“Adya,” she whispered into the dark. “Adya, are you awake?”
There was a telltale rustle, a sigh that was not quite as agitated as she felt it was meant to sound. “I am now,” said Adya.
“What do you think it will feel like?” she asked. “Walking through the sky?”
Silence followed. For several moments, she thought maybe Adya wouldn’t answer. But then her roommate rolled over. The light of the night-lights glazed her features, leaving her lips just bright enough to read.
“I had a seizure when I was thirteen,” she said. “I was daydreaming in math, just staring out the window. My whole body jerked awake. You know that feeling when you’re dreaming about falling and your arms and legs respond as if you actually are?”
Delaney thought of jolting awake in a wooded clearing, a chilly dawn gilding the leafless trees. “Yeah,” she said. “I know the feeling.”
“It was like that, only I’d never actually fallen asleep. Afterward, everything started to go numb. My vision tunneled. By that point, I was on the floor.” She fell quiet, and Delaney let the silence fester. “The thing is,” she said, “I knew I was on the floor, because I could see myself. The entire class was moving around me but I was perfectly still, standing on a desk in the center of the room. Not part of my body, but elsewhere. Like I’d been shaken clear out of myself.” The mattress creaked as she rolled onto her back. “I imagine that’s what it’ll feel like.”
“My roommate says it’s a form of paresthesia,” piped in Mackenzie from her makeshift cot on the floor.
Rolling onto her stomach, Delaney reached for the Tiffany lamp between their beds. The light clicked on, bathing the little dorm in a soft kaleidoscope of colors. Mackenzie lay curled on the top of a borrowed sleeping bag, a snowy plush owl propped beneath her head.
“I thought you were asleep,” Delaney said at the same time as Adya moaned, “Bartleby isnota pillow, Mackenzie.”
“I have too much stress to sleep, Laney-Jane,” Mackenzie said, switching out Bartleby the owl for a pleated throw pillow. “I think I’m into my roommate.”
Adya sat up in bed, her comforter pooling around her. “Haley? With the onesies?”
“I only have the one roommate,” Mackenzie said dryly.
“I thought we don’t like her.”
“We don’t, and I don’t really want to unpack that right now, so can you please turn out the light?” Mackenzie sank down and drew the cover over her head. Her voice slipped out in a muffle. “I just want to lie here in the dark and brood.”
Delaney stayed Adya’s wrist halfway to the lamp. “First tell us what you meant before. About parathesia.”
“It’sparesthesia,” Mackenzie corrected, reemerging.
“Mackenzie.”
“Fine.” Mackenzie rolled onto her back, curls sprawling in a fiery halo around her head. “Allegedly, crossing through the sky places intense pressure on our nerves. We’ll each experience a distinct physical sensation. For Haley, it feels like spiders crawling up her skin, but it’s different for everyone.”
“So we have no idea what it’ll be like,” Delaney said. “It could be anything at all.”
“It could hurt,” Adya added glumly.
“It might.” Mackenzie curled up onto her side, her knees drawn into her chest. “Alina Cho from the first floor heard a rumor that when Price goes through, it feels like he’s drowning.”
“That’s awful,” Adya said.
“Yeah.” Mackenzie picked at her polish. “But it’s not real. It’s a tactile hallucination.”
Delaney thought of the creeping dark, the way it murmured, waiting. She thought of the boy in the woods, his body wreathed in midnight, the way she’d pursued him through the press of trees. “Wait, stop. I know you.”
She knew how real a hallucination could feel. How the imprint of it stayed with you, long after it was over. She couldn’t imagine Colton Price carrying an ache like that. Not even the specter of one. He didn’t seem the type of person to suffer anything, let alone pain.
“I have a calculus exam tomorrow,” Adya said, breaking her train of thought, “and you’re both disrespecting my rigid sleep schedule.”
“What rigid sleep schedule?” Delaney kicked her foot out from under her covers, restless. Instantly, the shadows engulfed her toes. “You were up until three a.m. last night watching cat videos.”
“And that’s between me and the internet,” Adya fired back. “Anyway, it’s the only thing I can do to keep from thinking about that face in the mirror.”
Delaney suppressed an empathetic shudder. “Have you seen it again?”
