I know that 50 miles isn't that far away with a car but it is a lot farther when you're riding a bike with a backpack filled to the brim with stuff. I love riding my bike... but not for 4 hours.

The stench of cigar smoke lingered in my nose and the buildings leaned over me as I entered the dark alleyway. The dim streetlamps flickered over my head, giving a creepy aura to the already nightmare worthy streets. The silent aura that was present during the night only was disrupted by the sound of squealing tires and footsteps.

I looked up at an old rusted sign hanging over a just as old building. The words "Spring to Life" were barely visible in the dim light on the sign. The aged brick around the exterior of the building had ivy scaling its high walls. Spring to life was an old flower shop that went out of business in 2003. The old store used to be very well off until the young woman that ran it became paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident.

I held my breath and opened the door, trying to avoid stepping on any broken glass that might be in the building. I was half expecting to get kidnapped the second I placed my foot into the shop. The sound of a small bell rang, announcing my entrance to the building. The sound of the bell was quite soothing compared to the horror film-like atmosphere outside. The stale aroma of roses still filled the shop and replaced the smell of the smoke I had lingering in my nose earlier.

I let go of my breath and looked in front of me to find a boy that looked not much older than myself sitting on a dusty counter. He had messy, medium length brown hair and was in red and orange robes. I walked up to the boy while keeping a hand ready to take the pepper spray out of my sweater pocket. I tried my best not to show my mixed emotions of fear and anxiety.

"Would you happen to be Joey Firestone?"

"That would be me. Your name is Ashley Lifeheart… Right" Joey paused and pulled out a sheet of parchment wrapped around two handles like a scroll. "Yup… your name is Ashley Lifeheart. Nice to meet you Ashley."

Joey held out his hand in greeting. I grabbed his hand firmly and shook it with a fake smile across my face. I was still keeping my left hand on the spray in suspicion.

"So, Joey, why did you call me here? It must be very important if you called me all the way here."

He looked at me with a shocked look. "You mean you don't know? Hehe… that's embarrassing. Wow, I thought you already knew. Huh, nobody told me that you had no idea that you were a wizard." Joey scratched his head and silently chuckled. "Well, it is actually very simple. I came here to take you to Wizard City to train as a wizard in Ravenwood Academy. I will explain it more when we get there."

I blinked a few times and cleaned my ear with my pinky. "I'm sorry… I think I heard you wrong. Did I hear you say that I'm a wizard and you want to take me to some kind of strange wizarding school?"

"Yup, you heard right. I'm also a wizard."

I didn't ask any more questions. By this point I was sure he was nuts, probably with the addition of insanity or a horrible mental disorder. Why else would someone think that they were a wizard... why would anyone else think that I was a wizard? He was talking about wizardry and taking me to some kind of wizard school… who wouldn't think he was crazy by this point? I pulled out my pepper spray and got ready to spray Joey in the eyes when he flicked his hand and a tiny red and yellow thing knocked it out of my hand. It moved so fast that I couldn't make out what it was but I thought I just saw a small fireball. Of course, nobody could make a fireball out of thin air so that must have not been it, however my fingers felt very hot. I didn't have time to think about that.

I ran out of the building while I still could to find out my bike lock was clipped and my bike was stolen. I had totally forgotten that this was the abandoned part of Detroit. I knew I shouldn't have bought that dollar bike lock and should have bought something better. I started running down the street, my backpack weighing me down. Suddenly a thin wall of fire appeared before my face. Instead of deciding where the firewall came from, I skidded to stop and started running another way. Joey was running behind me, yelling something at me. I didn't care, everything that he said was nonsense anyway. Adrenaline was rushing through my body, making me run even faster. I looked ahead to realize that I had ran right into a dead end. I looked back to find Joey still at my heels. I spit a few cuss words under my breath in frustration. I thought for sure that I lost him.

I turned around, swallowed my fear and stuck my hand into my backpack to pull out the first thing I could find, hoping it was something that I could fight a person with. I felt something cold and hard and yanked it out of my backpack. It was a first place trophy I got from an AKC (American Kennel Club) dog show I showed at. I held it up in both my hands and prepared to fight with it. It was valuable, yes, but not as much as my life. Memories flooded my head of the event but I shook them away... I had something more important to deal with right now. My hands were shaking and sweaty with the fear of the unknown.

"What… what are you? What do you want with me? Get away!"

Joey laughed at me like it was all one big joke to him. "Hay Ashley, what was that about? I told you to stop and you just ran even faster. What didn't you understand about the word 'stop'?"

"I said get away!" My wobbling knees were about to give out on me. My vision was impaired with the fog of sweat and tears in my eyes. I raised my quivering voice to try and get my point across. "AWAY! GET AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Joey sighed as he pulled out a golden colored card and waved some sort of wooden stick over it. The card shined a light blue and vanished into a pile of snow. An abstract snowflake design showed itself in front of Joey and busted into many shards of light. Suddenly I couldn't move. I started panicking at the fact that my limbs wouldn't work. I struggled to get free of this invisible body bind. Joey walked up to me and smiled.

"Sorry about that. I had to use my freeze treasure card to stun you. You wouldn't calm down. Now let's go to Wizard City. "

He really was a wizard… and that stick must had been his wand. He grabbed my shoulder with his left hand and waved his wand with his right. Flames swirled around our feet and started to glow a strange red aura. My feet felt hot from the strange red fire burning at my heels. The flames engulfed Joey and I, blinding us from anything that wasn't in the magical cone of flames. I would have been screaming if I could move my jaw. Just as fast as the flames showed up, they disappeared into a small pile of embers. We ended up in some place with a lot of people and colorful shops. Every single person here was wearing just as strange clothing as Joey, some even stranger. Lots of people had wings or were riding some kind of beast and the rest had flying pigs and other creatures surrounding them. In the center of the large aria was a large pool of water with a flying pig fountain in the middle. Joey wove his hand in front of my face.

"Hey, are you alright? Are you aware that you aren't stunned anymore?"

I laughed in awkwardness. "Now I am." I turned my head to look at him right after I put my trophy back in my bag. "Where are we?"

Joey smiled. "We are currently in the commons of Wizard City."

"Tell the truth, what did you give me?"

"Give you what?"

"Why am I seeing dragons and people with wings?"

"Why wouldn't there be dragons and people with wings?"

I raised my voice a little louder. "Again... what did you give me?"

Joey took a step back in confusion. "What?! I didn't give you anything! I have no idea what you are talking about! What are you accusing me of?"

I lowered my voice and shook my head. "This isn't going anywhere anytime soon."

I know it is short, I just wanted to get it up and out of the way. I don't have much more to say than that other than thank you for reading my story and I hope you stick around to read my other chapters. :) See you then.