A Beautiful Dark (23 page)

“Yeah,” I said. “I hope so.”

We swung back and forth, both of us ignoring the cold.

“Cassie?”

“Mmm?”

I stopped my swing, digging my heels into the ground, hard. “Sorry I haven’t been, you know, all there lately.”

She stopped her swing, too. “Mmm, I don’t know if I can let you off that easily,” she said. “How about a little groveling first?”

“Shut up.”

“’Kay.”

We kept swinging.

“Skye?”

“Yeah.”

“I forgive you.”

“Thanks.”

She smiled at me sideways, the way she smiles when she’s getting an idea. “Remember that time in third grade, we got into the huge fight over who would be the first one to wear the floral leggings we both got, and I accused you of copying me, and you gave me back your half of our friendship necklace?”

“Of course,” I said. “And then we both wore them on the same day, and everyone called us the Olsen Twins. And that’s when we founded the copycat club, where we had to wear the same thing once a week for the rest of the year.”

“Yeah. Well, I kept the necklaces. I knew you’d want yours back someday.”

“A Beautiful Dark”

“Totally. Come on.”

In her room, she opened her jewelry box and held up two gold chains with half of a tiny gold heart dangling from each. One said
Best
. One said
Friend
.

“I think you need this back now,” Cassie said. “You’re my best friend. Don’t disappear on me like that again, okay? I missed you.” I gulped, trying not to feel too guilty. Whatever had happened in the past few weeks, I knew it was only going to get more intense from here as my powers—whatever they were—really took shape. And I knew there was no way I could let Cassie in on that part of my life. Not really. No matter how much I wanted to.

I put the necklace on, feeling the ridges with my thumb. If I was going to listen to anyone, if I was going to trust anyone in this world, it was Cassie.

We fit the halves together, the jagged edges interlocking exactly the way they used to, and it struck me as weird that the tiny heart hadn’t grown or changed in the years since we’d neglected them, even though
we
had.

I knew that she was telling the truth.

I would make the right decision.

Chapter 29

T
he house was gaping with emptiness when I got home. I deleted the voicemail from school informing Aunt Jo that I had missed classes. I felt guilty about it, but I would make up for everything starting tomorrow. I couldn’t focus on homework, obviously. So I decided to go out back to the field and see if I could make anything strange happen. On purpose, for a change.

I was already hard at work by the time Devin showed up, with Asher walking slowly behind him. When our eyes met, my stomach dropped. He looked just as bad as I did. Maybe worse.

If Devin noticed, he didn’t say anything. In fact, he didn’t look much better. “Oh, good,” he said. “You’ve been trying on your own. That’s great.”

I could have been imagining it, but he seemed tenser than he usually did. The laughing Devin from yesterday was gone. I wondered if he was thinking about last night. I tried not to—especially with Asher there—but I couldn’t shake the memory of him sitting up, watching as I scrambled to put on my shoes and jacket. The sound of the door locking behind me.

We spent the rest of the afternoon out in the field, working on teasing out my powers. They tried all kinds of things, but often they just showed me something that one of them could do and then tried to get me to do it. But as evening approached and I couldn’t really imitate either of them, it began to affect everyone’s mood.

The weather had slid down the awful slope from cold and clammy to a mix of sleet and rain, and my hands turned numb from the cold as Devin tried relentlessly to get me to fasten an icicle that had fallen to the ground back to its branch.

“You’re not trying hard enough!” he yelled into the wet, driving wind. “Use your
mind
, Skye. Focus your energy.”

Asher stood behind me, blasting icicles on various branches near Devin’s head. “Fasten
those
back,” I heard him mutter.

“I
am
trying!” I yelled. I had been practicing using Asher’s trick of flipping the switch but to no avail. Nothing was happening—nothing at all. Though Cassie’s encouragement had strengthened my resolve, it had also made me realize how much I missed my life the way it used to be. I would have given anything at that moment to be curled up in her room watching a movie or hanging out at the Bean and playing pool with her and the boys.

My wet hair clung to my face and neck as I tried again and again. My eyes felt wild. I didn’t have to think too hard to figure out what color they were.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Asher said. He walked over, tentatively reaching out both hands to me, and with no effort at all, a flame sprang up between them. I wanted to lean in toward the heat. But I looked away.

“It doesn’t help if you do everything for her,” Devin said, and I couldn’t quite identify the emotion in his voice. Envy, maybe—but Guardians didn’t feel envy. Wasn’t that what he’d told me?

“I think we can all agree that your approach is a dismal failure,” Asher said.

“Do you guys have to constantly bicker?” I asked.

In Asher’s hands, the fire disappeared, and the cold began to weave its way back into me.

“I’m calling it a day,” I said.

Devin left in a huff. I noticed that he avoided looking at me as he soared off through the trees with his massive wings, several of his pure white feathers spiraling down below him. They fell to the ground, where they soon turned the color of mud, just like everything else.

Asher and I just stood in the empty field facing each other.

“Skye—” he said.

I stared back at him. There was so much that I wanted to say. Instead, I turned sharply on the heels of my snow boots and trudged back to the house. I kicked my boots off when I walked into the kitchen, padding the rest of the way upstairs as the freezing wet hems of my jeans soaked through my socks, leaving little wet half-moons on the carpet. I shed my clothes in a heap just outside the bathroom door and, zombielike, stood in the shower for a second or two before realizing that I hadn’t turned it on. I let the steam fog up the mirrors and fill my lungs, and the hot water washed away my anger and sadness. Soon feeling had returned to most parts of me.

As soon as I could feel my toes again, I began to cry. Great, heaving sobs that shook my body and made it hard for me to stand. I was so tired, anyway. My legs gave way and I fell to the shower floor, where I kept crying, hugging my knees to my chest, watching the sudsy water swirl around me on its way to the drain.

