Chapter 1.

Phoenix woke up to furious whispers and bright white lights.

She could almost make out what the person was saying, something about a stupid suicide and attention seeking.

Dimly her brain made the connection between what the voice was saying and the boy she'd saved from the river before being sucked in by the current herself.

She sat bolt upright when she realized she was awake, as in, actually awake.

She wasn't dead. It looked like she was in a hospital actually.

She looked across the room, to the place where the whispers were coming from but the curtain was drawn over the bed and she couldn't see the people there.

She was alive, but how? After she'd pulled the boy to the shore the current had taken her right back in and she hadn't been able to summon the strength or even the will to fight it.

The curtains were drawn abruptly, interrupting her thoughts and a beautiful, polished woman with shiny white blonde hair stepped out.

Behind her, lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling was the boy she'd saved from the river.

The woman was obviously related to him, they had the same color of hair.

She noticed Phoenix staring and went over to her side of the room.

"Hello, I'm Cora Vaughn. The mother of the boy you saved."

Phoenix regarded her for a moment then said

"I'm Phoenix Irvine."

"I know. I'd like to thank you for saving Cameron, truly I hate to think what would have happened if you hadn't been there."

Phoenix couldn't help but notice she sounded anything but grateful. One could even say she was bored.

After a few moments passed and there was no reply Cora continued, saying

"Anyways, as a token of my thanks I'd like to offer you a spot at Viridian Academy, the school where he goes. You've heard of it, no?"

Phoenix nodded her head yes and Cora smiled. "Then you know what a wonderful opportunity this is."

She reached into her handbag and handed Phoenix a business card. "My people will be in touch with you sometime this week, probably tomorrow. Bye!"

Before she finished her last sentence she was already halfway out the door, waving at Phoenix as she left.

Phoenix didn't think she'd take her up on her offer. Yes, Viridian Academy was super prestigious and with their name on her resume she could probably get into any college she wanted and almost any job too.

But she didn't really want to go to a snobbish rich school filled with blue blooded brats who thought they deserved to be worshipped because they were filthy rich. The words "Viridian brat and Viridian boy" didn't get to be used as insults for no reason.

The school had a great academic program, it was awesome for networking, and it took the physical well-being of its students very seriously if the gourmet cafeteria and well equipped gyms she'd heard about existed.

If you took away the sky high school fees and the elitist values, it was every teenagers dream school.

But behind the glittering facade Viridian presented to the world there were illegal car races at stoplights, waiters getting harassed at diners, stupid Viridian brats wrapping hundreds of thousand dollar bill cars around trees and having the nerve to be pissed off about something that was their own fool fault, using the girls from the Faile public school and Harrison prep for their stupid games and leaving a slew of broken hearts in their wake and their students stuffing dollar bills down everybody's throats as if it made everything alright.

She should know. She'd grown up in Faile, and this town was firmly inside Viridian's shadow.

Hell, she'd even heard of some students in the schools who called themselves the royals or something with an actual court of students they felt were "worthy". It was probably a joke, but it rubbed her the wrong way just the same.

Sure, the fact that the students were proper grade A assholes and she'd probably be friendless and lonely in the school didn't really matter when you thought of the opportunities Viridian would open for a poor white trash girl like her. But still.

A tap on the iron frame of her bed caught her attention and she looked up to meet the eyes of the boy she had risked her life to save. For a moment she was actually speechless as she looked at his perfect face. Years spent studiously avoiding Viridian students, especially the boys had left her unprepared for their beautiful faces, perfect in the way only money can mold or in some cases, buy.

Something humorous sparked in his amber eyes as he noticed her checking him out shamelessly. He cleared his throat as if to speak but she beat him to it.

"Back there at the river, I could have sworn I drowned just before I could get myself out of the water, after getting you out, of course." He gave her a sideways look that confirmed she was right.

She had drowned, and she had died or at least almost died.

Which begged the question, how was she still alive? She doubted he was the one who saved her seeing as he was the one who'd been in need of saving in the first place.

"Yeah, you did. In fact, you actually died.

When I pulled you out of the water, you weren't breathing. You didn't even have a pulse. It scared the shit out of me.

With the amount of times I tried to jumpstart your heart I wouldn't have been surprised if I broke your ribcage."

Phoenix stared at him for a few seconds before stating the obvious.

"But I'm alive now."

"Yeah. If I didn't know better I'd have said-" he paused and then said

"Never mind. I guess all the first aid classes my parents made me take as a kid came in useful after all."

He gave a small smile and said

"I'm Cameron by the way."

"Your mother mentioned it." The spark in his eyes dimmed a little when she mentioned his mother and she remembered her furiously whispering about attention seeking suicide.

"How did you manage to pull me if you couldn't swim? If I remember correctly I was the one who had to save you initially." Phoenix said.

"I can swim."

"Then you weren't trying to kill yourself? because from where I was it looked like you were drowning."

Bleakly he said, "I was drowning. Or rather, trying to drown. One last futile attempt to escape my fate."

She scrunched her face up in confusion, but before she could reply him or ask him what he meant by that he'd gone to his end of the room and was searching the sheets for something.

Just before he left the room he said

"They called your legal guardian a while ago, so she should be here any minute now. Goodbye, Phoenix."

Once he was outside the room, Cameron took a deep breath then exhaled.

There was something strange about that girl, his supposed savior.

Honestly he had no idea how she was still alive.

On the banks of the river, before she miraculously came alive and he started looking for someone to call an ambulance, she had looked so peaceful, so beautiful and at rest, like an Ophelia just fished out of the water. No matter what he did, how many times he tried to resuscitate her, she just stayed like that. Not breathing, no pulse, nothing. And then just when he'd given up, just when he'd thought that he'd managed to kill someone in his stupid flimsy attempt at escape, her eyes flew open and she was alive, coughing and gasping for air.

If he didn't know better, he'd call it magic.

If he didn't know better he'd think her cursed, just like him. But he did know better. She was just a lucky bastard.