The late March wind bit at Jessica's cheeks as she trudged through the underbrush of Blackwood Park. Dried leaves crunched beneath her sneakers—not her cheerleading shoes, thank god—announcing each step like a countdown to what would undoubtedly be the nerdiest Thursday night of her life.

  "Remind me again why I’m totally here with you guys?" Jessica pulled her fleece jacket tighter around her shoulders. "It's freezing."

  Kevin walked ahead, cradling his telescope like a newborn, each step measured as if the forest floor might suddenly open beneath him. "Because," he said without turning, "you love me, and your inner wolf wants to protect me.”

  "Yeah, right." Jessica rolled her eyes, but something inside her chest tightened. It wasn't entirely untrue.

  Salina snorted, her combat boots crushing twigs with definitive cracks. The sound echoed through the darkening woods. "Because you're sick of pretending to care about Tiffany's lip gloss collection? Or maybe Camella's endless drama about which football player looked at her for 0.2 seconds too long?"

  "They're not that bad," Jessica protested, though her defense lacked conviction even to her own ears.

  Salina's black-lined eyes found hers, one eyebrow arched in perfect disbelief. "Uh-huh. Tell that to someone who didn't witness you fake-laughing at Mia's joke about calculus yesterday. Your eyes were practically screaming for the sweet release of death."

  Jessica felt her cheeks flush. "I was trying to be nice."

  "You were trying to fit in," Salina corrected, ducking under a low-hanging branch. "Different thing entirely."

  Kevin cleared his throat. "Ladies, can we save the psychoanalysis for after I ace this assignment? I've been tracking this meteor shower for weeks."

  The path narrowed as they ventured deeper into Blackwood Park. Jessica had almost forgotten how different the forest felt at night—how the familiar twisted into something alien when bathed in moonlight. She'd spent countless summer days here as a kid, running wild with Kevin and Salina, constructing elaborate fantasy worlds where every shadow held a potential adventure.

  Now, the trees loomed over them like watchful sentinels, their bare branches stretching toward a sky already dotted with the first pinpricks of starlight.

  "Here." Kevin stopped abruptly in a small clearing. He set down his backpack and began assembling a collapsible tripod with practiced efficiency. "Perfect view of the eastern sky. If my calculations are right, we should see the peak activity in about forty minutes."

  Jessica leaned against a gnarled oak tree, watching as he lovingly extracted the telescope from its padded case. She couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm—the way his hands moved with such certainty, so different from the awkward teenager he appeared to be in the school hallways.

  "That's your new telescope?" she asked, genuinely impressed despite herself. The sleek black instrument looked far more sophisticated than the plastic toy versions they'd played with as kids.

  Kevin beamed, his smile visible even in the growing darkness. "Celestron NexStar 8SE. Saved up all summer working at the comic book store." He patted it affectionately. "Eight-inch aperture, computerized mount, GPS alignment. This baby can spot galaxies millions of light-years away."

  "Nerd," Jessica coughed into her hand.

  "Proud of it," Kevin shot back without missing a beat.

  Salina had wandered a few feet away, her pale face tilted toward the sky. The moonlight caught in her black hair, turning it almost blue. "You picked a good night. The energy feels... different."

  Jessica exchanged a glance with Kevin. Salina's "energy readings" were a long-standing inside joke between them—part of what had made her such an entertaining friend throughout high school. Yet something in Salina's voice made Jessica's skin prickle with goosebumps that had nothing to do with the chill.

  "Different how?" Jessica asked, pushing away from the tree.

  Salina shrugged, the movement causing her oversized black sweater to slip off one shoulder. "Charged. Like before a thunderstorm, but... sharper."

  "Atmospheric electricity due to the incoming meteor activity," Kevin translated, not looking up from his equipment. "Perfectly normal."

  "Says the guy who couldn't even feel the negative vibes coming off Mr. Wilson yesterday before he surprised us with that pop quiz," Salina retorted.

  "That wasn't supernatural intuition," Kevin argued. "That was him literally saying 'I hope you all studied chapter seven' with that evil twitch in his eye."

