The benefit of crashing in the hotel room while everyone else went cross-country skiing all day is that I’m well rested at midnight. Everyone else, not so much. Yawns, yawns sound everywhere when we venture out into the cold, dark snowfield to watch for the northern lights. Far beyond us, in a haze of dark are the snow-filled woods where Josh and I plan to snowshoe in the dusk tomorrow, if my body is up for it.

“Well, this is certainly bracing,” Mom says, shivering, after we’ve huddled on the red Adirondack chairs around an unlit fire pit for all of five minutes.

The innkeeper joins us outside to make sure “we” have everything we need, but the way he’s studying Auntie Ruth, I know who he’s concerned about. Who wouldn’t be? Her silver parka is going to inspire Persephone’s entire Wynnter wardrobe.

“Oh, wow. Would you look at the northern lights. So awesome,” Roz says flatly as we all stare at the cloud-dense sky. There is not a trace of the aurora borealis, not even a hint of pale honeydew green on the black canvas above.

“Sometimes they’re there. Sometimes not,” the innkeeper responds.

“How long is this going to take anyway?” Roz’s whine shades the contours of every consonant and vowel in her question. How should I answer? In a minute, two hours, twenty days, an eternity, unknown. “Whose idea was this?”

“Mine,” I tell her, and when she aims a death glare at me, I can’t help but add, “And we’re doing this again tomorrow night.”

“Again?” Roz demands. “Why?”

“Clouds tonight,” Josh says, tilting his head back.

“Then why are we here now?” Roz asks, but meets my eyes as our parents answer in tandem: “Just in case.” She sighs. “I so did not win the family lottery.”

Oh, but little sister, you have. When we get home, I plan to convince our parents to let Roz go on her seventeenth-birthday expedition with Auntie Ruth. That will be this big sister’s parting gift before I leave for Reed College. (Application submitted—and surprise of surprises, my campus interviewer loved my three-page researched and footnoted proposal to create my own gastrodiplomacy program with Le Cordon Bleu. Afterward, Ms. Kavoussi gave me a high five.)

Meanwhile, the innkeeper sidles even closer to my aunt and asks her, “Hot rum toddy?” After Auntie Ruth nods eagerly, let’s just say a grown man has never run so fast in snow. (See also: gastrodiplomacy.) And let’s just say I smile, watching Auntie Ruth absently rub her ringless finger, feeling the wedding band that is tucked away safe, somewhere.

We sit outside for so long, without so much as a delicate lightening of the sky, that everyone else, even Mom and Dad, dozes, neglecting their sentry duty of scanning the horizon for any possible sign of danger. As they made sure we all knew (repeatedly), just a few days ago, a cougar had snatched a pet cat off a porch nearby. The only sound now is the soft wind, the drift of snow from the mounds around us. I press my lava pendant lightly to my chest. This, right here, right now, is all I need.

In this peace, my eyelids droop, even though I napped earlier, but I refuse to fall asleep now, not when Josh takes my mittened hand and stands. We walk a few feet from everyone else.

Cocooned in our embrace, I whisper up to him, “So.”

“Story time?” he asks. I can feel Josh’s dimpled smile before I see it.

“I had an idea for my next gastrodiplomatic effort.” The clouds shift, clearing an amphitheater overhead, sparkling with stars. “A moonlight bake sale at the last tailgate at school, featuring mooncakes and information about photosensitivity. And we can sell Persephone there. I think it’ll make it easier for me to go back to school if I’m the one who tells everyone about my condition.”

“Or I could just impale the guy who was a jerk to you in the next issue.”

“I’d rather educate him.”

Josh squeezes my hand: My gastrodiplomat.

I squeeze back: I know.

So many divergent roads have led us to this very moment: a trip to Africa that may or may not have triggered my allergy to the sun, a condition that added depth and meaning to a comic, a comic that’s given me a place to use my voice for others, and a boy who is my semicolon.

“There it is!” exclaims Auntie Ruth, jabbing her finger due north.

The innkeeper, I notice from my peripheral vision, is hurrying back (to her) with a steaming carafe and an enormous camera with the largest lens I’ve ever seen. He takes that opportunity to stand (body-warmingly) close to my aunt as he hastily sets up a tripod.

I squint and see nothing but stark black. I blink, then stare even harder at the sky. Even more nothing.

“This is it?” I say to Josh. All that’s visible is the most unimpressive smudge mark on the dark sky. Seriously, this is what people ooh and aah over? This is what people fly to Iceland and trek thousands of miles to Norway to observe? This?

Josh starts shoulder-laughing, trying hard (and failing) to squelch his chuckles. I do, too. I don’t want to hurt the innkeeper’s feelings because he’s (excitedly) adjusting his camera lens here, fiddling with the tripod there.

“Look here,” the innkeeper says, beckoning all skeptics to his camera.

I trudge over the snow to his elaborate setup. He taps his finger on the screen on the back of the camera. The camera catches what I have missed completely with my naked eye: a green-blue light splashes across the dark sky. It is glorious.

“Sometimes you need a little help,” says the innkeeper.

Sometimes? I glance at my parents, who have force-fed heaping piles of help on me, Roz, Auntie Ruth, their clients. They had good reasons, namely, Love.

Roz gasps. “No way!”

In the blink of an eye, some atmospheric conditions have changed without us even sensing it. Now, as I look skyward, the universe premieres a ballet of light for us. The aurora dances in the night sky, light that is lovely only because the sky is so dark and deep. I gasp. Darkness is the prerequisite condition. My heart expands as the wild green light dances free and bright.

With his arms around me, Josh sings in my ear softly, “Take my love, take my land / Take me where I cannot stand …”

My voice rises to meet his: “I don’t care, I’m still free.”

Together we end, our voices all twangy strong: “You can’t take the sky from me.”

“You guys are really and truly—” Roz starts to say, but then stops the way I have, hundreds, thousands of times before.

“Weird, I know,” I fill in the censored blank for her.

“No,” she says, “perfect for each other.”

The shelter of the night may conceal my grin, but it can’t contain it. Good thing, because I don’t think I’m hiding my happiness from anyone, least of all Josh, who squeezes my hand. I stare up at the northern lights, stare until I can almost believe that my eyes will never miss another miracle that bursts around me. Stare until I know with absolute certainty that I will remember every contour of this radiant moment when my eyelids finally close.

In one blink, I am lit with possibility.

Starlight, moonbeam, sunray, I glow.