For three nights in a row, Kess dreamed about following. Sometimes she followed the computer-voice of the map on her phone, and sometimes she followed Giant and sometimes she followed Danny. (He never spoke, and when she woke up she wondered why he was floating around her subconscious since he hadn't been around in a while. She wasn't sure he and Priya were even going out anymore.) They led her down suburban sidewalks or forest paths or city streets crammed with abandoned cars. They led her to a merry-go-round, or to a nondescript building that hummed like live electric cables, or to nowhere at all. She woke several times in the middle of her dreams, and sometimes when she woke the room was full of colored light that flooded through the walls as if they were made of glass.

When she woke up at 2 a.m. on the third night, she knew which direction to go.

She didn't turn the headlights on until the car was down the street, just in case the light would shine through her parent's window. She was grateful they were leaving the next day. The sooner they were gone, the sooner Kess and Priya could stop hiding their hands and pretending they still liked each other. Kess couldn’t even imagine what would happen after they came back and discovered what was going on, that their daughters had superpowers and that Priya had somehow turned bad.

Kess drove. Navigating was tricky. She seemed to hold in her head a Direction and a Distance, but there wasn't always a road going in the Direction. Several times she picked a road that seemed to be headed the right way until it curved unexpectedly. Eventually, after taking three u-turns in a row on a black road through the woods near Greenlake, she parked on the curb and got out of the car. The Direction pointed into the woods.

She reached for her phone to use the flashlight, but her pocket was empty—she’d left it on her bedside table. Could she see the strange lights on purpose? She glared at the darkness. Nothing happened, but the moon, once she got used to it, was actually pretty bright. She continued walking in the Direction as the Distance dwindled smaller and smaller.

Lights appeared through the trees. She couldn’t tell whether they were regular lights or lights like the ones she’d been seeing, that no one else could see. There were three of them, white glowing spots flickering between dark branches. As she watched them come toward her, she realized they were also converging on whatever point she was headed for.

Ahead, something loomed out of the trees, dull in the moonlight. An old water tower. She emerged into the open space around the tower. The white lights in front of her floated at waist level, so bright she could barely see anything else.

Stop seeing them, she said to herself. Stop now.

And she did. With the lights gone she could make out dark human figures, one standing where each light had been a moment before.

The figures stood between the trees like witches. For a strange moment Kess thought maybe they literally were witches and they were about to take their clothes off and dance in the moonlight. Even stranger for someone so uncomfortable with nudity she wore an awkward t-shirt over her suit when she went swimming, Kess could almost imagine herself joining them.

One of the figures stepped out into the moonlight. Danny.

For a moment, she thought he’d forgotten her name and was about to call her something like “Priya’s sister.” But no. Bottled-water boys always remember names.

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“Kess,” he said. “You’re here too?”

The other figures stepped out beside Danny. One was his friend, the black girl with the long blue braids—Laura? Luanne? The other was a short boy with a bit of a weasel face. (She remembered to be nice and added “poor dear” to the end of her thought. A short boy with a bit of a weasel face, poor dear.)

“Kess, this is Samuel. He works at the grocery store with me. Samuel, this is my friend Kess. And you’ve met Lorraine, obviously.”

Bottled-water boys, it seemed, could sense when you couldn’t remember someone’s name, even at strange times and places, and were always prepared to tactfully remind you of it. They had probably evolved this trait on the Serengeti.

“You’ve got the hands?” asked Kess.

“Yes,” said Lorraine. In the moonlight her hair was silver-blue and her glasses shone like real cat’s eyes. “We’ve got the hands. Here.” Stepping forward, Lorraine grabbed Kess’s arm. Kess tensed, but Lorraine didn’t seem to notice. She pulled up Kess’s arm and held up her own hand with palm facing Kess’s.

A blue spark flashed between the stars on their hands, and Lorraine grinned.

“Okay,” said Kess, shaken. “Okay. So what do you think is happening? What do you think the lights are?”

“Magic,” said Danny. “I mean, it’s probably magic, right?”

“No, not probably. Magic isn’t a thing.”

Lorraine cocked her head to the side. “You’re awfully close-minded for someone in the dark, dark woods after midnight.”

“What lights?” That was Poor Dear, whose real name Kess had already forgotten. “You said something about lights.”

“The lights. The weird lights around power cables and in the sky.”

“None of us has seen any weird lights,” said Danny.

“But they even came from you, from your hips, your—” Pockets. The white lights had come from their pockets.

“Do you have your cell phones with you?”

“Yeah,” said Danny as the other two nodded.

That’s what was happening. Kess could see electromagnetic radiation—radio waves and cell phone signals. Figuring that out was so satisfying she laughed.

“What’s funny?” asked Poor Dear. He sounded worried that he was missing something important, and the insecure expression on his face made him look weaselier.

“Do any of you guys know what’s going on?” Kess asked. “At all?”

“No.”

“Well isn’t that hilarious?”

“Um…”

Lorraine put a hand on her hip. “I’m not sure it’s funny,” she said. “But it’s definitely going to be fun.”

That made Kess laugh too, and the laugh jostled something loose in her. Suddenly, the other kids’ heads glowed with blue light. It was a bright, clear blue, and it made them look magical and beautiful like sorcerer-angels.

###

TRUEWORLDORDER.NET, PRIVATE MESSAGE CONVERSATION BETWEEN USERS POWERISKNOWLEDGE AND CLEVERHANDLE:

cleverhandle: I still don’t want to give you my name. For all I know *you’re* “them.”

powerisknowledge: You make a good point.

powerisknowledge: You don’t sound like them.

powerisknowledge: The electric girl—do you like her?

cleverhandle: What does that have to do with anything?

powerisknowledge: Tell me what you like about her. Do it or the conversation is over.

cleverhandle: Okaaaaaaaaaaay.

cleverhandle: I’ve only met her once in person. But yeah, I like her. She’s funny. She has good taste in music. She’s weird without being too weird *or* weird-on-purpose. She’s blonde with brown eyes.

powerisknowledge: Why do you like that?

cleverhandle: I don’t know. Maybe it’s that blue-eyed blondes are cliché? I just really like it.

powerisknowledge: You’re not one of them.

cleverhandle: Good to know.

powerisknowledge: Holifeld Company.

cleverhandle: That it?

cleverhandle: That’s your information?

cleverhandle: That’s all you’re gonna say?