SOLVED. YA modern fantasy book about a redhead whose hair gets redder when powers awaken. [s]

[mallizard]

Hi! I'm trying to look for an old book I read in high school/possibly middle school, so middle to late 2000's. It's got at least two books in the series that I remember.

I know it's a modern story about a girl living a normal life at the start. She's a redhead and she has two best friends, one male and one female. I'm pretty sure the dude is into her but I can't remember how hard it touched on the topic.

She has this.. weird awakening after finding something in a forest that gives her magic powers. Her red hair turns redder, like from a natural red to a bright, looks-dyed red, and she spends the entire story with her and her two friends. At one point I think they fall in a river? And fend off a demon bear? All while defending themselves from.. some magical thing that I don't know. At the end of the first book I know that the dad specifically comments about her hair color change, and that it looks like her mother's now, who had passed away in a supposed car accident when she was a child.

SPOILERS FOR THE NEXT BIT?
In the second book it gets a lot weirder, because I know that there is time travel shenanigans. They're in some strange cave or tunnel and.. she walks through it but walks backwards in time? So that she can save her friends that had fallen down a pit or something.

And then she reaches this strange place, I think it's either a big tree but hollowed out or maybe some place in the clouds? Where she learns that her and her mother are some special thing and there's a strange powder that gives her a lot of power but foreshadows that it's very dangerous so she shouldn't take too much. But when she learns her friends are in danger or is getting ready to fight this evil thing, she takes all the powder at once and basically becomes god for a hot minute. But unfortunately all the things she does doesn't help her save her friend, the boy, who dies at the end of the second book.

I've tried to find this thing for years now but I can't seem to, and it's been really grating on me because it's a story I remember liking a lot. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what it might be?

[Mai]

Searching online I came across this blog post:
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/quest...
The search sounds similar to yours! The search was solved and the book was Alosha by Christopher Pike. It's a trilogy. The reviews for the second book, The Shaktra, mention that one of the main characters dies. The first book was published in 2004.

[mallizard]

Thank you so much I'm so happy o)-( Years of searching is finally over-- for this book, at least