Chapter 1

“Erin. Oh, Erin. Wake up!”

The melodic yet persistent voice reverberated in her mind and chased away the last remnants of sleep. Erin Nguyen woke with a start, disoriented and unaware of her surroundings. But the feeling was short-lived, for when the ground beneath her feet jolted unexpectedly and she hit her head against something hard, Erin was no longer confused.

Less than three weeks had passed since Erin’s school had gone on summer vacation. Although she hadn’t had anything in particular planned for the three months, her friend April Willis was going away to soccer camp. Not wanting to be alone, April had asked Erin to come along – an invitation that Erin had accepted without complaint, for soccer was her favorite sport.

But riding in a hot, stuffy school bus jam-packed with chatty teenage girls was something she could do without. Especially when said bus was driving over a bumpy and uneven gravel road.

“Ooh …” Erin yawned loudly and gracelessly, uncaring when her outstretched arms almost struck her seatmate on the head. She groaned and turned to the girl sitting next to her, perhaps the only person on the bus whom Erin would call a friend. “Are we there yet?”

“No, silly! Not even close!” April giggled. “We’ve still got about another hour to go!”

“Then why – oh why – did you have to wake me up?” Erin moaned. Now that she was awake, there was no escape from the noisy teenage babbles of the other girls.

April just giggled again, her high-pitched girlish squeal grating on Erin’s nerves. “I wouldn’t want you to miss out on anything! Oh, can you believe that Jared Forrester and Kathy Gillespie are going out? They are such a perfect match!”

“You don’t say.” Erin glanced over her shoulder and saw Kathy, accompanied by two of her groupies, seated at the end of the bus. The three of them were gossiping and laughing together. Erin glared at the back of Kathy’s head, grimacing at the blondeness of her hair. “Well, good for her! I never thought that the ice queen was even capable of love.”

“Hmm …” April scratched her chin thoughtfully, unable to understand Erin’s dislike for Kathy. She mulled over all the possible reasons that she could think of until there was one that she liked. “Oh, my! You like him, don’t you Erin?” April exclaimed in a loud whisper. “You like Jared Forrester!”

Furious, Erin immediately lashed out at her. “Don’t be ridiculous! I don’t even know the guy!”

But her words were of no use – April was absolutely convinced otherwise. “Aw, it’s okay, Erin, I don’t blame you! I know exactly how you feel about him.”

“Are you deaf, woman? I just said I don’t like him!” Erin’s voice was rising to a feverish pitch and increasing in volume.

“Sure, sure. Whatever you say, Erin.” April giggled once more, brushing off her friend’s vehement protests as denial.

Erin gritted her teeth, barely resisting the urge to grab April by the throat and strangle her. The girl appeared harmless, but under that pretty exterior was just another brainless teenager. Wondering why she put up with April, Erin sighed and slouched farther down in her seat. How am I going to survive this next month?

Being a fifteen-year-old teenage girl was so irritating at times, especially for Erin. Not everyone that age had to be a ditzy, giggling hormone bomb just waiting to go off. But most of Erin’s schoolmates were. In her eyes, there was nobody worth talking to because they were incapable of intelligent conversation.

She just didn’t fit in with the high school crowd. The other girls were nice enough and they meant well – even the popular ones like Kathy and April – but were only interested in boys or gossiping. Erin was determined to have nothing to do with them and she coldly refused every invitation to the mall, to parties, to dances. Her unkind demeanor should have made her the most disliked person in school, but it seemed to have no effect on the cheery popular girls.

High school life was very unpleasant for Erin – the tomboy; the Vietnamese American; the short-tempered, shrill, impatient, aloof, unusual girl.

Exasperated, Erin sighed once more. Sometimes, she complained so much she gave even herself a headache.

-

An hour later, they finally reached their destination. When the bus crawled to a stop and the driver yelled at everyone to get off, Erin felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She was the first to leap out of her seat and get off.

“Finally! Off that accursed bus!” Erin threw her arms out and declared, “I’m here at last!”

Her companions didn’t share her enthusiasm. Kathy wrinkled her nose distastefully, a frown of disapproval on her face. “This place is disgusting and dead!”

