The normal world (Chapter 1)
Summer break is always the same. It starts with two weeks of sleeping in until noon, playing video games until your eyes burn, and completely forgetting what a classroom looks like. By January, the thought of moving into Year 8 is hanging over your head like a dark cloud, but when you have a best friend like Gabe, you do not really care.
We spent every single afternoon at the skate park or raiding the local corner shop for lollies. Gabe was my shadow, and I was his. We knew everything about each other—or at least, I thought we did.
It is the 5th day of year 8 and it was normal and not that scary as I thought it was the other kids were nice to me but only some were not nice to me or anyone really her name is Stacey she is an annoying brat she thinks she is so pretty, but she isn’t she aways has her phone in class taking photos when it needs to be in her locker she sometimes gets in trouble but she never learns. it is like training a dog to ride a bike when really, you cannot. our teacher named Ms Henderson she is the nicest teacher in the school as everyone proclaims so far, she is.
It is the next day. Day 6 of year 8 it has just liked the same do homework eat talk sleep I just wish something changed.
I was doing Hass when I saw someone or something a shadow at the window waving, but when I rubbed my eyes, it disappeared, and I was really tired than because I did science homework all night and I didn’t think of it at first I thought it was weird but it’s probably my mind playing tricks on me I told Gabe about it he said the same thing as I did so I didn’t do anything about it just ignored it.
A month later, everything had been going great. I was getting A grades on every test, I was friends with most of my teachers, and I had three new friends now named Casey, Jack, and James. Today, I went to Jack’s house after school, we played games for most of the time than we all had lunch together at a restaurant. It was so much fun. We laughed together Gabe and Casey were making funny jokes about Stacey as I left, I said bye to very one and.
Then, as darkness crawled over the streets, I started walking home alone.
The night was dead silent until I heard it-the heavy, frantic slapping of footsteps on the pavement. I whipped my head up. Out of the shadows, a man was sprinting directly at me.
He was moving with a desperate, terrifying speed, his limbs flailing wildly. Before I could even step aside, he slammed violently into my shoulder.
The impact sent us both crashing hard onto the freezing concrete.
Pain shot through my arm as I scrambled to sit up, gasping for air. The man was lying right there beside me, face down. Heart pounding, I opened my mouth to say, Are you all, right?”
But the words died in my throat.
Right before my eyes, the solid shape of his body blinked out of existence. He vanished into thin air, leaving nothing but an empty, cold patch of pavement where he had been lying a millisecond before.
I froze. My breath hitched, and a suffocating dread washed over me. I tried to scream, but my throat clogged up I thought I was going to die than everything goes dark.
