Aiden leans against his locker, his eyes drifting slowly over the crowd.

The entire student body appears to have crammed itself into the hallways. It’s the first day back, and everyone is worked up. Excited or nervous or both. Everywhere Aiden looks, he sees people chattering with each other, catching up with friends they didn't see over the summer, comparing their newly issued class schedules, finding their newly assigned lockers.

It’s all laughter and smiles, everyone bright with energy and enthusiasm.

Aiden feels completely outside of it all. Always, outside.

He wants to join the others in their happiness and excitement. He wants to be just like the rest of them, to walk out into the crowd and talk to people, feel carefree and unburdened.

But Aiden knows that he will never smile the way that everyone else is smiling. He’ll never laugh like that. Never be relaxed and unworried the way that they are. Never.

He’s a Guardian, and his lot in life is different.

He failed a rescue just two weeks ago. Didn't get there in time to help her, only to hold her hand as she died. He has no idea who she was, but his heart is still raw, aching, bleeding over it. Each person Aiden loses leaves a deep, permanent imprint on him. He's only fifteen, but the imprints are already starting to build up.

This last one was particularly rough for him. If he lets his mind wander for even a second too long, it goes right back to her.

Even if that wasn't the case, Aiden would still be deeply unhappy right now. Because the energy here is so. Fucking. Loud.

It’s been a deafening, nonstop onslaught ever since Aiden set foot on campus. Everyone’s emotions are running high, keyed up in one way or another. People have a lot of different feelings about the first day back. Elation and enthusiasm. Anxiety and self-consciousness. Sadness and regret. It's all there in abundance, and for Aiden, it all amounts to noise. Jarring, discordant. Unrelenting.

Each and every note is completely out of sync with the rest. Different tempos, tones, pitches, emotions, vibrations. None of them are in time with any of the others, none of them in harmony.

Aiden’s own note, the only one he can discern from the rest - that’s not good to listen to, either. It might actually be the worst out of all of them. It sounds so miserable, so fucking lonely. It worsens the sense of remoteness and detachment he already feels when he looks at the smiling faces around him.

Aiden feels profoundly empty. Lost in the broken ruins of his internal landscape.

He really doesn’t want to feel like this. It’s his first day of sophomore year, and he only gets to do this once. He's trying to cheer up, shake off the things weighing on his mind, focus on good things.

There’s soccer after classes are done, he reminds himself. It'll be good to see Jabrill, Rasheem, Damien, all the guys. That’s something to look forward to.

Aiden brightens a tiny bit at the prospect, right as a new wave of students come in through the doors, swelling the noise.

Aiden flinches, rubs his temples.

Noah and Grant went to go sit on the roof and throw food at the incoming freshmen, and Mellie is off with Dahlia. But Ralph is at Aiden’s side, as always. Chewing on a toothpick, looking bored. He narrows his eyes, watching Aiden's face.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks.

“Nothing.” Aiden keeps his voice quiet. He knows that it’s not nearly as loud in here as it sounds to him, that he doesn’t need to shout over the noise. Even if it’s unfathomable to him that Ralph can hear his words so easily. “Just got a bad fucking headache.”

It’s true. The noise is only building as more and more students arrive on campus. Aiden feels like he’s been forced to listen to the world’s worst music at a screaming volume for over an hour, and it just keeps getting louder.

Ralph is familiar with Aiden’s headaches. He knows that Aiden prefers to be left alone when they happen.

He sticks the toothpick back into his mouth, pushes up off of his own locker. Aiden watches him disappear into the crowd, then closes his eyes.

God, his head is killing him. How upset would his aunt be if he skipped the first day of class? He doesn’t want to make her unhappy, but between the noise and the increasingly bad headache...

No, come on. He wants to stay. At the very least, he doesn't want to miss soccer.

Aiden tries to concentrate, to calm the noise. It’s starting to push and pound against his skull, making him grit his teeth. He can normally hold it down a little better than this. But the failed rescue is still on his mind, and the energy around him is running so damn high.

Aiden is distracted, not doing a good job. He can feel what little control he has over the noise rapidly slipping through his fingers.

No, no, no, he thinks desperately. Come on, come on…

The noise rises up over Aiden like a towering tsunami, seconds away from breaking over his head.

