It happened every year - or so I'd been told.

Okay, listen. I was a kid with many problems. ADHD...Dyslexia...You name it. That doesn't really do me any good at school.

I can't focus in my classes. I get bored too easily. I don't like being crammed in a small school for six and a half hours a day.

Basically, I was a below C average student who got into a lot of trouble. Most of the time, it wasn't my fault. Regardless of that, I'd been kicked out of every school I'd been in since the third grade the same year I enrolled in it.

This year, I was determined to be good.

It was already June, anyway. I was in the home stretch. It was June twelfth. Two-and-a-half weeks more, and I'd be at home with my mom and dad. And in September, I'd be getting ready to come back here. Then maybe I could actually partake in this 'school tradition'.

It was a volleyball game. I know - what could be so special about a volleyball game? Well, the Barton Middle School Panthers's were here to play against our team; the Dorianne Middle School Lizards.

Now, you're probably laughing. Wow, lizards. That sure sounds intimidating. But don't let the name fool you, because our Lizards were aggressive and tough to beat.

I mean, I'd never actually seen the girls play, but Johnny Overwood - my best friend - had told me nonstop how amazing they were.

Apparently, the games were legendary. It was a year-end game for fun, but the bragging rights were suppose to be the equivalent of untold riches.

There was never a long-running streak. Usually, one team won one year, the opposite team the next, and so on. Sometimes, if they were really lucky, a team would get two years in the lime-light. Last year the Panthers had won, and our whole school was determined to make sure it didn't happen again.

"Wait until the first game is done," Johnny smiled excitedly as we took our seats on the crowded stands. Our backs were turned to the school. Since it wasn't raining, the games were outside in the heat of the sun. This meant that the bleachers were moved around the volleyball court - as if closing off the exit for those playing the game.

Though Dorianne was a small school, building- and student-wise, we made up for it in school spirit and sporting fields; a football field, a race track, basketball courts, tennis nets. Behind the football field, there was a forest that stretched way out. Why anyone thought it was a good idea to put a school near the woods, I had no clue. All I was sure of was that there was a legend of a ghost in there, and everyone stayed away.

Ghosts, ha.

Personally, I was never a big sports fan, and I didn't try out to join any teams. But we were the most competitive school I'd ever been to when it came down to athletics, and the games were always exciting.

"The Panthers pick someone from our school to sub in with our team, and the Lizards do the same for Barton." I wasn't sure how that worked out, but Johnny seemed happy enough about it.

He was a scrawny 5'5" guy, and cried a lot when he was stressed, or upset, or frustrated. He had shaggy blonde hair hidden under a green DORIANNE MS cap (which he always wore), light skin and soft blue eyes. Despite us only being in seventh grade, he had acne and whiskers on his chin. I'd always secretly wondered if he'd been held back several grades.

Sitting down in his green muscle-shirt and a brown jacket and jeans and sneakers, packed next to the six-hundred other students from Dorianne sporting the same school colours, you might not see anything wrong with him. But Johnny had a problem.

He was crippled. He got out of gym and sports because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. The way he walked always made me cringe - it was like every step hurt him. But man, if he wanted to, he could run.

Johnny was my only real friend. Sure, there were the people I'd say hello to in the halls, or sit beside in the classes I didn't have with Johnny. But when it came down to it, Johnny was the guy I always hung around; before school, during school, after school.

It's not because I had a crush on him - I didn't. Don't get me wrong, he has the best personality and is very handsome, but since I'd first met him at the beginning of the school year I'd pegged him as my brother.

Which was cool, because I was an only child.

"If they pick you, what happens?" I asked Johnny.

"Well, I can't actually play. I suppose I'd just tell them about my legs..." he looked like he put a lot of thought into that answer.

"The rival school would boo you." I guessed.

Johnny frowned, as if the thought hadn't occurred to him. "Oh."

"It's cool," I assured him. I wish I hadn't said that, Johnny looked like he was about to cry. He hated letting people down. "I'll just volunteer as tribute in your place."

If that was against the rules, Johnny didn't say anything.

Across from us, the eight-hundred kids from Barton filed into the bleachers. Most wore black; the colour of their team. But some stuck out like sore thumbs in yellows and reds. A guy in green - one of our school colours - was being shunned by his friends.

"Here come the teams!" Julia Rodriguez, a hispanic girl in my biology class, shouted beside me.

To the left, cheerleaders in various greens and browns started performing routines. They did flips in the air, and waved their pom-poms around as they chanted.

From behind our bleachers came our mascot - someone in a green comical lizard costume that had giant eyes and a pink forked tongue hanging out of its mouth. He wore a number nine light-brown jersey that said 'Dorianne' across the back.

Behind him trailed the team.