“Yeah!” Monica Sanchez and Elaine Barrett – Kathy’s mindless minions, Erin had dubbed them – chorused in unison.

“It would look so much prettier if there were some plants here.” April squealed. “I think a nice little flowerbed over here would brighten this place up!”

“And some grass, too! You know, the bright green kind, not this ugly yellow grass,” Penny Harris chimed in.

“Ugly yellow grass?” Erin scoffed. “It’s dead grass. Don’t you know anything?”

None of the girls seemed to hear her. They were too busy discussing ideas on how to make the neglected soccer field beautiful, lost in their own little world.

The coach shook her head, almost as if she couldn’t believe that the eleven adolescents standing in front of her would be her new soccer team. She muttered something about practice starting the next day and getting unpacked. Still shaking her head, she then walked off.

Coach must be disappointed … Erin sympathized with the woman.

But she didn’t have much time to dwell on it. April grabbed her friend by the arm just then and dragged her towards the others. “Come on, Erin!” she exclaimed. “Let’s put our stuff away and meet in Anna’s room. It’s a girl’s night out!”

Erin didn’t have a chance to protest. She was too busy hurrying alongside April so her arm wouldn’t be wrenched out of its socket.

-

Once Erin had emptied the contents of her suitcase and organized her stuff to her liking, she went out to the soccer field. April was still unpacking and wouldn’t bother looking for Erin until her stuff was organized.

She hadn’t been able to get a close look at the field earlier, but when Erin took another glimpse at it, she was a little … disappointed. Popular Kathy Gillespie hadn’t been exaggerating when she complained it was dead. The turf was covered with dying, overgrown grass that probably had not been watered for months. The chalk lines on the playing field were worn and faded, barely there. Both goal posts were rusted and falling apart.

“Oh, come on,” Erin grumbled. She stomped onto the arena, a slight twinge of satisfaction rising in her as her sneakers trampled the barren land. “Could this get any worse?”

A wave of anger surged over her. What a summer it was turning out to be! Stuck on a bus with people she would prefer not to associate with – as if that hadn’t been bad enough, the soccer field was the worst one that she had ever seen. And all she had to look forward to was listening to April, Kathy, and the rest of the girls fuss about their appearances and chatter about boys.

Giving in to her fury, Erin let out a strangled scream and kicked at one of the goal posts. Much to her horror, the weak rusted metal gave away and the structure collapsed. The pathetic goal post was reduced to a pathetic pile of metal and net.

Uh … that wasn’t me … Frantic, Erin made a feeble attempt at reconstructing the post, but it fell to her feet in a crumpled heap. There was clearly nothing she could do to remedy the situation.

Well, she wasn’t going to stand around like an idiot, waiting to get into trouble. Erin spun on her heel and fled.

-

“There you are!” Jasmine Dietrich proclaimed when Erin came running by. “Come in! Come in! You’re just in time!”

“Just in time for what?” Erin glared at her. She was exhausted, flustered, and not in the mood for games.

“Oh, you know!” Anna Marshall said, dismissing Erin’s rude response with a wave of her hand. “Didn’t April tell you that we were going to meet here after we all got settled in?”

Yes, she vaguely recalled April saying something to that effect, but Erin never cared about what April had to say. She realized that the rest of the girls were sitting in a circle.

Kathy didn’t wait for an answer. “Don’t be shy!” She took Erin by the hand and led her inside, seating her on the wooden floor between April and Elaine, and returned to her rightful place. “So, now that we’re all here, let’s get started!”

“Wuh … what? Started on what?” Erin was beginning to get tired of repeating everything that the others said.

Diane Everett grinned widely – she was hiding something behind her back. At Kathy’s nod, she revealed the object in her hands: a glass bottle. Erin was still confused, but no one else was. Everyone else seemed to get it.

Jasmine saw the blank expression on the Asian American’s face. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Truth and Dare!”

“How could you not know?” Kathy looked absolutely horrified. “It’s only the best game that’s ever been invented!”

Monica and Elaine nodded vigorously in agreement, but Erin was far from impressed. “No, it’s something that teenage girls do when they get together in large numbers because they want to pry into other people’s lives.”

“But, Erin, you’re a teenage girl, too,” April reminded her. “So shouldn’t you be excited about this too?”

