Excerpt:

He was being tortured, but by what? And was I the only person seeing all these other things?

The scene flashed like a strobe light in front of me—a flash of the Noah I knew, then a flash of the painted Noah that made no sense. I scoured the room for someone to help, but no one else seemed to notice what was going on. Except for Sarah, her glower across the room turning to a maniacal grin.

“STOP!” I screamed at her.

The unexplainable vision melted away. Standing at the cafeteria doors, Sarah gave one last smirk before turning on her heel and walking away. A crowd of people hovered near us. The school nurse appeared next, hurrying as quickly as her short legs would carry her.

“Paramedics are on the way,” she said as she arrived, kneeling beside me. “Everyone, please, go back to your tables.”

When no one listened, she yelled, “Go!” This cleared away a few of them. I didn’t leave. Noah’s head still rested in my lap, his eyes closed, though he wasn’t convulsing anymore. His body had gone limp, the rise and fall of his chest nearly unperceivable.

“What happened?” the nurse asked.

Before I could answer, the EMTs rushed in with a stretcher. They pulled him away, yelling all sorts of things I couldn’t understand as they started performing CPR.

“Hang in there, buddy,” one of them said. He passed some small white tube-like packet under his nose, but nothing happened. “Can you hear me?”

No response. At this point, I thought Noah had stopped breathing, making me feel more hopeless than I’d ever felt in my life. What in the hell did Sarah do to him?

More CPR. More failure.

“It’s not working!” said the attending EMT. He put his ear to Noah’s chest then nodded toward the exit. “He’s breathing, but his heart rate is low. We need to transfer him now.”

And just like that, Noah was gone, flying away on that stretcher like a helium balloon in the wind.