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and hung up.
    Mason came over late that night when I couldn’t sleep and tried to cheer me up with stories from his time in Africa. I laughed in the right places, but couldn’t help thinking about how Ang and Sophie would have the same kind of link I had with Mason. There was something so intimate about being in syndesmo with someone else. With Ang getting involved with Toby and now she’d have such a close connection with Sophie . . . would I get squeezed over to the sidelines of her life? The larger part of me knew that was irrational, but I couldn’t help the anxious little twinges every time I thought of my best friend.
    “You want to talk about Sophie at all?” Mason asked after I’d hardly reacted to his story about his dad losing his watch down one of the wells they’d built.
    “Not really,” I said. “Sorry I’m such a buzz kill right now.”
    “I don’t blame you. It sucks.”
    “I’m sorry about my general state of crankiness, too. I know I haven’t been much fun.”
    “Well, life hasn’t exactly been a Disney vacation lately,” Mason said. “But I understand that better than anyone.”
    I rested my head against the hollow just below his shoulder, his arm warm around my back, and his heartbeat thumping in my ear. My thoughts turned from Sophie to Mason. On the surface, he and I looked like any high school boyfriend and girlfriend, but still, something clouded the space between us. I remembered Mason’s angry words when I’d used the red influence on him. Maybe it was the Sophie thing? It occurred to me that we’d never officially acknowledged any boyfriend/girlfriend status. But I couldn’t think of a way to bring it up without sounding extremely lame.
    It seemed crazy that anything could keep us from being as close and in love as two people could be, like Toby and Ang. Mason and I had years of friendship, hundreds of moments of shared history. Heck, we had a psychic link . And still this space, or hesitation, or whatever it was kept us from falling completely into each other. Maybe it just took time to switch from friends to boyfriend and girlfriend.
    I yawned. Mason’s legs twitched a little, and I realized he’d fallen asleep. I let my eyelids close. After a moment, the world seemed to tilt, and my feet sank into sand. The cove.
    My heart in my throat, I turned in a half circle, vigilant for signs of the fog. Tiny ripples of water lapped against the beach with a sound as soft as a mother’s whispered, “shhh, shhh.” The dark circle of the fire pit stood empty. I doubted I’d ever be able to hang out around the bonfire again without seeing Bradley in the flames, black fog puffing from his lips as he begged me for help.
    Corinne, over here, Mason’s voice whispered through my mind.
    Straining to see in the dark, I scanned the beach.
    Where? I asked, just as a swatch of beautiful aqua light danced a slow twirl across the night sky. By the light of the twilight rainbow, I spotted Mason near a stand of Ponderosa pines about twenty feet to my right.
    As I began walking toward him, the ground beneath my feet changed and softened. Instead of scuffing over fine grains of sand, I pushed my legs through six inches of fluffy, cotton candy-like material. To my right, Tapestry Lake shimmered like gossamer. I looked harder and realized a body of water no longer occupied the space. Instead, the reservoir held an undulating sea of tiny threads that seemed to have their own faint source of illumination.
    “Mason?” I called, my voice cracking with apprehension. “What’s happening?”
    “I don’t know, but I think it’s okay. Just keep walking toward me.”
    With each step, the temperature dropped, and the air took on an almost solid quality, like cold metal against my skin. I drew a sharp breath, half expecting there’d be no air to pull in.
    I finally reached Mason and stopped before him, my teeth chattering so hard I doubted I could form coherent words.
    Is this a dream like last time?