I felt a little better after my walk. After Logan left, I spent the evening looking at my hair and paying attention to when it would change.

After a while, I started to notice a correlation between the changes and how I was feeling at that moment. After about an hour and a half of watching try not to laugh and rage compilations, and even some really sad animal videos, I realized I was onto something. By dinner I had a short list of colors and what emotion each one represented. I also started keeping a journal, in case I was feeling a more rare emotion and discovered a new color.

At dinner, I tried telling my mom about the whole mood-hair color thing, but for some reason, the words just wouldn't come out. I guess I kind of felt resentful due to the fact that she knew what was happening, but wouldn't tell me what was going on and why it was even going on in the first place.

I learned to keep my emotions much more under wraps, and figured out I could keep the electric green color if I controlled my emotions and didn't let them get out of hand. If I felt a particularly strong emotion, though, and didn't try to suppress it, my hair would change. I had to be especially careful around Jameson, because I knew that if I wasn't, my hair would probably turn red from anger and frustration.

It was a drizzly morning a couple of days later, and as I was sitting by my window, staring at the grey sky and the raindrops slowly trailing down the glass, I sighed and rubbed my tired eyes. I wasn't getting much sleep anymore. I was just stressed from school, life, and now my "freak mutations", as Jameson so graciously put it. I would just sit in my room and stare out of my window for hours at a time. I wasn't eating, I wasn't drinking, and I didn't want to get out of bed most mornings.

I heard a light tapping on my door. I stayed silent.

"Ean, baby? Can I come in?" my mother asked through the door.

I didn't say anything, just continued to look out the window.

I heard her sigh before coming into my room. I kept my gaze glued to the murky sky.

"Ean you-" There was a brief moment of silence. "You're numb."

I looked at her, my brow furrowing. "What?"

"Your hair's grey. Means you're numb/depressed," she said, coming and sitting beside me on my bed.

I stared at her. "You know about that?" She nodded. "How??"

She sighed and looked down. "Look, there's something I need to tell you. These traits, these changes..... They're from your father."

My eyes widened. "What?"

"Your dad had a lot of similar traits." She smiled at me, cupping my face in her hand. "You remind me of him more and more every day." I noticed tears welling up in her eyes.

I looked down, my brow furrowing as thoughts swirled like a whirlwind in my head.

My dad? Mom never talked about him. My father was shrouded in mystery, and there weren't any pictures or things lying around the house that depicted him, or, as far as I was aware, belonged to him. I had never met him, but came to the conclusion that he obviously didn't care about us if he just up and left my mom when she was pregnant.

But here she was, talking about him almost longingly. It didn't make any sense.

She drew her hand away quickly, seeming to remember something, and looked down.

"Mom, why did Dad leave us?"

She looked up at me, brow furrowed and tears glittering at the corners of her eyes. "What? Leave us? No, baby. You're dad didn-"

Her phone started to ring. She looked at the caller ID.

"It's work, I have to take this. We'll talk later okay?"

Before I could protest, she pressed a kiss to my forehead, answered the call, and left the room. A few minutes later I heard her Harley pull out of the garage and drive off. This left me by myself, once again.

What my mom said left me with more questions than answers. I felt like I was spiraling into madness.

I got up off of my bed, determined. There were bound to be answers somewhere in this house, right?

Well, if that was the case, I was going to find them.

The first place I looked was my mom's room. I looked under her bed, in the closet, and even the drawers in her night stand and dresser. My search came up empty. I walked through the halls, looking at the pictures that lined them. I noticed one was a little cockeyed. Reaching to fix it, my hand brushed across something behind the frame. I quickly removed the picture to find a switch of some sort. I curiously flipped it.

I heard a low humming sound coming from behind me, and when I spun around, a panel in the other wall had moved aside to reveal a staircase that led to god-knew-where. There was a soft glow coming from the bottom of the stairs. I craned my neck, trying to see. Unfortunately, it was impossible to see anything from my current vantage point. Taking a deep breath, I made my way down the dark stairway, holding onto the handrail for dear life.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, what I saw was honestly a little overwhelming and hypnotic. Soft yellow fairy lights were strung all over the ceiling, revealing an array of black and white-striped objects. There was an oddly-shaped couch that reminded me somewhat of a porcupine, black and white curtains draped from the ceiling near the end of the room, and chairs with spikes along the edges. There were photos strung across the entirety of the room. I noticed that in almost every single one, they depicted a man. But that's all I could tell about him, because in all the photos, his face was cropped, scribbled, or blurred out. The ones that hadn't been tampered with were simply too blurry to distinguish any defining features.

Looking over at the other wall, there were a few glass cases with clothing items and accessories in them. The first one was a short, black and white-striped dress with neon green fringe and a tapered skirt. It was covered in glitter and sequins that sparkled in the light. I ran my fingertip across the glass, a layer of dust sticking to me as I did so. Now that I looked around, everything was covered in a thick coating of dust. No one had been down here in a long time. That must've been why I saw a timer for the fairy lights; no one was manually turning them on and off.

I looked at the next case, and it was the biggest of the three protective enclosures. It held an elegant, black, spider web-themed wedding dress.

Had that been my mother's wedding dress?

I turned my attention to the last case, which was small and on a stand. It held a pendant in the shape of a beetle, with the legs studded with tiny, sparkling diamonds, and the body made up of a glowing emerald. I stared at it in curiosity.

What was all of this stuff? And why was it all in a basement I never knew we had?

I turned and walked toward the back of the room where the striped curtains were draped from the ceiling. I moved them aside and stepped into the other part of the room.

On the rear wall was a large cork board, cluttered with tons of photos of what I presumed to be the same man from the other photos, red yarn, and thumbtacks. There were also maps of a place I had never seen before.

I stared at it, my brow furrowing in confusion.

Is my mom trying to find someone?

I heard Logan calling to me from upstairs, breaking me out of my musings.

"I'm down here!" I shouted, still staring at the cork board on the wall.

"Woah, dude, what is this place?" I heard him ask as he came up behind me.

"I don't know, Logan. I don't know."

"Woah! The ground!!"

All of a sudden, the ground beneath my feet grew hot, and as I looked down while quickly backing away, a complex pattern of fire was forming what looked to be a pentagram on the floor.

Suddenly, the glow grew blinding before the circle became a black hole, trying to swallow me. I screamed as I lost my footing. I groped at the floor, trying to stop myself from sliding toward the hole.

"LOGAN!!" I screamed, terrified.

He quickly crawled toward me and grabbed my hand, trying to pull me back.

"HOLD ON! I GOT YOU!"

"DON'T LET GO!"

"I WON'T LET GO!"

Logan's knees were slipping. We were drawing close to the hole.

"LOGAN!!"

"HOLD ON, EAN, WE CAN MAKE IT! WE CAN-"

His words were drowned out by our screams as we were sucked into the fiery void.