The Changer

Prologue

                I was standing at the end of a dimly lit alleyway. Water dripped off the rooftops onto the pavement from a fresh fall of rain, a few clouds still stuck up in the starry night sky. I heard deep breathing from somewhere near me, and looked over to my right, where I saw a boy. I’d seen him before, many times, in fact, so though it was dark, I knew exactly what he looked like. Black hair and emerald green eyes that shone in the lamplight, a good half-head taller than I was, though at the moment, he was bent over with his hands on his knees as he panted, like he’d been running. He was so close I could have touched him, but I just stood there, almost like I was frozen.

                Suddenly a loud screech echoed down the damp walls, as a large midnight blue sedan pulled to a halt. The doors burst open and several people dressed in all black with face masks jumped out, guns pointed at the boy next to me. His eyes went wide with fear, and I heard him swear under his breath as the men cocked their guns. His eyes flickered back and forth, searching frantically for an escape route, but there was none, the alleyway was a dead end. That’s when I knew that I had to do something, or at least try, I focused on the some large tin garbage cans that stood behind the blue sedan, hoping for something, anything to happen.

                A loud crash sounded as the garbage cans fell over, the guards turned to them worried, the boy took this as his opportunity. He ran as fast as he could behind them and out of the alleyway. It took the men a few moments to notice he was missing, but only a few, and I could only hope that was enough. One of the men started barking orders to search around to try and find him, and the group split in two going in two different directions.

                As I stood there, silently praying that the boy would not be found, a murderous laugh sounded behind me that made my skin crawl. I spun around as fast as I could, but all I saw was a masked shadowy figure that dissipated into the brick wall.

                BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

                My alarm clock blared in the darkness and I woke with a start. I looked around frantically, all I saw was the bleach white walls of my room covered in the things I had hung on them, my messy floor, my own bed. There was no boy, no shadowy figure, no men with guns. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned my alarm clock to snooze. It was all just a dream… I hoped. And with these thoughts I drifted into a , thankfully, dreamless sleep.

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CHAPTER ONE

                The sun shone down on me as I sat in the coffee shop, sipping a drink of a cup of my hot chocolate and I let out a happy sigh. I loved the spring, where the sun would come out, and the world just seemed to come alive again, but a slight chill still clung in the brisk April air. I looked at the window, where I saw my reflection. I’m half Jamacian, half Chinese, and so because of my ethnicity, I have a medium brown skin tone and straight black hair that fell just below my jaw line. I’m an average height at 5 foot 8 and am 19 years old; at the moment I have a job at our small local bookshop, which is one of my favorite places ever. As I sat staring out the window and contemplating my life, someone grabbed my shoulders and shouted “Boo!” I screamed, nearly throwing my hot chocolate at them, luckily there wasn’t much left, so it didn’t spill. The person who’d grabbed my shoulders began laughing hysterically, and immediately I knew who it was. “Nira!” I shouted angrily, as she continued to laugh. The person standing behind my was one pretty much my only friend, Amnirah Simmons, or Nira for short. No one was exactly certain what ethnicity she was, since she’d been adopted and no one knew who her birth parents had been, though that never stopped Nira. Whatever combination she had, it was doing her good, she had dark-red hair, blue eyes, and lightly tanned skin that appeared to be tinted red-brown. She just continued to giggle and I smacked her in the arm so that she’d sit down.