I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. Was I really trying as hard as I could to manifest and control my powers? I just felt like a time bomb, ticking down the seconds until I was ready to explode. And it didn’t help that the only people who really understood, who knew what I was going through, weren’t people at all.

Stepping out of the shower, I wrapped a plush towel around me and wiped my hand across the mirror above the sink. This girl stared back at me. She had wet black hair, a swollen pink mouth twisted in confusion, a splotchy red face, and silver eyes. Not gray. Silver.

I put on my flannel boxers and T-shirt and got into bed, letting myself slip under the covers. I curled into as small a ball as possible, trying with all of my might to disappear into the soft folds. What I wanted, more than anything in the world right then, was my mother.

Early the next morning, I became aware of Aunt Jo hovering in the doorway, stepping one foot past the doorframe and then edging back into the hall, afraid to commit one way or the other. I had no idea when she’d gotten home, though it must have been sometime last night after I’d already fallen asleep. I eyed her warily through a little gap in the cave I’d made under my comforter.

“Skye?” she finally called. “Are you awake?”

I mumbled something unintelligible.

“I’ll take that as a yes. I have to head back out to the Collegiate Peaks this afternoon. I’ll be gone for ten days. How about I fix breakfast to make it up to you?” she asked brightly, as if pancakes with syrup would solve all of the world’s problems.

Ten minutes later, I was shuffling into the kitchen in sweatpants, snow boots, about four different long-sleeved shirts layered on top of one another, as well as a huge knit scarf that I’d wrapped around my neck three times. I couldn’t decide if going to school was worth it.

Aunt Jo took one look at me and her eyebrows crinkled. “Oh dear,” she said. “Are you auditioning for a horror movie after school?”

“I plead the fifth,” I muttered as I parked myself at the kitchen table and smothered a short stack in syrup.

She sat down across from me. “My late hours and all the time I’m away are getting to you, aren’t they?”

“No.”

“Guy troubles?”

I sighed. “Sorta. There are two. . . . I don’t want to talk about them.”

“Do I know them?”

I shook my head. “New guys at school.”

“The ones you mentioned before.”

I nodded

She raised a questioning eyebrow but didn’t press the issue further.

“Listen, uh, did Mom ever tell you about . . . her family?”

“Only that she didn’t have one. She was an orphan. I’ve told you that.”

Aunt Jo was an orphan, too. It was one of the reasons they’d bonded when they’d met. A common thread.

“Are you feeling a need to connect with your roots?” she asked.

Was I? I hadn’t even stopped to consider that I might have a set of grandparents on each side: one in the Order, one in the Rebellion. I wondered if they were rooting for me. Why hadn’t they made contact now that Asher and Devin had? They must have known about me.

“I don’t know. I’m just . . . thinking about a lot of things lately.”

“I wish I had some answers for you, hon.”

I wondered how she’d feel if she knew some of my questions. I poured more syrup on the pancakes. “I think a lot of the answers are right here.”

I popped more pancake into my mouth.

She laughed. “They can cure just about anything.”

“Definitely,” I said.

After finishing my pancakes and giving her a big hug, I walked out the door. No one was more important in my life. As long as I had Aunt Jo, I could make it through anything.

Chapter 30

I
was taking some books out of my locker that morning when a folded-up piece of paper fluttered to the floor. I bent to pick it up, thinking, reflexively, that it might be from Asher or Devin. But when I saw my name scrawled across the front in familiar, loopy script, I knew it was from Cassie. She never just texted me like any of my other friends did. She didn’t believe in texting. She believed in calling and ceremonious note writing. Say what you would about Cassie, but she did everything with major flair.

The note read:

Cassie and the Mysterious Ellipses request the pleasure of your company at our very first GIG!

Tonight! 8:30 p.m.

Love the Bean

75 Main Street

River Springs, Colorado

Kindly RSVP by returning this note to my locker by 3 p.m. SHARP so we can give Ian a head count.

Accepts with Pleasure_______________

Declines with Regret_______________

I laughed, writing my name into the “Accepts with Pleasure” slot and slipping the invite into the front pocket of my backpack. Going down the hall to swing by her locker on the way to my next class, I saw Asher leaning against the locker door. My heart jolted. He was the last person I wanted to see at that moment. I whirled around and took the long way to class, the RSVP still in my pocket.

I got to lunch before Dan but after Cassie, who was already sitting at our table with her guitar out, scribbling something in her music notebook. As I sat down across from her, I waved my RSVP note in front of her face.

“Not to interrupt,” I sang, “but I have a present for you. . . .”

“Ooh!” she squealed. “Yay! So many people are coming, I hope we have room for everyone at the Bean! What are you going to wear? Promise me you’ll dress up? I’m
so
excited!”

I dropped the folded-up paper on the table in front of her and unwrapped my sandwich. I tried to push the memory of Asher guessing my favorite lunch out of my head. “I don’t know what I’m wearing,” I said. “I hate dressing up.”

“Oh my god, if you lame out on me tonight I’ll kill you. You’re definitely coming, right? Right?”

“Of course! Yes, I’m definitely coming.”

“Good. Because there’s something I need to ask you.”

“What?”

She paused, letting the drama of the moment build between us. “How do you feel about taking risks?”

“What?” I asked again. “What kind of risk?”

“There’s something I’m thinking about doing tonight. And it’s kind of scary.”

“Cass! Seriously? What is it?”

She played with a long twisted curl that had come loose from her side braid. “I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s a big risk.”

“Riskier than singing on stage in front of a hundred people?”

“Are you kidding? I’m a performer. That doesn’t scare me one bit. If I did this, it would be, like,
epic
.”