Chapter 1

"Please, Please, Please!" Angie was following me around with her dark brown eyes shining at me with anticipation.

"How many times do I have to tell you? I will not go to that side of the bridge, not even for you." I went to the kitchen and started dinner, "You can stay for dinner, if you wanted to stay." I pulled out the fish and started skinning and cutting it into thin slices. She was beside me totally forgetting the whole thing about making me go with her over the bridge. My mom warned me about going over there, though for some reason, I want to go there with Angie.

"Anyway so can you go, please? The music festival is supposed to be really fun this year." she didn't look the same, its as if she knew I would say no.

"What the hell, sure, I'll go with you." I put the fish in the refrigerator with a note that had instructions on how to cook it. Mother is a horrible cook, so I learned to cook when my father died.

"Really! Oh my gosh! I am so excited, we have to go shopping. You need a new outfit and new sh-" I held my hand up.

"I have an outfit I can wear." I went to my closet and pulled the outfit that had sat in the back of my closet for almost a year. I hoped it still fit. I pulled the jeans on, it felt tight and snug like they are supposed to be. I had a red spaghetti strap shirt that went with it. The pants were black skinny jeans with dark red beads stitched into the trim.

"Oh My Gosh, that is so cute! Where did you get that?" she started pulling me to the bathroom to do my make-up. I never was good at it.

"My cousin Brittany bought it for me, she expected me to go out with that guy she set me up with in January." I rolled my eyes to the thought of even dating that snob.

"Oh yeah. I remember that dude. He was way too preppy." she giggled. She had room to talk, she was a cheerleader and dated people like him. Angie turned me towards the mirror, I stared at my reflection while Angie put the make up away, "Alright, you are done." Again she brought out all the high points of my looks: my long neck, high cheek bones, and bright grayish-blue eyes. I smiled and the dark red lipstick shown my shy sweet smile(at least that's what everyone calls it) and turned to Angie.

"I swear, when you get older, you are going to be a make-up artist." she shrieked and gave me a hug. Sure she could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but she was a good friend. I fixed my curls, though I couldn't really do anything. My thick lightly curled dark brown hair was the same no matter what I did. Everyone though begs to know what I do with my hair, all I say is that I brush it. I sigh and let her hurry me to the car, I realized with her red kinky curly hair bouncing around her heart shape face, she looked like a kid with her usual wide smile reaching her eyes. Even though she was older than me, I am 15 almost 16, she is 16 almost 17.

We were driving over the bridge in Angie's green convertible, we had the cover down so I could feel the October air blowing my hair behind me, I looked towards her and she was staring at me, "What?"

"What are you going to do for your birthday, it is tomorrow."

'Shit!' I had forgotten it was my birthday tomorrow. The one bad thing was that my birthday is October 31, "I don't know, what should we do? Maybe go back over here and go to that new mall that has a built in ice-skating ring." I knew how much she liked ice-skating and I liked watching her twirl and have fun. Besides, I really wanted to go to the paint-ball field. I was more of a tom-boy.

"Yea, but instead of ice-skating, lets go to the paintball field. Maybe we can play." I looked at her as normal with the 'You know me so well', "What? I might hate it, but you go crazy when tournaments happen. We have been friends since we were 3, well I was 4. Why do you keep staring at me?"

"Its nothing." I smiled at her as she did her childish giggle. We were coming up to Willows Valley Park, it is the main park in Willows Valley, Maine. When we got out of the car. We grabbed our jackets and walked to the ticket counter. My jacket is a black denim with my last name in red stitched on the back. I got it this year for being on the volleyball team, I want to be the team captain, the captain's jacket is red with black writing on the back and on the back underneath the name is the word captain. But, I will probably not get that far until I am a Junior, I am only a Freshman.

"I will pay, think of it as one of my birthday presents for you." she turned towards the ticket booth.

"It's free, if its her birthday." the ticket man looked at me.

"It is." I smiled and thanked him as he gave us our tickets.

"That was cool. So now we have more money to party!" she grabbed my hand and we ran towards the crowd of people watching a couple boys fighting.

"Lets go this way," I grabbed her hand this time and went around the fight, but not before one of the boys looked up at me and I knew who he was, "oh my gosh." Michael is in there, that means… I didn't even want to think about it. If they were here, then my Mom was right about not coming here.

"What? What did you see?" she started looking around us.

"Its nothing, come on. I see a good seat over there by the big Oak tree where we can watch the concert." as soon as I said it she nodded and forgot about it and we started walking through the crowd towards the big Oak tree. We sat down and talked about what we were going to do about my birthday tomorrow when two shadows were standing over us. I looked up and sucked in air.