She must have been more tired than she’d realized. Sleep stole up on her so quietly that dreaming seemed to collide with consciousness. It was as if she blinked, and everything changed. Suddenly the world was blue, the low hum of the Oklahoma wind swallowed by silence.

She sat up, suddenly alert. The room was filled with the familiar blue light.

“Great,” she said softly. “This again.”

Tonight Jessica didn’t waste time trying to go back to sleep. If this was a dream, she was already asleep. And it was a dream. Probably.

Except for the matter of that soggy sweatshirt, of course.

She slipped out from under the covers and got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The motionless rain had been wonderful, so she might as well see what wonders her subconscious had cooked up this time.

Jessica looked around carefully. Everything was sharp and clear. She felt very calm, without any dreamy muzzy-headedness. She remembered from a psych class she’d taken last year that this was called “lucid dreaming.”

The light was exactly the same as in her dream the night before, a deep indigo that shone from every surface. There were no shadows, no dark corners. She peered into one of her moving boxes and could see everything inside it with equal and perfect clarity. Every object seemed to glow softly from within.

She looked out the window. There were no floating diamonds this time, just a quiet street, as still and flat as a painting.

“That’s boring,” she muttered.

Jessica crept to her door and opened it carefully. Something in this dream made her want to respect the deep silence; in the blue light the world seemed secretive and mysterious. A place to sneak through.

Halfway down the hall Beth’s door was ajar. Jess pushed it open tentatively. Her sister’s room was lit in the same deep blue as her own. It was wrapped in the same silence and flatness, though it was definitely Beth’s clothing strewn chaotically around the floor. Her sister had accomplished even less on the unpacking front than Jessica.

A shape filled the bed. The small form was tangled uncomfortably in the covers. Since the move Beth hadn’t been sleeping well, which kept her in a state of constant crankiness.

Jessica crossed to the bed and sat down gently, thinking about how little time she’d spent with Beth since they’d arrived in Bixby. Even in the months before the move her little sister’s tantrums had made her impossible to hang out with. Beth had fought the idea of leaving Chicago every step of the way, and everyone in the family had gotten into the habit of avoiding her when she was in a bad mood.

Maybe that was why this dream had led her here. Having to get used to Bixby herself, Jessica hadn’t thought much about her sister’s problems.