Prologue
The sound of a glass shuttering against concrete had her jumping.
Melinda was panicking, her breaths coming fast and short. She took a couple of steps, walking backwards towards the center of the playground. She needed to calm herself down. Everything was fine, she was just over-stimulated due to her anxiousness, but she was going to be alright. It was all going to be-
Someone breathed next to hear ear.
Melinda gasped.
She spun around but there was no one there. She was standing alone, in the middle of the playground. The wind had picked up and the whine of the merry-go-round had joined the groans of the rusty swing set. Melinda's erratic breathing was making her head fuzzy and her eyesight blurry. She tried to calm down, tried to relax the tension in her jaw and her shoulders.
Something touched her lower back.
Melinda screamed. She whirled around only to find out that, again, there was no one there. This was positively nightmarish. Melinda was by now certain that someone was playing with her. The sky had turned a dark grey color and the girl decided that she'd had enough. It was time for her to leave, phone or no phone. She started towards where she'd just come from, but then something grabbed the back of her jacket.
Melinda let out another scream, but this one never reached her ears. Her eyes widened and she yelled again, but no sound came out of her mouth. Melinda thrusted at the invisible force holding her in place, but it wouldn't budge. In a last attempt at freedom Melinda wrenched around, getting the jacket off her. The excessive force of her struggle had her stumbling forward. Melinda tried to catch herself, to stop from crushing down in a bed of yellowish dead leaves. She managed to remain upright, but then her shoe caught on something, and she tripped again.
To save herself from landing on the hard concreate Melinda threw her hands out.
When she fell straight through it, she mentally chided herself for not thinking to orb away.