Death writes with a Purple Ballpoint Pen

1: Skype Premium is a Godsend

Dedicated to long-drives. I love your username and I loved the comment you left on the previous chapter.

Anna's Mom and Dad in the media section. Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap has no relevance to the chapter but it's one of my favorite songs.

1: Skype Premium is a Godsend

This story starts out like most others that center around a teenager: on the very first day of a new school year.

In fact, if it weren't for the part of me that was more paranormal than normal, there wouldn't even be a story to tell.

See, I'm a straight up Honors student who irritatingly tops every single class – a perk of being supernaturally intelligent – who enjoys a good romance-fantasy-adventure book whenever she wants to unwind and whose only two real friends live on the other side of the globe.

In the universe of pets, I'd be a pet rock.

One hundred and fifteen percent blend-into-the-beige-colored-background normal.

Though, if you ask my parents, that's the entire point.

Blending into the crowd and never standing out is basically Rule Number One in the "How to be an Effective Angel of Death" Guidebook – and yes, one of my ancestors just had that much free time they actually wrote one.

Don't get me wrong – we can talk to other people. Normal people, that is. You just couldn't make strong connections with people outside the lifestyle. It narrows down the people you can be friends so much so that the ones you can truly call your friends all live in a different country.

Let me how explain how things work.

In every country, there's only one Angel of Death – another irritating clause from the Guidebook – so we end up looking for friends, relationships and even a potential life partner beyond our borders.

Dad, for example, is the official Angel of Death for the US while Mom, who grew up in Canada, helps him run the family business. They didn't have to look very far, sure, but like the rest of our people, they still had to deal with Customs.

Kevin and Marie were another good example.

Kevin and Marie were the successors for the Angel of Death business – fronted by a bookshop and an Internet café – in India and the Philippines, respectively.

Of the next generation of Angels of Death, we had formed a friendship out of our shared age. The three of us were born weeks within each other. We made up a tiny clique in an already very exclusive group of people.

Like every other future Angel of Death, we had the same jet-black hair, brown eyes, slightly tan complexion and an average build and height for wherever we lived. As a joke, we called each other cousins.

Now don't go thinking that I'm going to be marrying another cousin of mine. In our world, you could ride the love boat with as long as you didn't share a parent.

Kevin and Marie had found love years ago – much to my dismay.

And what about me?

Well, I suppose that's we're here to find out.

* * * * *

One way to measure a teenager's sanity is their willingness to get up before the sun has even thought of peeking over the horizon.

Non-nerdy-slash-human translation: I, Anna Walker, am most definitely insane.

It was four AM – and the first day of my senior year of high school to boot – and I was firing up my computer.