My name is Everit Tyshinski and, for a long time, I wanted to die. It wasn't always that way. I once was a reasonably competent attorney with a well-respected firm in Philadelphia. I lived in a posh suburb with the love of my life, Tara, where we were in happy pursuit of our first child. We met on the soccer pitch. An old college buddy had convinced me to play on his team in a gender-mixed, adult league. While warming up before the first game, an inadvertent pass struck me where no man should be struck, bringing me to my knees. When my eyes cleared, standing above me was a leggy, auburn blonde. She had asked me to pick up a pregnancy-test kit on the way home that night. But the firm was celebrating a big damages award at the local bar. In my drunken stupor, I had forgotten. So she ran out to the store instead. Everything changed after that.It was my fault. Soon after Tara left, I became obsessed with death. Though I wanted to kill myself, I just couldn't commit the act. The fantasy of suicide became my only companion in the back seat of the van I called home. Then, I found an ad soliciting for a soccer coach at a high school in North Philadelphia. They were averaging two homicides a day there. At last! The resolution to my cowardice! Thomas Paine High sat in one of the worst neighborhoods in North Philly. And like me, it was closer to dead than alive. We needed each other. They needed a soccer coach - I was the only one to have answered the ad - and I needed a place to die. I was well on my way to becoming a city statistic until I met those kids. That's when strange things began to happen.