To Aiden and the Andrews' family, Leiston was a completely new city. It was a beautiful city, and for some reason, all of the houses were big but dirt cheap. The only reason they'd moved was because Andrews & Co., Aiden's father's huge company, invested a bit too much in a deal with another company and had to close down because of bankruptcy.

However, Aiden had his doubts about the town. For one, Leiston was completely unheard of, and the population was a little under a thousand. How was that supposed to go unnoticed? And how come Aiden's nightmares had begun getting weirder and more active since they'd arrived four weeks ago? Every time he'd tried to bring up to his mother that something was very off about Leiston, she would always dismiss it as "We've just lost our company — these houses are big and cheap." He knew that. But he also knew that something off was happening in the city.

He especially noticed something up in his conversation with a passerby as he walked to school.

A girl around his age was on a skateboard, bumping down the sleekly paved road. She was black, her skin rich and chocolate brown. Her hair was straight, long, and black, but there was also a streak of hot pink that matched her colorful skateboard and black-and-pink leggings. She was wearing a neon blue denim jacket and a blue-and-purple bracelet that complemented her undertones, and on her not-so-white teeth were braces. Overall, the girl was pretty, but Aiden was too busy sulking to notice it.

She skidded to a halt in front of him, and Aiden stopped. They were on the street of the neighborhood, to the right of a house with two hot pink bikes and a very small baby blue scooter. "Hey," she said in the most stereotypical American accent that one would see people using in a Starbucks cafe, like she was pure American and nothing else — which her skin tone argued against. "I'm Vanessa Scott." It also argued against her name. "Who are you, and ... what are you doing in Leiston?"

"I'm Aiden." He didn't want to tell her his last name — normally people put up special treatment when they connected the dots to Andrews & Co., and that wasn't the kind of treatment he wanted at Leiston Middle. "I just moved here."

Vanessa picked up her neon skateboard and laughed. When he didn't join, she frowned. "Are you serious?" she asked him. "You're not just one of those emo, hide-in-the-shadows, sulky kids?"

Aiden frowned at his outfit. "I'm not emo!"

Vanessa dismissed it physically, as though waving clouds or flies out of the air. "I mean the part about you moving here. That's impossible. No one moves to Leiston — people only leave Leiston. What kind of weirdo family would move to Leiston? How low did you drop?" she asked him. "This is ... this is the Leiston with the legend. You know." Her voice dropped. "The Legend."

Aiden's eyes almost bulged. "No one moves to Leiston" was a perfect example of how this was not a normal town. And there was a legend? No wonder all the houses were so cheap! People were so desperate to leave the wretched town that they'd sell anything for whatever cost! "I actually don't know," Aiden told Vanessa. "What's the Legend?"

"SHH!" hissed Vanessa suddenly and very loudly. "You're going to get us caught!" Vanessa looked around and spotted an old, red-haired woman eyeing them with a scolding glance. Vanessa cursed and looked to the side, where the hot pink bikes and baby blue scooter were. "Pick your ride before we get in trouble!"

"What?"

"Okay, scooter it is!" When the woman's head was turned Vanessa threw him the tiny, baby blue scooter. "Get on! Now!"

Out of panic, Aiden caught the scooter and began pushing as fast as he could, watching the houses fly by him as the baby scooter skidded across the pavement. The old woman who'd been watching them had apparently seen Vanessa and Aiden, so she yelled, "Thieves!"

Vanessa and Aiden cursed in unison.

Aiden pushed harder and harder as the doors of almost every house in the neighborhood opened, confused twenty to fifty-year-old men and women shouting, "Muriel, where are the thieves?!"

Soon enough the neighborhood had caught on and most of them were chasing Vanessa and Aiden. They were now going downhill, Vanessa keeping steady and Aiden a foot on the baby-sized breaks. One neighbor brought out a car but was stopped by the security entrance at the exit of the neighborhood.

Vanessa and Aiden rode free, soon arriving at four large buildings that he assumed to belong to the International School of Leiston. When Vanessa stopped, he pulled over the tiny scooter. Its wheels, once clean and shiny, were scraped with white scratches and very dusty.

Vanessa glared at Aiden, and her eyes seeming more like angry black holes, and they seemed to say This is all your fault.

"It isn't my fault!" argued Aiden. "I wasn't the one who decided to —"

"OKAY," she started loudly, before quieting down, "you're going to shut up now before everyone hears! You need to learn to close your mouth once in a while." Vanessa marched off. "Are you coming or not? My guess is you're in ISL High, right?"

"You need to learn to close your mouth once in a while"? That was not a phrase Aiden heard very much. Most of the time it's, "Talk to me! It's creepy when you don't, it feels like you're hiding something."

Aiden followed the angry girl to his first-period class. Good thing he didn't talk so much around his family, otherwise he'd be in for a long conversation at home about stealing children's toys.

ISL High was a very large building. It was wider than it was tall but it must have been about ten stories high — as though every high schooler in Leiston went to that single academic facility. It looked very prestigious with its grass-covered green courtyard and a much smaller building next to it that seemed like a wooden, earthly, homely cafe called Renald's. The building was white with a red rooftop, like Aiden's home, and the entrance had just as large doors and the same gray marble pillars. The cafe had dark brown wood and an oak-colored roof. There was even more wood on the outside tables, but on the inside, there were sofas pushed against the wall and circular marble tables in a very modern style.

Inside ISL High was a very different story. The floors were — once again — marble, and so shiny he could see a pale, frowning face staring back at him. The light poured through the windows like batter out of a bowl — softly, satisfyingly, and with a sweet aroma. Teenage students littered the halls, walking in different directions, yet all of their movements seemed smooth.

Why would no one move to Leiston? If all the schools were like this one, who wouldn't want to move here?

Aiden kept his head down and continued to follow Vanessa Scott, for he didn't have any other way to go. She seemed quite a bit younger than most of the students, so he could only conclude that she was in ninth grade, same as him. Vanessa didn't seem to notice him as she navigated through the halls without a single word. Aiden didn't want to be rude and staring into the back of her head — or weird, staring at her feet — so he settled for looking at her backpack, which was actually quite interesting, until her backpack had slung off.

Aiden had made it to class.

Yay.

Something was odd about this class, though. There was definitely something wrong with them. He scanned through all of his classmates and nothing seemed to stand out individually. There were about twenty of them.

But when he blurred out his eyes and looked again, he saw it.

The class was divided into two straight down the middle, one had nine teenagers, and the other had eight. Vanessa joined the team with eight and they were now balanced. But that wasn't all that was odd.

Vanessa's "team" was the normal kids. They were average thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. But the other side...

When Aiden took a step back and saw them as a whole, something very odd happened.

Their eyes.

Their eyes flashed from their normal colors to red, orange, and yellow. It was so sudden and Aiden almost didn't catch it. But that was mainly because he'd almost fainted.

Those were the exact same shades as the fierce burning in his nightmares.

Aiden's teacher had him introduce himself, and now Vanessa's team and the Nightmare Kids were waiting. At first, he didn't know what for, but then he realized.

Vanessa's team seemed to be waiting for him to sit down.

The Nightmare Kids seemed to eyeball his every move with their warm, fear-inducing eyes. They were waiting for him to choose. They were vessels from his dream into the real world. His imagination taking hosts in the students.

The Nightmare Kids were waiting for him to decide his fate.