Vanishing by Degrees

Eleven students and two teachers want to relive the year before the school shooting that killed them and try to change what happened. Right after they die, they arrive in Sojourn, a natural satellite located in a transitional space between their homes in Green Hills, Maine, and the First Heaven. If they stay in Sojourn, their bodies will vanish gradually, but they will reclaim them for special Earth-bound missions. While they are in Sojourn, five embodied Spirits conduct a tense courtroom trial in which they challenge the conflicting testimonies of the students about the events that precipitated the school shooting. This trial generates the background stories of the leading characters, as well as the abrasive exchanges between each of the Five Spirits and the students who are fighting to regain their lives on Earth. These stories include a student's wrongfully accusing a friend of causing a car accident that nearly killed six people; a jealous girl's murderous plot against her rival for the love of a daring athlete; a popular group's spreading scandalous lies about a sometimes-rebellious youth and driving him into madness and murder; a Neo-Nazi's plot to shoot a hundred students; a high school gang's rape and murder of an innocent girl; and a devious girl's attempt to thwart the school-shooting plan that she had devised. After the trial reveals the merits and wrongdoings of the group, the students and their teachers await the verdict that will decide their fates. If they are allowed to return to Earth, they must confront three violent encounters that will determine whether they can alter their wrongdoing, prevent the tragedy that killed them, and win back the lives that they have lost.