Twelve girls in total, all different heights and skin tones and hair colours, wore the same dirt-coloured jerseys, black shorts, white knee pads, and running shoes. They all sported their hair in ponytails. And they all received massive roars of approval from the crowd.

Normally, I just listened as everybody cheered around me. This time, for this special game, I cheered too. As loud as I could.

Johnny shot me a look of approval as he screamed and clapped. The other school clapped half-heartedly, until their team came out on the right side.

They had a smaller group of cheerleaders, but they were more advanced. They did flips and twirls and shot each other into the air. They chanted louder than our cheerleaders, and had better rhymes.

Their team came in before the mascot, which I didn't think was normal because of the murmurs of students around me.

The team wore black jerseys and shorts, and white sneakers. They were all very tall, and all very mean-looking. Most had dark skin, as if reflecting the fact that they were supposed to be 'black' panthers.

Everybody from Dorianne gasped when the mascot came out.

"They got a new costume!" Johnny whispered to me in outrage. He made a sound like an animal, which he made a lot when he was frustrated and/or crying.

The costume looked realistic.

Someone in a panther costume with sleek black fur, claws, and pointy white teeth in a forever-open mouth danced their way onto the court. The yellow eyes on the small head of the black panther looked like they were moving from face to face in the crowd. They landed on me and seemed to stay there, making me feel uneasy. No matter which way the mascot moved, the eyes were always looking directly at me.

It must've just been my ADHD. I must've just been hallucinating.

Barton cheered so loud my teeth chattered. Their team huddled up on the right side of the court, and our team did the same on the left.

On either side of the net was a referee and a score-keeper (so each side could see the score). There was one guy behind the back line on the left of the court, and one in the same spot on the right. Everything was set up so perfect, I felt like this should be televised.

Johnny shifted, straightened, and tensed up beside me. I turned to him. "Are you okay? Is something wrong? Is it your legs?"

He shook his head. "No, it's not my legs."

I waited. He didn't say more. "Then what's wrong?"

"Smells like..." he locked eyes with me and stopped abruptly, almost like he was keeping a secret from me.

"Smells like what?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Uh, nachos! I smell nachos! Maybe we'll get some later!"

I could tell he was lying, he really sucked at it. His nose twitched, and he tapped his fingers against his thigh. I couldn't smell any nachos, and there wasn't anywhere near us that sold them, anyway.

Before I got a chance to call him out on it, the score-keeper on the other side of the court tapped the microphone, then stepped aside to let a woman speak.

"Welcome! Welcome!" She must've been the coach of the Panthers. She was in a black-and-white track suit, and she had her hair up in a ponytail. Even from a courts distance and two rows up on the bleachers, I could see that she had a kind face and smile. She had black hair and dark skin, but her eyes were blue. It was extraordinary. She even had panther-ears sticking out from the top of her head!

Too bad we didn't have anything like that for lizards...

"That's Mrs. Vandal," Johnny told me.

"This is the thirty-first annual year-end volleyball game! Remember, this is a game for fun! But try hard, team mates, because it might be the last time some students witness this." It couldn't have been possible, but she seemed to be looking at me when she said that.

The crowd cheered around me, but I suddenly had a sick feeling in my stomach. I turned to Johnny, but he just glanced at me and kept hollering: "Go Lizards! Whoooooo!"

"There will be three games, and as most of you know, after the first we will be subbing in a randomly selected member of the crowd!"

More screaming. Everyone wanted to be a part of this.

"And now, without final ado, let the games begin!" The crowd roared louder if it were possible. The coach nodded to the refs, and then took a seat on the bench beside the team and the mascot.

The cheerleaders cleared off the court and took their places in the bleachers, the first row, right in front of Johnny and I.

I looked back at the Panthers. My stomach did a flip. Three of them were staring at me, the mascot, too. Two licked their lips. I realized that the coach wasn't the only one wearing panther ears, the three girls wore them too.

I gripped Johnny's arm.

"Is everything okay?" Johnny asked me.

I wanted to shake my head and tell him no. I wanted to get him to walk me home and maybe stay over for dinner. I wanted to leave the school as fast as possible.

But Johnny had been talking about this game for weeks. I couldn't just ask him to leave it.

"I'll be fine." I promised. "Maybe I just need nachos."

He smiled at the joke, and turned his attention back to the game. They'd started already, and because I barely focused on the actual game (I may or may not have been staring at the Panthers on the bench), I didn't realize that it had ended.

"That was a fast game." I muttered to Johnny. He shook his head.

"That's probably just your ADHD acting up - the game was pretty long and eventful. Did you see Sabrina strike?"

I shook my head.

"She. Was. Amazing." Johnny insisted. I knew he had a crush on her, but whenever I brought it up he denied it. I mean, he didn't know her that well - he'd arrived at this school last year a month before it was over - but he thought she was, in his words, 'real swell'.

