment’s silence, then the yelling started: disbelief, fury; and suddenly Lissa found herself clicking into action, found her training propping her up, propelling her forward.

“I’m a nurse. Move away please, I can help.”

She expected to have to clear a path, but the other youths bounced upward, shouting their heads off, and dashed screaming in pursuit of the car.

“Dial 999!” Lissa shouted as she knelt down to examine Kai, pulling her phone out of her pocket. She had no idea if the lads could catch the car and was terrified they’d get hit again; there was only one way out of the development, it would have to double back at some point—but she had to prioritize.

She looked down at the figure on the pavement, his head sideways on the sunbaked stone, next to cigarette ends strewn in the gutter.

“DARLING.”

He was beautiful, fifteen years old. Lissa couldn’t get over it. Not that that mattered, of course; of course it didn’t. It had absolutely nothing to do with it. But as she bent desperately trying to save him, as she finally, finally, heard the sirens she’d been waiting for, she couldn’t get over it: the sheer heart-stopping beauty of the young soft skin, the curve of the neck, the dark hair. He was a child. She couldn’t bear to think of how the family was going to take it. She cursed herself; her best friend had deleted Ezra’s number from her phone, for her own good. She couldn’t even call him.