To begin the metamorphosis, open the bag and place it on your bed. Being careful not to damage the fabric, climb inside before you go to sleep. Keep your head out!

After you have slept in the bag for three nights, you will receive further instructions.

Justin stared at the bag and the booklet for a long time. He was tempted to just stuff them back in the box and take the whole crazy thing back to the old man. Only, he wasn’t sure he could find the store again, even if he tried.

He rubbed the whisper-soft fabric between his fingers. It reminded him of his mother’s cheek.

He climbed inside the bag, feet down, head out, and slept. That night his dreams were sweeter than they had been in a long, long time. But when he woke he felt oddly restless.

Justin slept in the bag for the next two nights, just as the directions said. In his dreams—which grew more vivid and beautiful each night—he flew, soaring far away from his brutal uncle and the house where he had felt such pain and loss. He came to long for the night and the escape that he found in his dreams.

On the morning of the fourth day, Justin felt as if something must explode inside him, so deep was the restlessness that seized him. Eagerly, fearfully, he turned to the instruction booklet that had come with the silken sack. As he had half expected, he found new writing on the page after the last one he had read—a page that had been blank before.

Sometimes a leap of faith is all that’s needed.

Wondering what that was supposed to mean, he went to the bathroom to get ready for school.

His shoulders itched.

The next morning they were sore and swollen.

The morning after that, Justin Jones woke to find that he had wings. They were small. They were feeble. But they were definitely there.

Justin had two reactions. Part of him wanted to shout with joy. Another part of him, calmer, more cautious, was nearly sick with fear. He knew Uncle Rafe would not approve.

He put on a heavy shirt and was relieved to find that the weight of it pressed the wings to his back.

The next morning the wings were bigger, and the morning after that, bigger still. Justin wouldn’t be able to hide them from his uncle much longer.

The wings were not feathered, nor butterfly delicate, nor leathery like a bat’s. They were silky smooth, like the sack he slept in. To his frustration, they hung limp and useless. Late at night, when his uncle was asleep, Justin would flex them, in the desperate hope that they would stretch and fill, somehow find the strength to lift him, to carry him away from this place.