A Beautiful Dark

with carrots and ginger mashed potatoes, and afterward we held a disaster movie marathon. It was nice to have this time with Aunt Jo, munching popcorn and laughing. Even if she had overreacted. But that was kind of nice, too—to be reminded how much I meant to her.
    That night I had strange dreams. In one of them Asher and I were running from a volcano. I tripped and fell in the street, and Devin was the one who saved me. Aunt Jo was there, angry that I could be stupid enough to trip. Cassie and Dan were buried under the hot, molten lava. They didn’t make it.
    I woke up the next morning gasping. I was once again unable to shake the feeling that I was floating above my mattress. I couldn’t handle any other strange things happening to me this weekend. I didn’t open my eyes until the dizziness subsided.
    And that’s when I realized how cold the room was.
    Peeking my head out of the covers, I felt a frigid breeze brush against my face. I looked around my room, and my eyes rested on the curtains flapping gently against the wall. The window was open, though I’d been making sure to lock it every night before bed—ever since the morning after my birthday.
    My heart pounding, I scrambled out of bed to close it. But I stopped short before I ever reached the window.
    An inky black feather was dancing along the floorboards in the icy breeze. I had never seen anything like it before. Its length spanned at least from my elbow to wrist, and the color wasn’t just black, like the crows that stalked the fields behind our house—it had an iridescence to it.
    I bent to pick it up, examine it, but another gust blew the curtains into my face and before I knew it the feather was swept up by the wind and twirling through the open window, back out into the morning sky.
    What kind of bird has feathers like that?
    I shook my head. Too many strange things had been happening lately. Maybe on my birthday when I stepped out of the Bean, I stepped into an alternate universe.
    I spent the morning reading. In the afternoon, I hiked the fields near our house. I was hoping I’d cross paths with Devin, even though I knew that was impossible. He would be at the ski lodge until the bus brought everyone home late that afternoon.
    At one point along the trail, I thought I heard a branch snap behind me. I had the unmistakable feeling that someone was watching me—but when I turned around, time after time, no one was there. I was alone, the sound of my breath echoing into the gorge.
    That night I dreamed about my parents, and in my dream, they told me the story that Asher had told us around the campfire, and soon my memories became dreams and my dreams were memories. The connections were slipping from me as fast as I’d made them.
    On Monday, Cassie was waiting for me in the parking lot when I drove up. Her arms were around me as soon as I got out of the car.
    “Are you okay?” she cried. “Did Jo rush you off to the hospital?”
    “I somehow convinced her not to,” I said. “But let me know if I can’t remember how to get to homeroom or suddenly start falling over in the middle of conversations, okay?”
    Cassie smirked. “So you’re telling me that if you start acting weird , to let you know?”
    I nodded.
    “Um, Skye?” she said, tapping me on the shoulder. “You’ve been acting weird for days.”
    I laughed lightly and tried to play it off. “I’ve just been distracted, that’s all.”
    Cassie smiled at me knowingly but didn’t say anything else on the subject.
    We started walking toward the main building. “How did the rest of the weekend go?” I asked.
    “Not as much fun without you there, but I persevered. I can ski the bunny slope without falling now, at least. So yay me.”
    “Gold star!” I smiled at her.
    So far, I was doing a pretty good job of pretending not to have anything pressing on my mind. But I had to ask. I took my phone out of my pocket and pretended to scroll through a few texts. “Uh, how were things with Devin and Asher?”
    “Weird. They had some kind of family emergency and left a few hours after you did. At least that’s what I heard.”
    I stopped, grabbed her arm, and spun her around to face me. “You mean they weren’t there?”
    “Yep. That’s what ‘left’ means. What’s wrong with you?”
    “How did they leave? They came on the bus.”
    She rolled her shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I guess someone came to get them. It was the middle of the night. What’s the big deal?”
    I