"Oh, this is my favourite part! They're picking!"

Sure enough, the mascots were scouting the bleachers hungrily. The Black Panther made its way up the steps to our bleachers. The Lizard chose someone on the other side.

She was small, from what I could tell. She had a round face, red hair, and glasses. I could tell that she was the kind of person who hid behind books and not basketballs. Volleyball wouldn't come easy to her.

Then the Panther chose, and my heart stopped.

The ear twitched, if only slightly, as one of the feline's claws landed on my shoulder.

Johnny looked pale suddenly, and he shook his head, jumping up from his seat. It was as if he could feel my discomfort with this.

"No way." He told the panther. "Uh, I mean, she can't play. She hurt her leg a few days ago, it's still sore. Pick someone else. Please."

The coach was suddenly behind the mascot. I didn't know how she moved that fast. It must've been like the game...I just wasn't paying enough attention...

"You know the rules." Mrs. Vandal said. "Once a player is selected, they must come forward to play."

"R-right, but, uh..."

"Come now, time to play."

Mrs. Vandal led me away from my seat. In my peripheral vision, I saw Johnny try and follow me. Two boys from the football team held him back and cheered along with the rest of the crowd.

My mouth felt dry as I was pushed into serving position on our side of the court. Nerd-girl was in serving position for the Panthers.

I'll be fine, I told myself. It's just a volleyball game.

Boy, was I wrong.

Because, apparently, the Panthers had won the first game, so it was our turn to serve. I think I mentioned before that I wasn't all that good at sports.

P.E. saved my life. I knew what I was doing. At least, I knew how to position myself and hold the ball. One of the refs blew the whistle, and I let the ball fly.

Surprisingly, it went over the net. The crowd went nuts. A mean-looking dark skinned girl leaped up before the ball could make it too far onto their side, and she spiked the ball so hard that the girl in front centre, Madison, crumpled to the ground.

"Hey!" I shouted, as our coach, Mrs. Geoffrey, helped bring Madison to the bench and Sara came to take her place. "Not so hard! You're hurting people!"

I wasn't sure if she could hear what I said over the noise from the crowd, but her dark eyes stared at me intensely, almost like a predator watching their prey.

It was their serve next. The Nerd-girl didn't get it over. The Lizards rotated, so I was now back centre. Ruby served, the same girl who'd spiked the first time hit the ball back over the net.

On impulse, I raised my arms to block my face. The ball whacked against my barricade, leaving my arms throbbing as the ball skidded back to the Panther side of the court.

Some people from my school were booing me now. I looked at the crowd, shaking my arms and hoping to get feeling back into them, and I locked eyes with Johnny.

He looked concerned and panicked and agitated. He was being restrained by the two football players, who were now on either side of them. Julia Rodriguez was sitting one row higher than before, like she'd switched places with the boys.

I didn't hear the whistle, so the next serve caught me by surprise and hit me right in the head.

The world was spinning, the ground rushed up to meet my face. I heard Johnny screaming my name.

The Lizards crowded around me. "Are you okay?" Sara asked. It sounded like her voice was behind a layer of water.

That was too hard. No human being could have made that serve.

Through Sara's legs, I saw the Panthers on the other side of the net. Three were wearing different clothes now. Furry black long-sleeved body suits. On their hands and feet...were those paws?

No. No, no, no. This wasn't happening. I was hallucinating. I almost convinced myself of that, too, until the crowd started screaming - now with horror - and running away. Children jumped down from the bleachers and pushed one another as they attempted to get back to the school. The Lizards around me looked behind them, and started running in the opposite direction with everyone else. Nerd-girl almost kicked me in the face as she passed. Even the other nine Panthers were running.

The Panthers...they were actual panthers now.

They were on all fours. Their heads had become smaller and animal-like, glowing black like the rest of their fur bodies. The mascot seemed more agile, too. If it was ever a panther costume, it wasn't now. And the coach - she must've been the worst of them.

She was bigger than the girls, her eyes highlighter yellow, her fangs gleaming white. And she was standing up on her haunches, in front of the other four panthers.

Panther Vandal said something I couldn't make out, like it was in another language. If you've never seen a panther speak like a human, I envy you. Her mouth twisted in unnatural ways, her tongue was pink and fleshy and all sorts of wrong.

Behind me, the way the children were fleeing, the bleachers moved to block the path. I didn't actually see it, but I heard the creaks and groans, and when I looked back, two of the six bleachers surrounding the court had blocked off the exit. Two kids were unconscious. The rest were too scared to go out the other way.

There were about twenty kids behind me now, all screaming and trying to push the bleachers out of the way.

I pushed myself up in a desperate attempt to get back from the panthers. I barely made it to my feet when Johnny stepped in front of me. His backpack was strapped over his shoulders, but I didn't have time to dwell on the fact that it had appeared out of no where. We weren't sitting with it.

