Prologue

He Dreamed.

"You can't play with us!" they told him. "You can't go where we're going!"

"But… why?!" little Colin asked them.

Colin was a skinny boy with short brown hair and a deep frown. Tonight, as he Dreamed in this Dreamworld, he wore a brown vest and gray-striped shorts.

Right in front of him was a Gate – a white archway filled with shimmering blue light that led to a place far away. A Gate and three other kids.

The biggest of the three was a spiky haired boy in a bright red tracksuit. He laughed at Colin. "Because we don't {want} you there!"

The girl on his left had yellow hair and wore a green dress. She said, "You're too clumsy!"

The third kid, a tubby guy, scratched his head.

"Let's go!" the leader of the three said, and walked through the Gate, zipping off to somewhere else here in Gardens Dreamworld.

The other two hurried after him.

Colin rushed after them, but the Gate stopped him.

"Let me in!" he shouted.

But the light in the Gate had turned red. Red meant he couldn't get through… because the three of them were blocking him out.

"Colin." His father stood behind him, a tall man in a dark brown suit.

"I want to go through!" eleven-year-old Colin told his dad.

"Leave them alone, son. The prayerman is here to meet us." Dad told him.

"The prayerman is boring." Colin turned to the Gate and tried to push at it again.

It still wouldn't let him through. Two inches from the shimmering red light, he was stopped by an invisible barrier that felt like thick plastic.

"Help me?" Colin turned to his dad. "I want to go play with my friends."

Dad paused. "Not now, son. I want you to meet the Prayerman."

"You're boring." Colin accused. "And you never help me."

"Colin, listen to your father." Mom joined them. She was very fair, had long black hair and wore a long white dress, as she often did.

The same could be said of Gracie, Colin's younger sister. Gracie followed mom everywhere, all the time. Mom's dressing style was simply one of the many things about mom she followed.

Colin fumed. Once mom was there, he was never going to win an argument with dad. "You're just saying that because he's your friend!"

"Where are {your} friends?" Gracie asked, looking around from behind mom.

Colin growled and stomped away.

"Where are they?" Gracie's voice haunted him as he ran.

"Nobody understands me! Nobody cares about me!" Colin yelled. "Everyone just wants me to do what they say!"

He passed the prayerman on the way. The guy wore a suit like dad's, except that his suit was black and he had a hat.

"Hello, Colin…" the prayerman began, but Colin rushed by without replying.

He barely saw the Gate open up in front of him before he was through it.

The Gate vanished behind him.

***

His parents were frantic.

Colin Rivers was missing for three hours. Nobody could tell them where he went or where that Gate came from. Gates didn't appear out of nowhere, they were told. Things like that just {didn't happen}.

They called everyone they could, but nobody had seen him. The prayerman and some others helped them search for the missing boy all over the Dreamworlds Network.

It was his sister, Gracie, who found him in the end. They had left her right where they were in Gardens Dreamworld and told her not to leave.

Colin, she said, was suddenly there behind her when she heard a weird sound and turned around.

The boy didn't move the rest of the night. He said nothing and did not move no matter what anyone said or asked. He never stirred.

The only sign they found of him ever really having gone was a mark on the back of his right wrist – a mark in the shape of a diamond.

While they were discussing that mark, Colin woke up and vanished from Dreamworlds. They didn't even realize he was gone until an hour later. When his parents woke up and checked, he had already gone to school.

They called the school. The teachers reported nothing strange, just that he was quiet and moody today.

When he came back from school, they asked him more questions.

"I don't remember." He said, and went on as if nothing had happened.

But something {had} happened. Something that made him much quieter, much moodier, than he'd been before he'd vanished.

Colin Rivers was never the same again.