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“Bor-ing,” Amy cut in.

“The Transamerica Pyramid is too sharp and weird—”

“And
phallic.”

“I guess I would choose the harbor,” Paul decided. Looking over his shoulder, Chloe could see colorful little sailboats coming and going with the wind, dreamy, hazy islands in the distance. She smiled. It was a
very
Paul choice.

“Definitely
not
Russian Hill,” Amy added, trying to regain control of the conversation. “Fugly sprawl with a capital
Fug.”

“Made your decision just in time, Paul . . .”

As they watched, low clouds came rolling down from
the hills, replacing each of the nine windows, enclosing the views in a white, total darkness. What should have been a beautiful blue day with puffy white clouds now that they were out of Inner Sunset had rapidly given way to the same old stupid weather.

This wasn't exactly what Chloe had expected for her sixteenth-birthday-school-blow-off day.

To be fair, she always expected more than life was likely to give: in this case, a golden sunny
Stand by Me/Ferris Bueller
these-are-the-best-days-of-our-lives sort of experience.

“So dude,” Amy said, changing the subject. “What's up with you and Comrade Ilychovich?”

Chloe sighed and sank down against the wall, taking a last swallow from her own cup. Like Amy's, it was spiked with Paul's birthday present to her. Paul had already drunk his diet Coke and was now sipping directly from the amazingly cheesy plastic vodka flask. Chloe looked dreamily at the black-and-red onion domes on the label.

“He's . . . just . . . so . . .
hot.
”

“And
so
out of your league,” Amy pointed out.

“Alyec is steely-eyed, chisel-faced young Russian,” Paul said with a thick cold war accent. “Possibly with modeling contract. Sources say Agent Keira Hendelson getting close to his . . .
cover.
”

“Screw her.” Chloe threw her empty cup at the wall, picturing it smashing into the student council's blond little president.

“You
could
be related, you know,” Amy pointed out. “That could be a problem. He could be a cousin or nephew or something of your biological parents.”

“The old Soviet Union's a big place. Genetically, I think we're okay. It's the getting to actually
date
him that's the problem.”

“You could just, I don't know, go up to him and like,
talk
to him or something,” Paul suggested.

“He's always surrounded by the Blond One and her Gang of Four,” Chloe reminded him.

“Nothing ventured, nothing lost.”

Yeah, right.
Like
he
had ever asked anyone out.

Amy swigged the last of her coffee and belched. “Oh, crap, I've got to pee.”

Paul blushed. He always got nervous when either Amy or Chloe discussed anything like bodily functions in front of him—so usually Chloe didn't talk about that stuff when he was around.

But today she felt . . . well, odd. Jumpy, impatient. Not to mention a little annoyed with both him
and
Amy. This was supposed to be
her
birthday thing. So far it sucked.

“Too bad you can't do it standing up, like Paul,” she said, watching him blush out of the corner of her eye. “You could go over the edge.”

Now, what had made her say that?

She stood up. Leaning against the stone wall, Chloe peered down. All she could see was swirling whiteness
and, off to her left, one water-stained red pylon of the Golden Gate Bridge.

What would happen if I dropped a penny from up here?
Chloe wondered.
Would it make a tunnel through the fog? That would be cool.
A tunnel two hundred feet long and half an inch across.

She climbed up into a window and dug into her jeans pocket, hunting for spare change, not bothering to put her other hand on the wall for balance.

The tower suddenly seemed to tilt forward.

“What—,” she began to say.

Chloe tried to resteady herself by leaning back into the window frame, grasping for the wall, but the fog had left it clammy and slick. She pitched forward, her left foot slipping out from beneath her.

“Chloe!”

She threw her arms back, desperately trying to rebalance herself. For a brief second she felt Paul's warm fingers against her own. She looked into his face—a smile of relief broke across it, pink flushed across the tops of his high cheekbones. But then the moment was over: Amy was shrieking and Chloe felt nothing catch her as she slipped out of Paul's grasp. She was falling—
falling
—out of the window and off the tower.

This is not happening,
Chloe thought.
This is not the way I end.

She heard the already-muffled screams of her friends
getting fainter, farther and farther away. Something would save her, right?

Her head hit last.

The pain was unbearable, bone crushing and nauseating—the sharp shards of a hundred needles being forced through her as her body compacted itself on the ground.

Everything went black, and Chloe waited to die.

She was surrounded
by darkness.

Strange noises, padding footsteps, and the occasional scream echoed and died in strange ways, like she was in a vast cavern riddled with tunnels and caves. Somewhere ahead and far below her, like she was standing at the edge of a cliff, was an indistinct halo of hazy light. It rippled unpleasantly. She started to back away from it. Then something growled behind her and shoved her hard.

Chloe pitched forward toward the light and into empty space.

This was it. This was
death.

“Chloe?
Chloe?”

That was odd. God sounded kind of annoying. Kind of whiny.

“Oh my God, she's—”

“Call 911!”

“There's no way she could have survived that fall—”

“GET OUT OF MY WAY!”

Chloe felt like she was spinning, her weight being forced back into her skin.

“You
stupid shithead!
”

That was Amy. That was
definitely
Amy.

“We should call her mom. . . .”

“What do we say? That Chloe is . . . that Chloe's
dead?”

“Don't say that! It's not true!”

Chloe opened her eyes.

“Oh my God—Chloe . . . ?”

Paul and Amy were leaning over her. Tears and streaky lightning bolts of black makeup ran down Amy's cheeks, and her light blue eyes were wide and rimmed with red.

“You're a-alive?” Paul asked, face white with awe. “There's no way you could have—” He put a hand behind her head, feeling her neck and skull. When he pulled it back, there was only a little blood on his finger.

“You—you didn't—oh my God, it's . . . a . . . miracle . . . ,” Amy said slowly.

“Can you move?” Paul asked quietly.

Chloe sat up. It was the hardest thing she could ever remember doing, like pushing herself through a million pounds of dirt. Her head swam, and for a moment there was two of everything, four flat gingerbread friends in front of her. She coughed, then began puking. She tried to lean to the side but couldn't control her body.

After she finished heaving, Chloe noticed that Paul
and Amy were touching her, holding her shoulders. She could just barely feel their hands; sensation slowly crept back over her skin.

“You
should
be dead,” said Paul. “There is no. Way. You could have survived that fall.”

She was struck by what he said; it seemed true. Yet here she was, alive. Just like that. Why was she so unsurprised?

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First Simon Pulse edition July 2004

Copyright © 2004 by Francine Pascal

Cover copyright © 2004 by 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company.

SIMON PULSE

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Produced by 17th Street Productions,

an Alloy company

151 West 26th Street

New York, NY 10001

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

in whole or in part in any form.

For information address 17th Street Productions,

151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001.

Fearless™ is a trademark of Francine Pascal.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2004100272

ISBN: 0-689-86917-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-4424-8948-6 (eBook)