Chapter 1—The Crater

May 24, Oregon

Did a UFO land here and blast off again? It's possible, Jesse thought, as he walked around the hollowed-out crater with his two best friends, Nikki and Chaz.

The weather was gloomy with blotches of mist floating around like vapor ghosts. Ranger, a full-grown German shepherd, was with them. The dog belonged to all three friends and rotated homes, spending two weeks at each house. Whoever Ranger lived with at the time became the dog's alpha master. Today that was Jesse.

The four figures glided through the vapors, beams from their headlamps piercing the hazy gloom. Their necks craned up and around as they hunted for a hidden cave that might contain rare gems worth money—money for computer games like Starchitect, which they could use to build their own model of a solar system.

Remnants of the mining years surrounded the friends in the crater—worn-out tools, a rusty bulldozer bucket, and large and small piles of dirt. Rocks of all sizes lay around as if Hercules had stopped in the middle of a bocce ball game. Swirls of scrawny scrub brush danced in the air with the wind.

The mist parted for a second, and Jesse pointed a long, thin arm. "See that hole up there? I want to check it out." The dark opening was thirty feet up the cliff wall and set back on a grassy plateau. "If it's worth exploring, I'll throw down the rope and you two can come up."

Chaz twisted his baseball cap around backward and stared up. "Are you sure you want to freehand? It's a long way up."

"It is high, but it's where the opals might be, in a remote cave that never got mined," Jesse said. Chaz looked at Nikki, and she nodded her head in agreement. The three moved closer to the imposing cliff wall with Ranger close behind.

Jesse arrived first and pulled off his slicker, leaving him in a black T-shirt with "Astronomy Rocks" printed on it.

"Too much fabric for climbing," he said, stowing the jacket in his backpack and pushing his blond hair out of his eyes. Although it was chilly, he wore a pair of olive green cargo shorts with several torn pockets hanging loose. A pair of black retro sunglasses sat on his forehead, ready to be pulled down if the sun came out, which it occasionally did in Oregon. The glasses had belonged to Jesse's mom, who had died in a car crash three years earlier.

Jesse dropped his pack and pulled his lanky body up the steep slope by grabbing rocks and branches. Good footholds kept appearing, one after the other, for the tips of his thick-toed hiking shoes. The higher he climbed, the stronger the wind blew, making him wish he had tied on a bandana to keep his long, unruly hair from blinding him. Now both hands were busy keeping him from sliding down.

Chaz yelled up the slope, "You're about a third of the way up, doin' good." Chaz yanked off his hat and rubbed his black curly hair. Wiry coils stuck out like an electrical experiment gone wrong. He wore the only clothes he had donned since Earth Day—faded baggy jeans with holes in the knees, a worn-out leather vest his mom kept throwing into the Goodwill pile, and black Puma Voltaics with holes in them. "They're perfectly broken in now," he told his frowning mother. His parents were divorced, and his mom worked all the time, so didn't often see what he had on. In fact, she didn't know about a lot of what he did. Short for his age, Chaz was afraid he'd never grow tall, but what he lacked in height he made up for in pure spunk.

Ranger whined as Jesse climbed higher. Nikki hugged the dog's big body. "He'll be back," she said.

Nikki believed she was in charge of their little trio. The guys considered her to be the smartest of the three but thought she was headstrong and not always friendly. But they had grown up together since babyhood, so the guys were used to her high-and-mighty ways. Though thin as a rail, Nikki stood a few inches taller than Jesse. A red bandana kept her strawberry-blonde hair out of her eyes and away from the long, double-helix earrings that hung from her lobes. The bottom five inches of her hair were dyed crimson, and small red glasses perched on a freckled nose that crinkled whenever she was thinking. It crinkled now as she and Chaz squinted up at Jesse, impatient to begin their climb.

Jesse leaned on the lone thick branch growing out of the rock cliff and looked down at Ranger, who had begun to bark wildly.

Chaz reached down and rubbed the dog's head. "Ranger, you're a wild man. What's the matter, buddy?" Ranger stood on his hind legs and pushed away Chaz's arm while continuing to bark furiously.

"Ranger," Jesse commanded from above. "Quiet!" Then a slight movement caught his eye, and he twisted around to see something indistinct—a cluster of mottled light—hovering over the crater. He climbed a few feet up. The hazy sphere followed him. He moved down a few steps and it moved down with him.

"Whoa!" Nikki yelled. "Are you guys seeing what I'm seeing?" She covered her ears as Ranger's decibels increased to painful levels. "Ranger sees something too."

The light field moved closer to Jesse. Feeling spooked, he scrambled to the bottom of the cliff, creating a mini avalanche in his wake. With a throat full of dust, he grabbed Ranger's collar and issued another command: "Quiet! Sit, Ranger." Whipping his inhaler from a chest pocket, he took a couple of fast puffs. Ranger sat back on thick brown haunches and stopped barking, but still seemed anxious and kept whining.

"Is that a ghost?" Chaz whispered, not daring to move.

All eyes were riveted on the hazy globe of light as it grew in size and brightness and floated down. The kids stepped back.

"Something's forming inside the light," Chaz said. He couldn't pull his eyes away. "I think I see wings."

Two large wings took form on the back of the human-like figure materializing before them. Luminous robes billowed around the form and beneath the wings.

Jesse stared at the apparition. "It does look like an angel."

"No way." Nikki scowled and wiped her eyes, which were watering from the brightness.

"Huh, look at that," Chaz said as he approached the apparition.

"I wouldn't," Nikki said. But Chaz pushed his hand into the light field and it went right through.

"Feel anything?" Jesse whispered, as if speaking louder would make the light disappear.

"Nothing solid, but it felt weird, like intense buzzing around my hand. It really does look like an angel, doesn't it?" Chaz backed up a little more.

The three lapsed into silent, even reverent, observation, but were soon interrupted by a voice inside each of their heads.

Dear children, do not be afraid. You are right. I am an angel and a friend to Earth. I need your help for an undertaking of great consequence to your planet. Will you hear my story?

Stunned to silence, no one spoke. Then Nikki stepped toward the angel. "What do you want from us?" Just then the sky turned black, the wind whipped up a series of strong gusts, and everyone covered their eyes to avoid the flying dirt and dead brushwood.