"Open the bag," he said over his shoulder.

I was quick to obey. I wasn't sure what good it would do, but maybe Johnny had meat in his lunch bag that we could use to lure the panthers away with.

That's stupid, I thought. Johnny is a vegetarian.

"What do you want?" Johnny asked the panthers. They hissed. I was surprised they hadn't killed us all yet. I was also surprised by how confident Johnny sounded, his voice wasn't quavering. He was standing his ground.

"The girl," Panther Vandal replied. A chill ran up my spine when I realized she was talking about me.

Under a few notebooks, I found something that should've scared me. But after seeing seemingly normal people turn into panthers...well, I figured my brain was overloading.

I pulled a sword out of Johnny's bag, and he dropped the bag off his shoulders. It was about three feet long, and gold instead of silver. I'd never held a sword before, but this one seemed perfectly balanced.

"Well, you aren't going to get her!" Johnny shouted back.

There were sirens wailing in the distance. The police were on their way.

I held the sword out to Johnny, who shook his head.

"I can't use that. I wasn't made for it. You were."

"I've never held a sword in my life!" I hissed back.

"Send her forward, satyr. And we will let you live." The other panthers didn't look happy about that, but they nodded along with Panther Vandal.

Johnny snorted.

I looked back down at the sword in my hands. I could hear my fellow classmates screaming behind me. There were five panthers, maybe with this sword I could kill one. I certainly couldn't just wait until one of them killed me, Johnny, or the kids behind me.

"If you think I'm letting you take her, you're wrong. It's my job to protect her, and that's what I'm going to do." I admired Johnny's bravery. I was also glad that he had the panthers distracted.

I lunged towards the nearest one, swung my blade down, and cut the torso clean in half. I half expected her to re-form or something and then attack me, but she wailed in defeat and erupted into gold dust.

I mentally added that to my list of bizarre occurrences today.

Panther Vandal bared her fangs. "You will regret that," she hissed. "Children, attack!"

The panthers charged. I made an attempt to cut another in half, by my arc was too wide and the panther was too fast. She got a scratch just under my rib cage, above my stomach.

Johnny managed to stun her by throwing his school bag at her head, but the three other panthers kept on approaching.

The sirens were closer now, the police were here. I tried to focus on that. That was good news, right?

"Y/N!" Johnny shouted, dodging a lunge from Panther Vandal. "Focus! The sword, don't try and control it! Let it do the work for you!"

It sounded strange, but I didn't have time to think. The previously stunned panther and her two friends were on me now, walking slowly on all fours as if to scare me more.

I held out the sword, trying my best not to intentionally move it. A few seconds, and nothing was happening. A few seconds more, and I'd be dead. I was about to disregard Johnny's command and swing for the panthers, when the sword started humming in my hand.

'Drop me,' a metallic voice said in my head. The voice sounded like a young British man, but from a far away distance. There was an echo after he spoke. I thought I was going insane. Then, with a start, I realized that it was the sword talking. How? I'm not sure. But I dropped the sword.

I watched in both fascination and horror as the sword levitated and swung itself, as if someone invisible were holding it. In mere seconds, the three panthers that had been chasing me had also been reduced to dust like their fellow comrade, and the sword stayed pointed against Panther Vandal's black and furry neck.

"You haven't seen the last of me." Panther Vandal promised, and the sword cut into her. She erupted into gold dust and floated to the ground at my feet. The sword disappeared in midair with a loud 'pop', and I was left staring at Johnny for an explanation.

"What just--"

"Not now!" He pleaded, grabbing his bag from the gold dust.

"The police!" One kid was shouting behind me. "Look!" All of my classmates had calmed down by the time I turned to watch the police make their way up the hill. There were a dozen of them, hands on their guns. Our school volleyball coach was leading them to us.

"What happened here?" A chubby officer asked the closest student as his comrades started moving the stands back to their places. It didn't take long to get the first one out of the way to let the kids through. Police officers checked the two unconscious kids and radioed in for back up.

"Well," the boy replied matter-of-factly. "A student we just got this year decided to sabotage our annual volleyball tournament. She attacked the kids, and the other team! She has an accomplice, too."

"Can I get their names?" The officer took out a pad of paper and a pencil.

"Yeah," the boy nodded vigorously. "Y/N Y/L/N, and Johnny Overwood. They're right over there!" He turned and pointed right at us. I wanted to yell and protest. That wasn't what happened. The boy was lying!

But then I thought about how my argument would hold. There were five humans that turned into panthers and Johnny had a floating sword that killed them.

The chances of them not putting me in a straight jacket were very slim.

"Come on!" Johnny hissed. He grabbed my arm, and together we went sprinting across the field and away from the school and towards the forest, the chubby police officer desperately yelling for his partners to chase after us.

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