PROLOGUE

To be perfectly honest, Pike’s intro could use a rewrite

She was leisurely skating past a parking lot, her favorite iced tea in hand, on her way back to campus when more chaos erupted—literally. Someone must have been having an extremely bad day. She watched as their chaotic aura abruptly swelled into a Shade shaped like the ugliest scarecrow she had laid her emerald green eyes on.

The Shade began throwing its tantrum—picking up cars and haphazardly tossing them at this person, at that family, at the traffic light, at another unsuspecting parked car. A low, guttural Gwoooh! rumbled from its non-existent mouth as it rampaged through the lot. People in the parking lot hurried past the girl on skates, fleeing in terror from this shadowy creature.

But she didn’t run away along with them.

She rolled to a stop and faced the Shade, sizing it up. It was about the size of a basketball player on the taller end. In other words, it was definitely among the smaller ones she had encountered. This was an opportunity.

Draining the last of the iced tea in her hand, she tossed the empty cup in a nearby trash can and started to roll towards it…

…then stride towards it…

…then race towards it…

Sensing a threat, the Shade turned its flaming red eyes towards her—only to find a fist caving through its forehead. The fist glowed with a bright yellow aura, and that aura engulfed the entire being it was connected to. There was a wild, cocky grin on its assailant’s face as she followed through and sent it crashing to the ground.

There was no damage done to the cars still parked. Unlike moments before when the Shade fitfully threw the heavy hunks of metal aside, this time it phased through them like a ghost. The ground itself was too solid for it, however, and provided it a harsh landing pad.

Before it could recover and retaliate, the young woman with the yellow glow threw herself at it and pinned it to the ground. She began throwing fist after fist at the shadowy scarecrow. Off-balance and helpless against the relentless onslaught, the Shade flailed in futility as it became a punching bag for this human lightbulb. Its dark aura began to waver. Its chaotic energy began to billow away like steam from a dying fire.

With a desperate Gwoooh! the Shade swung a gangly arm and managed to swat away this glowing threat to its existence. Panicked, it slithered and scrambled in a different direction. It needed new energy. It needed to recover its lost chaos!

Three curious university students were directly in its path. Their curiosity turned into alarm as they saw the Shade storm towards them. Paralyzed by their distress, the students flailed and raised their arms and cover their faces in a vain attempt to shield themselves from the inevitable impact.

But before the Shade could reach them, the glowing girl shot through it like a golden bullet. One last Gwoooh! rumbled through the air as the dark aura burst apart like a popped balloon. A shockwave rippled over the parking lot… and then everything was calm.

The bright yellow glow around the young woman faded, reverting her back to her extraordinarily normal, university girl form. She redid the messy bedhead bun of her copper-brown hair (it had come loose during the scuffle) and turned to the three students. They hurried up to her with readied praise and enthusiastic babbles.

“That was a close one!”

“That was totally one of those Shades causing trouble, right?! You saved our butts!”

She let a laugh ring out, flashing a cocky grin and a whimsical wink from her emerald green eyes. “Anytime! It’s what we Stars do, after all!”

Then, she turned to her last point of impact on the defeated Shade. In place of the menacing darkness sat a dazed, disoriented young man. “What… Where am I…?”

She rolled over to him and hauled him to his feet. “Oookay, buddy. Let’s get you over to the Lumi Department.”

And so ended the chaos-involved incident in a parking lot of the town of Halo Ridge.

But from his dorm room just a few blocks from the excitement, Pike DeSanto was having a decidedly normal day.

He sat at his desk and finally turned his attention from the window to his notebook. Procrastination over. He yawned and rubbed the perpetual dark circles under his equally dark eyes. He needed to at least write the introduction before art class. Something. Anything. Even if he had to settle for good enough and change it later (which he had, plenty of times—before erasing everything).

A star is the main character.

In every story, they go on a journey, grow in inspiring ways, maybe go head-to-head with an insert-boss or two. And while each obstacle may be tough, they always emerge the victor. The audience loves reading a success story, after all. There may be other characters in a story, but the star is the only one worth caring about.

Who exactly is that star? What happens if it’s not you?—

—And it was starting to sound like an essay. Why did he always default to writing introductions this way anyway? He already wasn’t that great an artist, so he needed to git gud at the story part at least. Writing forums, friends, and even his high school literature teacher could never stress enough the importance of starting with a bang. Otherwise, people would pass his work over in less than a shake. And then his plan to be a graphic novelist after university would be replaced with his parents’ vision of him getting a 12-hour-day desk job.

Yikes.

Yeah. He’d need to rewrite it later.

Still, that was just the way he saw it. Only certain people were main characters of a story. Also, he was pretty sure all those main characters would be plucked from somewhere within the ranks of Halo Ridge’s up-and-coming Stars. Actual Stars. The proverbial superheroes of the world—not the ones found in outer space or the red carpet. Their lives bled protagonist material.

So, if he were ever in a story, Pike was sure he’d be a side character. If that meant uneventful afternoons like these, he didn’t mind it even the slightest. The last thing he needed was to be swallowed by a mass of chaos. The chaotic realm was an urban legend, but he was willing to believe it really existed.

He sat back and sighed. It was wishful thinking, and he knew it. Since it had been blessedly quiet lately, something that required him to fight for his literal existence was bound to happen. As a writer, he knew the fate of a side character was to be dragged into the many shenanigans the plot had in store for its star. 

And his best friend Mindie was most certainly an aspiring Star. Oh, the woes of being the go-to companion of such an ambitious luminescent.