A Beautiful Dark

flashed to the Rebellion’s camp. The night was freezing and my teeth were chattering, my hair still damp from earlier. After everything we’d been through that day—the past few weeks—I didn’t have the energy to keep talking outside. I was numb.
    “Do you want to come in?” I asked.
    Asher looked uneasy. “Um. Sure.” As I fumbled in my jacket pocket for my keys, he looked distracted, his eyes darting everywhere except at me.
    The heat flared up almost immediately when we walked in.
    “Whoa,” Asher said quietly. “What was that?”
    I took a deep breath. I wasn’t afraid of sounding crazy anymore. “I think it was me. I don’t know for sure. It could have just been static electricity—”
    “You know it wasn’t,” he said.
    I deflated even more. Yeah, I knew it wasn’t. “So okay, I short-circuited the thermostat a couple of weeks ago and it’s been wonky ever since.”
    “You’re getting stronger.” It wasn’t a question. Asher looked too grave.
    “But obviously not more controlled,” I joked, trying to keep the mood light. My voice hung in the air of the empty hallway. “Come on, this way.”
    The full moon cast a white beam of light through the windows of the living room, and even though the lights in the house were off, we could see where we were going.
    We walked up the stairs to my room. It was cozy in there, with the rest of the house so quiet and empty. I went into the bathroom, grabbed a couple of towels, tossed him one, and began to rub the other briskly over my hair to get it dry enough that I was no longer shivering.
    Sitting on the edge of my bed, I clutched the towel in my lap.
    Asher took off his jacket and draped it over my desk chair. “Jeez, Skye, you wanna turn down the heat a little? It’s roasting in here.”
    “Um,” I said, “I don’t exactly know how to, uh, reverse it yet.”
    What I didn’t want to say was that I was pretty sure that my accidental powers tended to flare up when I was feeling emotional—especially this weird thing I had with heat. I figured that the reason the heat had blasted when we walked in the front door had more than a little bit to do with my being alone with Asher.
    I wondered if he knew this.
    Could he somehow tell? Were my eyes flashing silver?
    “Here.” He came over to me, took the towel, tossed it aside, and brought me back to my feet. “I’ll help you. Close your eyes.” I did, and I felt him take my hands in his. I could sense the room growing even warmer. Something passed between our hands. A spark. I knew he felt it, too, because his hands twitched in mine. But he didn’t take them away. “Just pretend that everything inside you is lots of unfiltered electricity. Imagine what you want to do with it. And then imagine flipping a switch—and turning it on.” He paused, and I opened my eyes and looked at him. His eyes were searching mine, impossibly deep. I had to control myself. “The Gifted,” he said, “start small. They focus on nuances. A whisper of a breath. A hair out of place. They manipulate each and every small thing on this earth. And every little thing has an effect on something else. Just think of what a big change can do: It could sway the path of someone’s life, the outcome of battles, the course of history.”
    I swallowed, hard, mesmerized by the look in his eyes.
    “It’s our job, as the Rebellion, to stop them from controlling what they have no right to control. You could help us do that.”
    A warning bell went off in my mind. I broke away from Asher, and he didn’t try to stop me. Was he just using me? The room was too warm. I took off my jacket and then pulled my sweater over my head. Suddenly I felt self-conscious, standing there in my tank top in front of Asher, when I was so used to piling on the layers of sweater and fleece and Gore-Tex. I glanced over at him. He was staring.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Nothing,” he shot back. His eyes darted again, this time focusing above my head on the bookshelves behind me. “Oh, hey. Let’s play checkers.”
    “A Beautiful Dark” It was one in a stack of games left over from when I was a kid. I hadn’t played in years.
    “Sure, it’s a game of strategy.” He went to my shelf and pulled down the red-and-black cardboard box. “It’ll help.”
    He spread the game out on the rug, and we sat down, facing each other. I crossed my legs.
    “Well,” he said, reaching for a black piece, “see if you can handle this.” He made his first