He finds himself pushing through the crowd, heading for the door. He knows that the bell is probably going to ring soon, but he's dying for some outside air. He can barely breathe in here. The noise has its foot on his lungs.

His vision is a swirling fog of faces. He wonders if any of them belong to someone else he’ll fail to rescue in the future. Someone else he’ll let down, with fatal consequences.

Aiden is angry at them. Every single one of them. Their voices are piling onto the noise, overwhelming Aiden’s body and mind, making him frantic.

Can’t you all just shut the fuck up for a few goddamn seconds? he thinks, suddenly furious.

People see the angry gleam in Aiden’s eyes and start to melt out of his way. Some of them were doing that even before he got mad, actually.

Aiden knows that he cuts an intimidating sight. He shot up even taller over the last few months, so fast that he got a few pale little stretch marks on his back. He also trained really hard for soccer all summer, and he’s starting to fill out his tall, broad frame.

He doesn’t like that people are scared of him before he even opens his mouth, but at least it gets him a clear path to the door. Thank fucking god, because he can’t take one more second of this. The close confines of the walls and the press of bodies around him are combining with the noise to suffocate him on all sides.

Aiden bursts out into the open air, gasping for breath, dizzy. His eyes are closed, but the pain in his head makes white lights explode across his vision like flashbulbs.

He blinks his eyes open and manages to get a look around, then lets out a relieved breath. The coast is clear. He went out through the door on the far side of the school, the one that faces the soccer field. There’s no one out here to see Aiden and wonder what the fuck he’s doing.

He stumbles a little further from the door, puts his back against the wall, and tries again to turn the volume down. But nothing is working, and he can’t take much more of this. Something vital in his head is going to break.

Aiden desperately casts his mind around for anything, any possible way to stop what’s happening to him. Any pathway to refuge, to deliverance.

He stops his struggle all at once, tips his head to the side.

He hears something. Something so unique that it captivates him instantly and completely. Something different from all the other noise.

Aiden tries to listen through the snarl of noise, to reach this one lone sound. Before he can really listen to it, it dances away from him.

Intrigued, Aiden chases it.

What is that? He can’t quite pin it down, but he’s already certain that he’s never heard anything like it before. It can’t be - is it a soul? No, there’s no way. No soul that Aiden’s ever listened to sounds like this. Nothing even close to this. So what is it?

Aiden sinks into a deep state of concentration, trying to listen, to push the other noise down so he can hear the elusive little sound. It seems to stay just ahead of him, like a word right on the tip of his tongue, something he’s mere seconds away from understanding.

He’s just about to catch it when - all on its own - it starts to sing.

Out from the tangled mass of soul notes rises something singularly beautiful.

Aiden stops breathing.

He had been taking big, deep breaths without realizing it as he followed the sound, but now everything goes still. All he can do is listen, awestruck, goosebumps spreading down his arms.

The sound is bright and sweet and bewitching. In every subtlety of it, there exists an infinite gentleness. It moves in slow, graceful waves. Rising, flowing, curving, climbing, falling. Aiden moves with it somehow, though he remains standing perfectly still.

It’s the kind of spine-chillingly beautiful song that makes an earthquake register in your soul. It lifts Aiden’s heart, makes it feel startlingly free and light.

The inside of Aiden's head is hell. But right now, there's an angel singing into it.

He’s so completely spellbound that it takes him some time to realize: the brutal crush of the noise has gone quiet. Still there, but like a radio turned down. Simple static, white noise, easy to ignore. And his headache, it’s gone, swept away. He’s breathing as calmly as if he was floating on his back in a tranquil ocean.

The singing soul flows softly through his mind, simultaneously soothing and breathtaking.

Aiden doesn’t understand what’s happening. No soul has ever spoken to him before. He’s never heard anything like this in his entire life. He can hardly believe that’s a soul - it sounds so different from all the others. But that's what it is.

And if it’s a soul, it’s connected to someone.

Moving as if in a trance, Aiden pushes himself up from the wall and goes back inside.

The hallways are still crowded with people. Aiden weaves through them, following the sound, his eyes scanning the faces before him. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to tell which one of them the soul belongs to. He’s never been able to make connections like that.

He hasn’t seen the person yet. He's sure of that, even if he couldn't say how he knows. It's like he’s navigating by the stars, guided by something bright and glowing.