Erin cursed. April had her there. If only she had remembered to mention that such were the behaviors of normal teenage girls – and Erin was not normal at all.

“I’ll start us off!” Kathy took the bottle from Diane, placed it in the center of the circle, and spun it. The neck of the bottle landed on Sandra van Buren. “All right, Sandy, you’re up first!” Kathy giggled. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Sandra replied.

“Okay, then!” Her eyes glimmering mischievously, Kathy asked, “Who was your first kiss?”

The room erupted into coos and girlish giggles. Erin yawned.

Sandra’s face turned bright red. “W-w-well,” she stammered, pressing her index fingers together nervously. “Um …”

Eventually, amidst the stuttering and blushing, Sandra finally gave an answer. Erin didn’t hear the name of the boy who was her first kiss, nor did she really care. The game seemed to drag on forever. Barely attentive, Erin only participated when the bottle landed on her and when she had to ask the questions.

She didn’t know how much more she could take. Just when she was about to get up and leave the room, though, something caught her eye. She squinted her eyes, trying to get a closer look, and saw that the item in question was an ordinary soccer bag. At least that was what she would have liked to believe. Something about it didn’t seem so ordinary. As ridiculous as it sounded, Erin felt that the soccer bag was radiating energy. Dark energy.

“It’s your turn, Erin,” Anna said. But Erin barely heard her. “Erin? Erin? Truth or dare?”

A frightened look crossed April’s face. “Erin! Snap out of it! You’re scaring me!” Her nails clamped down on Erin’s shoulders and dug into the skin, hard.

“Huh? Ouch!” Erin yelped, breaking out of her trance. She jerked away and glared at April. “What’d you do that for?”

“You started spacing out,” Diane explained in a worried voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. But take a look at that over there, will you?” Erin pointed at the mysterious soccer bag. “Was that there earlier?”

“Where?” Anna looked. “Hmm. I don’t remember seeing that here.”

“Neither do I,” Jasmine corroborated. “Is this somebody’s idea of a joke? Or did someone forget their stuff?”

“We should check it out,” Kathy suggested. “It might have the person’s name in it. I’m sure they want it back very much.”

“Good idea, Kathy!” Monica and Elaine gushed, right on cue.

“Yeah, I suppose so.” Sandra paused for a moment, then she blurted, “Maybe we should get Coach. I … something doesn’t feel right about this.”

“Sandy, it’s just a harmless soccer bag,” April said soothingly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” She went over to the bag and unzipped it. “See? Nothing to be worried –”

She was never able to finish her sentence, for the strange soccer bag swallowed her very existence before their eyes.

The girls stared at the empty space where their friend had stood seconds before, shocked and silent. Overwhelmed by the surprising turn of events, they could only stare. Then, Kathy let out an ear-piercing shriek.

-

When Erin forced her mind to work again, she found herself floating in a sea of nothingness. She was floating in what appeared to be a vortex, or maybe even space. The sky was black, but it was streaked with thick trails of red – the same eerie red of a sunset. Down where the ground would be if it existed were rows upon rows of pyramids, each of them identical. A pair of blood red eyes pierced the darkness and leered at Erin. A low snarl filled the void. And as soon as it had appeared, the eyes disappeared and she felt herself falling. Her vision went blank.

-

Erin woke with a start. She was practically hyperventilating; the dream had given her quite a fright. Groaning, she picked herself off the hard, wooden floor and sat up.

“Where am I?” She glanced around, hoping to recognize her surroundings. Her stomach began to wrench once she realized that she was in Jasmine and Anna’s room. So that part hadn’t been a dream. But where were the others? They were nowhere to be found. But something in the corner of the room caught her eye. Her breath caught in her throat.

There was the soccer bag, smug in all its glory. It was unzipped, just as it had been when April and the others had disappeared, and it was still radiating dark energy. For a moment, Erin thought she heard something snarling. It sounded just like the one she had heard in the void, the snarl that had accompanied the blood red eyes …

Unable to comprehend the thoughts that were racing through her mind, Erin was paralyzed with dread. She sat on the floor unmoving, just thinking. But rational thought didn’t stand a chance against pure terror. Erin bolted to her feet and raced out of the room, screaming.