"This time I'll reach her!" Tristan said. "I have to warn Ivy, I have to tell her that the crash wasn't" an accident. Lacey, help me out! You know this angel stuff doesn't come naturally to me."

"You can say that again," Lacey replied, leaning back against Tristan's tombstone.

"Then you'll come with me?"

Lacey checked her nails, long purple nails that wouldn't chip or break any more than Tristan's thick brown hair would grow again. At last she said, "I guess I can squeeze in a pool party for an hour. But listen, Tristan, don't expect me to be a perfect, angelic guest."

Ivy stood at the edge of the pool, her skin prickling from the cold water that occasionally splashed her.

Two girls brushed past her, chased by a guy with a water gun. The three of them tumbled into the pool together, leaving Ivy drenched by a shower of icy drops. If this had been the year before, she would have been trembling, trembling and praying to her water angel. But angels weren't real. Ivy knew that now.

The previous winter, when she had dangled from a diving board high above the school pool, frozen with a fear she had known since childhood, she had prayed to her water angel. But it was Tristan who had saved her.

He had taught her to swim. Though her teeth had chattered that first day and the next and the next, she had loved the feel of the water when he pulled her through it. She had loved him, even when he argued that angels weren't real.

Tristan had been right. And now Tristan was gone, along with her belief in angels.

"Going for a swim?"

Ivy turned quickly and saw her own sun-tanned face and tumbleweed of gold hair reflected in Eric Ghent's sunglasses. His wet hair was slicked back, almost transparent against his head.

"I'm sorry we don't have a high dive," Eric said.

She ignored the little jab. "It's a beautiful pool anyway."