He stops in the space where three different hallways meet. Students are crossing through the area, but lockers line the walls, which means that people are stopped here, too. Talking and laughing.

Aiden moves out of the flow of traffic and stands off to the side. He has the sense that he’s really close, like the person he’s looking for is right in front of him.

He slowly scans his eyes over the crowd, and a brilliant flash of red catches his attention.

It came from a guy leaning back against the locker at the very end of the row. Right across the room from Aiden.

The first thing that Aiden notices about the guy is the vivid color of his hair, a fiery shade of red like Aiden has never seen before. His hair falls partially over one of his eyes, guiding Aiden’s gaze down to them. Big, bright, gentle eyes, with honey-colored irises.

Aiden’s eyes linger on them, then take in the rest of his face. He has striking, delicate features, sprinkled with freckles. Aiden’s eyes follow every graceful line and soft curve, one by one.

Even discounting the red hair, there’s a lot of red overall on this guy. His lips, which are slightly upturned at the corners. His eyebrows. The faint sunburn dusting his nose and cheeks.

He’s wearing a flannel that's a little too big on him. Deep forest green in color, patterned with cool grey and midnight blue. Buttoned up, but the collar is open. Black t-shirt beneath it.

He’s talking to a short girl with long black hair, laughing at something she’s saying. The window next to his locker is cracked open, and the wind sifts gently through his blazing red hair, the sunlight falling against his neck. His slender arms hold two textbooks to his chest.

Something about the slant of his cheekbones gives his eyes a smiling quality, but his eyes would smile even without them. They’re made for it. Sweet and warm and attentive.

They show his laughter as his friend jokingly shoves his shoulder.

Aiden stares at him with absolute certainty in his heart. The soul he’s hearing belongs to this guy. He knows it in an inexplicable, intuitive way. The sound and the person connect, fit together just right.

Aiden doesn’t get this. Why the redhead’s note is hitting him in a thousand different beautiful ways.

Aiden takes a step forward before he realizes what he’s doing, then comes to a sharp stop. He retreats a little and leans one shoulder against the wall, trying to blend in. Pretending not to stare.

Why are you singing to me? he thinks, at a loss.

The guy must be new to the school. Aiden is sure of that, because he’s certain that he hasn’t seen him before. He would remember, because - the redhead is cute. He's really, really cute.

Aiden has been trying to ignore the hyperawareness he seems to have for when another guy is good-looking or attractive. Fighting down the weird nervousness, the restlessness, the electric sparks that go through him if he lets himself look for too long.

Right now, though, the current of electricity hums in Aiden’s very core, and with his head so unusually, brilliantly clear, he’s extremely aware of it. The longer he stares at this guy, the more he feels a strange, startling shock to his body. It makes something flutter wildly in his chest, makes his cheeks burn, kind of makes him want to curl up and hide. He feels completely undone, unraveled by it.

There’s power, magic in the way the sound of this soul resonates within him.

Aiden hesitates, not sure what to do. He really wants to introduce himself to the guy. That would be the first step in understanding what makes him different.

An intense, paralyzing shyness suddenly seizes hold of Aiden, freezing him to the spot. What would he even say? The redhead is a complete and total stranger, and he has no idea that he's different.

The guy pushes up off of his locker and starts following his friend across the hall, directly towards Aiden.

Aiden panics internally, nearly starts backing away. He forces himself to stand still, impassive, his arms folded loosely over his chest. He struggles hard and manages to pull a neutral expression onto his face, to ignore the guy as he goes past.

Aiden can’t help it. He looks down at the redhead as he passes by, intending to steal the quickest possible close-up glance. But the redhead happens to look up at him at the exact same moment, and their eyes meet.

The sweet soul smiles brightly up at Aiden, his amber eyes shining with warmth.

Aiden's heart trips over itself.

The girl with the long black hair nudges the redhead's elbow. “Come on, Jamie. We're gonna be late."

The guy turns away, and Aiden’s face becomes one in a sea of new faces he’ll meet today. The split-second interaction has probably already been forgotten.

Not by Aiden, though.

Jamie, he thinks, curiosity burning in his chest.

Aiden still has no idea what’s going on, what any of this means. But that song... it’s like the universe is speaking in his ear.

Pay attention, it says. This is important. He is important.

Now go find out why.