  Jessica laughed, the sound startling a nearby bird into flight. For a moment—just a breath—she felt like her old self again. Not Jessica the cheerleader, obsessed with maintaining her social standing and hitting every mark in Tiffany's increasingly complex routines. Just Jessica. The girl who had once spent an entire weekend helping Kevin and Salina build a "ghost detector" out of an old radio and Christmas lights. Too bad it never worked.

  "Hey, I brought the snacks," Salina said suddenly, dropping her backpack onto the leaf-strewn ground. "Protein bars and water. Nana forgot to buy the chips at the grocery shop.”

  Kevin looked up, smiling at her. "Where are the herbs you promised to bring?”

  Salina rolled her eyes. "Just shut up and take the food before I curse you." She tossed a protein bar at his head, which he caught with unexpected grace.

  "Thanks." His voice had softened, and she had to look away from the sincerity in his eyes.

  Salina handed Jessica a bar, but she shook her head. “Sorry, but they have chocolate.”

  “Oh, well.” Salina unwrapped one bar and took a slow bite from it. “Too bad they don’t have meat bars.”

  The three of them settled into a comfortable silence as Kevin continued setting up his equipment. Jessica perched on a fallen log, watching as he attached the camera to the telescope's eyepiece with meticulous care. Salina wandered the perimeter of the clearing, occasionally stopping to examine something only she could see in the underbrush.

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  "So this assignment," Jessica said after a while, breaking the quiet. "Is it just 'take pretty pictures of space' or what?"

  Kevin snorted. "If only. No, we have to document the Lyrids meteor shower and submit a full analysis. Angular velocity, trajectory patterns, comparative brightness—the works."

  "Fun Friday night," Salina commented, rejoining them with something clutched in her hand. She held it out to Jessica—a small, perfect acorn. "For good luck."

  Jessica rolled it between her fingers, the smooth surface cool against her skin. "Thanks. I think."

  "Don't knock it," Salina said, dropping beside her on the log. "Oak is sacred to like, half the pantheons. Protection, strength, endurance—all that good stuff."

  "Which would matter if we were, you know, doing anything other than looking at falling space rocks," Kevin pointed out.

  Jessica pocketed the acorn anyway. Old habits die hard.

  The wind picked up, sending a cascade of brittle leaves skittering across the clearing. The sound reminded Jessica of skeletal fingers dancing over piano keys—a thought she immediately banished. She'd spent too many nights in this forest with these two, concocting wild stories about ghosts and monsters lurking in the shadows. Stories that had seemed thrilling at thirteen but felt childish now at seventeen.

  "Remember when we camped out here trying to spot Bigfoot?" she asked, surprising herself with the sudden nostalgia.

  Kevin chuckled without looking up from his viewfinder. "You mean when Salina swore she saw glowing red eyes, and it turned out to be Mr. Peterson walking his dog with one of those LED collars?"

  "That dog was unnaturally large," Salina insisted, but her lips twitched with suppressed laughter. "And Mr. Peterson is hiding something. No one needs that many bird feeders."

  Jessica smiled, letting her gaze drift upward through the canopy of branches to the star-scattered sky beyond. "We were so convinced Moon Valley was secretly the supernatural capital of America."

  "Was?" Salina raised an eyebrow. "Last I checked, we fought a werewolf, a vampire, and other freaks from hell. Not to mention a crazy robot.”

  "And people still think they are just creepy nonsense," Jessica said. "Maybe the government is covering it up, just like the crash at Roswell, New Mexico.”

  Kevin made a choked sound that might have been a laugh. "Please don't get her started on the Roswell crash theory again. I still have nightmares about that PowerPoint presentation."

  "It was thorough research," Salina sniffed, though her eyes glinted with amusement in the growing darkness. “Ever since that alien blob attempted to eat us during detention, I had to take action. There's no telling what other threats might come from space."

  Jessica was about to respond when the surrounding forest seemed to...shift. There was no other word for it. A subtle change in the air pressure, a deepening of the shadows between the trees. The night birds that had been calling to one another fell silent as if holding their breath.

  She glanced at her friends, wondering if they felt it, too. Kevin remained hunched over his telescope, oblivious, but Salina had gone rigid beside her, head tilted as if listening for something just beyond human hearing.

  "Hey," Jessica whispered, not sure why she was keeping her voice low. "Do you—"

  "Shhh." Salina held up one black-nailed hand, eyes scanning the treeline. "Something's off."

