“If you ask me,” I’d said, mumbling through the red scarf wrapped around my nose and mouth, “no class project is worth dying for, even with that whole ten-points-extra-credit thing going for it.”

Gemma turned to me and lowered Dad’s camera to push back a blond curl. The cold of December at midnight added a metallic luster to her blue eyes. “If I don’t get this credit,” she said, her breath fogging in the icy air, “I don’t graduate early.”

“I know,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. “But seriously, if I die two weeks before Christmas, I’m totally coming back to haunt you. Forever. And trust me, I know how.”

Gemma shrugged, unconcerned, then turned back to the autofocused images of Albuquerque. Luminarias lined sidewalks and buildings, casting eerie shadows over the deserted streets. For a final on community awareness, Gemma opted to make a video. She wanted to capture life on the streets of Southside. Troubled kids in search of acceptance. Drug addicts in search of their next high. Homeless people in search of sustenance and shelter.

So far, all she’d managed to get on tape was a skateboarder wiping out on Central and a prostitute ordering a soft drink at Macho Taco.

Our curfew had come and gone and still we waited, huddled together in the shadows of an abandoned school, shivering and doing our best to be invisible. We kept getting hassled by gang members who wanted to know what we were doing there. We had a couple of close calls, and I got a couple of phone numbers, but all in all, the evening had been pretty quiet. Probably because it was thirty below out.

Just then I noticed a kid huddled under the steps of the school. He wore a semi-white T-shirt and dirty jeans. Even though he wasn’t wearing a jacket, he wasn’t shivering. The departed weren’t affected by the weather.

“Hey, there,” I said, easing closer.

He glanced up, shock plain on his young face. “You can see me?”

“Sure can.”

“No one can see me.”

“Well, I can. My name is Charley Davidson.”

“Like the motorcycle?”

“Something like that,” I said with a grin.

“Why are you so bright?” he asked, squinting.

“I’m a grim reaper. But don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds.”

Fear crept into his eyes anyway. “I don’t want to go to hell.”

“Hell?” I said, sitting beside him and ignoring Gemma’s sighs of annoyance that I was once again talking to air. “Trust me, hon, if you’d been penciled in for a personal interview with evil incarnate, you wouldn’t be here now.”

Relief softened his expressive eyes.

“So, you just hanging?” I asked.

It didn’t take long to find out that the kid was a recently departed thirteen-year-old gangbanger named Angel who took a nine millimeter to the chest during a drive-by. He was the driver. His redemption, in my eyes, came when I learned that he had no idea his friend was going to try to kill the puta bitch vatos trespassing on their turf until the bullets were flying. In an attempt to stop his friend, Angel actually wrecked his mother’s car, then wrestled his friend for the gun. In the end, only one person died that night.

While I was busy lecturing Angel on the benefits of bulletproof vests, a scene in a distant window caught my attention. I stepped out of the shadows for a closer look. A harsh yellow glare illuminated the kitchen of a small apartment, but that wasn’t what got my attention. At first I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me. I blinked, refocused, then sucked in a deep breath as shock crept up my spine.

“Gemma,” I whispered.

Gemma’s saucy “What?” was quickly followed by a gasp. She saw it, too.

A man in a filthy T-shirt and boxers had a teenage boy pinned against a wall. The boy clawed at the man’s hand clenched around his throat as a meaty fist shot forward. It slammed into the boy’s jaw with such violent force, his head whipped back and hit the wall. He went limp, but only for a moment. His hands drifted up blindly to fend off the attack. In the span of a heartbeat, the boy’s disoriented gaze seemed to lock on to mine. Then the man hit him again.

“Oh, my god, Gemma, we have to do something!” I screamed. I ran for an opening in the chain-link fence that surrounded the school. “We have to do something!”

“Charley, wait!”

But I was already through the fence and running toward the apartment. I glanced up in time to see the man wrestle the boy onto the kitchen table.

The steps to the apartment building weren’t lit. I stumbled up them and pounded on the locked entrance door to no avail. A postage stamp window revealed a dark, deserted hallway.

“Charley!” Gemma was standing in the street outside the apartment. Because the window was set high, she had to stand back to be able to see in. “Charley, hurry! He’s killing him!”

I ran back to her, but I couldn’t see the boy.

“He’s killing him,” she repeated.

“Where did they go?”

“There. Nowhere. They didn’t go anywhere,” she said in a rush of emotion. “He fell. The boy fell, and the man—”

I did the only thing I could think of. I sprinted back to the abandoned school and grabbed a brick.

“What are you doing?” she asked as I scrambled through the fence and rushed back to her.

“Probably getting us killed,” I said as I took aim. “Or worse, grounded.”