Chapter 1

~Kylee's POV~

My most memorable experience began with a brutal attack.

Okay, let me back up a bit. I may be autistic, but I know when I have to be more specific. My name is Kylee Schwartz, and I was diagnosed with autism when I was seven years of age—seven years, three months and twenty-seven days to be precise. The weather was slightly cloudy, threatening rain, and the temperature was wandering between seventy-two and seventy-four degrees. My therapist was Miss Sanchez, who had a mess of curly red hair and a wrinkle-withered face. She told my mom that I was autistic, to which my mom replied with nothing more than a dumbfounded glare.

My mother didn't know what to do with me after that. She provided my three meals a day and a place to sleep, but I never felt like she was actually there—it always seemed as if my food and bed just appeared like a rabbit from a magician's hat. We never talked much either; we could have been sitting right next to each other on the couch, but it always felt as if we were miles apart.

But if there was one thing my mom did notice, it was my love of music; there was always something about the graceful sound of people singing as well as the lyrics that reached out to me, enveloping me in a soothing way that Mom's hugs could only dream of accomplishing. My mom enjoyed playing music on her stereo system, and she knew I loved it all the same when I began to join her—I even managed to sing along to the lyrics after having heard the songs just once. After noticing how content music made me, she got me an iPod Touch for Christmas.

I was twelve years, eight months and ten days old when I fell in love with Tokio Hotel. My mom got me one of their albums when she saw extraordinarily positive reviews for it online. I was hooked on the German rock band after one listen—their music was so inspiring, and very different from the repetitive pop music crap that people somehow manage to like these days.

By the time I turned sixteen, I had all their albums: Zimmer 483, Schrei, Scream, Humanoid (both the English and German versions), and Best Of (again, both versions). I memorized every song from start to finish, and I felt like I was ready for my first Tokio Hotel concert. My mother quickly agreed and got me a ticket to one of their shows while they were on tour in the states.

Mom dropped me off near the stadium, where a bunch of overexcited-looking fangirls flocked to see their idols onstage. It was twilight, but the temperature hovered between seventy-nine and eighty-three degrees. The minute my mother's white BMW drove out of sight, I rushed into the massive building with my screeching comrades.

As four young men ran onstage and the concert commenced, the girls that surrounded me were screaming louder than I thought possible with their arms and cameras in the air. Each screeching fan, each explosion of a guitar jam, each whack on the drums pummeled my eardrums brutally. But I was somehow able to tolerate it despite my usual discomfort around loud noises.

I gazed longingly up at the lead singer as he delivered each angelic note through the microphone. There was something about him that was different—he was so graceful and full of energy, and somehow I felt drawn to him. My heart fluttered with a strange mixture of panic and excitement when he turned towards me, our gazes locking for half a second. Something about that brief connection managed to change my entire being, and an intense sensation came alive inside of me—something like a wildfire. It felt as if the singer had managed to transfer his passionate energy over to me. A smile stretched slowly across my face, and I eventually raised my arms and screamed with the rest of the crowd.

When the concert ended, the four men disappeared backstage and the once earsplitting crowd had begun to thin out. I started toward the exit, but I was overcome with an unusual sensation. My body stared to feel heavy, like every step I took caused me to gain thirty pounds. There was a distinct burning in my chest, and I kept glancing back at the now empty stage. I knew I wasn't ready to go home and leave my favorite band forever, but Mom would be waiting for me.

As I stood outside the building and waited for my mother to arrive, my insides felt like they were melting into a black ooze. There were excited girls all around me, but I had never felt so alone in my life. My body was enveloped in a sea of others, but my mind was trapped in an empty void in space. My emotions were growing dark, and I began to regret ever going to the concert.

I stared at the road unmoving as I waited for my mom to come, but her white BMW never showed up. Anxiety pricked at the blackness in my core and only made me feel worse each minute as girls disappeared and I was left standing firmly on the sidewalk.

When I got tired of waiting, I withdrew the cell phone from my pocket. Opening it up, I scrolled through my contacts until I found my mom's name and called the number. I laid the phone against my ear and listened impatiently to the buzz on the other side. One buzz sounded, then another, then another until finally: "Hello, this is Donna Schwartz. I can't come to the phone right now; please leave a message."

I slapped my phone shut and shoved it back in my pocket. I sighed in frustration as the last of the fangirls disappeared from the premises and left me standing in a barren wasteland that was once overcrowded and alive with a thousand screams. A light breeze blew, making some nearby trees shiver. The sky was blacking out as nearby lampposts switched on and bathed the parking lot in pools of pale orange. Not a sound was heard, not a body was seen. And as always, the pure emptiness of my surroundings made my imagination run wild.

Images flashed before my eyes, drowning out the world around me and lifting me to another realm visible only to myself. But I quickly discovered that only one image swam around my mind—that brief but memorial vision of when the singer looked at me. I had seen his face in various photos, but in person his gaze was beyond real. His golden brown eyes dazzled like ambers and pierced my core in a way that calmed my being, as if he were secretly letting me know that everything would be alright—and all in a half-second time span.

In my daze, my legs began carrying me back toward the building; it was better than standing unmoving like a pole in the middle of the nothingness. But I didn't go inside the building—it was just as deserted in there as it was outside. Instead I rounded the corner, curious as to what was behind it. Halfway around, though, my path was blocked by a huge wall of chain link fence. Somewhere on the other side of the barrier, I saw two lights gleam like sinister eyes in the dark of night. Just as quickly, the monster's growl rippled through the air, and I realized that it was a vehicle starting up.

"You're not getting back there."

I squeaked in surprise and whirled around to see the silhouette of a burly man stumbling toward me. When he stepped under a nearby lamppost, the light unveiled him as a man in his late thirties with unruly dark hair and a five o'clock shadow. He wore street clothes spotted with scarlet splotches, and there was a deep gash in his forehead just above his left eyebrow. My shoulders slumped in relief when I saw that he wasn't a security guard, but he still looked dangerous—he reminded me of a crazy serial killer out of an action movie.

"That fence is pretty high," the man pointed out. "There's no way you'll scale it." He smirked suspiciously, and his eyes punctured my core like poison darts.

The hotness of panic welled inside of me, and my bones seemed to rattle in my skin. I felt this sensation whenever I met someone new that I didn't trust, even if they came off as being really friendly. But this was serious; I knew for a fact that this man—whoever he was—was going to hurt me.

Without warning, the bloody man pounced and knocked me to the ground like a wild cat claiming its prey. My head collided with the chain link fence and slid down its metal web painfully before landing on the hard concrete ground. With a dizzy and aching head, my burning anxiety exploded into a full-on panic attack; I screamed and flailed with every bit of strength I had while my predator struggled to pin me down. I felt hotter than fire as adrenaline rushed to the rescue, but it was no match for its opponent. I was soon held beyond ability to move, and all I could do was scream as a rock-hard fist began whacking me mercilessly in the head.

Amongst my earsplitting cries for help, an unfamiliar voice rang through the night. "HEY! GET AWAY FROM HER!"

I heard the fence rattle and a thump against the concrete soon followed. The man that had wrestled me to the ground was flung off my body, and I caught a quick glimpse of a brawl between a brawny and skinny man before everything around me faded to black.