  Kevin looked up, irritation flickering across his features. "Guys, I'm trying to calibrate here."

  "No, she's right," Jessica said, standing slowly. The skin at the back of her neck prickled with awareness. "Listen."

  Kevin paused, finally registering the unnatural silence that had fallen over the forest. No rustling leaves, no distant animal calls, not even the whisper of wind through the branches. Just... stillness.

  "Probably just a predator nearby," he said after a moment, but there was uncertainty in his voice. "Coyote or something. Animals go quiet when they sense danger."

  "A coyote doesn't make the air feel like this," Salina muttered.

  Jessica knew what she meant. The atmosphere had grown heavy, charged with an electricity that made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. It reminded her of the moment before Coach Harris blew the whistle at a competition—that suspended breath where anything seemed possible and everything hung in the balance.

  "Maybe we should head back," she suggested, hating the tremor in her voice. Jessica Tumblerlee, cheerleader extraordinaire, afraid of a brief silence in the woods? Tiffany would have a field day with that one.

  Kevin frowned, looking between his telescope and the sky. "But the meteor shower—I need these observations for—"

  A twig snapped somewhere beyond the clearing, the crack like a gunshot in the silence.

  All three teenagers froze.

  "That wasn't a coyote," Salina breathed.

  Jessica felt her heartbeat quicken, the rush of blood in her ears nearly drowning out Kevin's response.

  "Could be a deer. Or a raccoon. Or literally any of the hundred species that live in these woods." But he was already reaching for his backpack, movements betraying his unease.

  Another snap, closer this time. Then another. Something was moving toward them through the underbrush—something heavy enough to break branches underfoot.

  "We should go," Jessica said, no longer caring how the fear colored her words. Every instinct in her body screamed danger, a primal warning she couldn't ignore.

  Kevin nodded, hastily disassembling his telescope. "Help me with this," he whispered, gesturing to the tripod.

  Jessica and Salina moved to assist, their breathing shallow and quick. Jessica's fingers felt clumsy with adrenaline as she helped fold the tripod legs.

  The forest had changed around them, shadows deepening and stretching in ways that defied the steady moonlight. Trees that had seemed merely atmospheric before now loomed ominous and watchful, their gnarled branches reaching like clawed fingers.

  "Hurry," Salina urged, her voice barely audible.

  Kevin secured the telescope in its case with trembling hands. "Almost—"

  He never finished the sentence.

  Above them, the night sky rippled—there was no other word for it. Like a stone dropped into a still pond, the stars and darkness alike distorted in concentric rings. A pulsating energy swept through the clearing, raising goosebumps across Jessica's skin and setting her teeth on edge.

  "What the actual—" she began.

  Then the clouds came—if they could be called clouds. Swirling, luminescent masses poured across the sky like living smoke, their edges tinged with an unearthly blue-white glow. They moved with purpose, coalescing directly above the three stunned teenagers.

  "This isn't normal," Kevin breathed, scientific certainty crumbling in the face of the impossible. "This isn't—this can't be—"

  "Run," Salina said suddenly, grabbing Jessica's wrist with surprising strength. "We need to run. Now."

  But Jessica couldn't move. Her feet felt rooted to the forest floor as she stared upward, transfixed by the swirling anomaly above them. It was beautiful in a terrifying way—like looking into the heart of a storm and finding something looking back.

  The clouds pulsed, their glow intensifying with each throb. The surrounding air crackled with static electricity, making Jessica's long hair rise and float around her head like a blonde halo.

  "What's happening?" she managed, her voice sounding distant to her ears.

  "Nothing good," Kevin replied, abandoning his telescope entirely now. He grabbed her other arm. "Move!"

  The urgency in his voice finally broke through her trance. Jessica nodded, turning to follow her friends toward the path they'd entered. But before they could take two steps, a blinding beam of light shot down from the center of the cloud formation, engulfing all three of them in its brilliant glare.

  Jessica threw her arm across her eyes, the light searing even through closed eyelids. A high-pitched hum filled her ears, drowning out Kevin and Salina's shouts. Her body felt suddenly weightless, as if the earth itself had lost its grip on her.

  And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the light vanished. Leaving only darkness.