“Say again?”
“Midnight,” he repeated slowly. “It’s 12 a.m. Since the world changed color, this has all happened in a single moment.”
“A single moment…”
“Time stops for us at midnight.”
Jessica peered through the car windshield at the frozen woman at the wheel. The look of concentration on her face, the hands tight on the wheel… She did look as if she were driving but trapped in a frozen instant.
Dess spoke up next, her voice without its usual nasty edge. “There aren’t really twenty-four hours in the day, Jessica. There are twenty-five. But one of them is rolled up too tight to see. For most people it flashes by in an instant. But we can see it, live in it.”
“And ‘we’ includes ‘me’?” Jessica said quietly.
“When were you born?” Rex asked.
“Huh? You mean this is because I’m a Leo?”
“Not your birthday, what time of day?”
Jessica pondered the question, remembering how many times Mom and Dad had told this story.
“My mom went into labor in the afternoon, but I wasn’t born until thirty-something hours later. Not until late the next night.”
Rex nodded. “Midnight, to be exact.”
“Midnight?”
“Sure. One out of every 43,200 people is born within one second of midnight,” Dess said, smiling happily. “Of course, we’re not exactly sure how close you have to get. And we’re talking real midnight here.”
“Yeah. My birth certificate says 1 a.m.,” Melissa said glumly. “Lousy daylight savings time.”
Rex looked up at the moon, his eyes catching its nonlight with that inhuman flicker. “In a lot of cultures people believe that those born at the stroke of midnight can see ghosts.”
Jessica nodded. That actually sounded familiar. One of those pirate books she’d read for English last year—Kidnapped? or Treasure Island? — had been about that. Some kid was supposed to find treasure by seeing the ghosts of dead men buried with the gold.
“The real story is a bit more complicated,” Rex continued.
“I’ll say,” Jessica said. “If that panther was a ghost, we seriously need new Halloween decorations.”
“Midnighters don’t see ghosts, Jessica,” Rex continued. “What we see is a whole secret hour, the blue time, that zooms right past everyone else.”
“Midnighters,” Jessica repeated.
“That’s the word for us. Midnight is ours alone. We can walk around while everything else in the whole world is frozen.”
“Not everything,” Jessica said.
“True,” Rex admitted. “The darklings and slithers, and some other stuff, live in the blue time. For them the blue time is like normal daylight and vice versa. They can’t get into the other twenty-four hours, like most humans can’t get into the twenty-fifth.”
“Only us midnighters get to live in both,” Dess said happily.
“Yay,” Jess said. “I’m thrilled.”
“Come on, haven’t you ever wished for an extra hour in the day?” Rex asked.
“Not an extra totally weird hour! Not an extra hour where everything tries to kill me! No, I don’t think I ever wished for that.”
“Wow, you are so daylight,” Melissa said.
“I’ve got to admit, things have been bad for you,” Rex said, using his Mr. Calm voice again. “But it’s usually not like this. Normally the slithers only watch us, and darklings don’t care much about us at all. They’re like wild animals. They can be dangerous if you do something stupid, but they don’t go out of their way to mess with humans. A midnighter being attacked for no reason is new to me.”
“It’s pretty much new to me too!” Jessica said. “And I didn’t do anything stupid, all right? One of those… slithers led me out here on purpose. Then the big cat thing tried to kill me. Twice.”
“Yeah, we should try to figure this out,” Rex said mildly, as if Jessica had been assigned a locker at school that wouldn’t open. She guessed that none of those darklings had ever come after him.
“I knew you were different,” Melissa said, “even before psychokitty tried to eat you.” She closed her eyes, tipping back her head as if smelling the wind. “There’s something funny about the way you taste.”
Melissa’s face went blank, almost as lifeless as Beth or the woman driving the car. Jessica rolled her eyes. Melissa was calling her different?
“But right now we should get you home,” Rex said, glancing up at the sky. “There’s only about five minutes left.”
Jessica started to speak, a million questions on her tongue. But she just sighed. Nothing was getting explained. Everything these people said confused her more.
“Fine.” As she said the word, Jessica realized how good home sounded. The panther must still be around somewhere.
Rex and Melissa pushed their bikes, walking next to Jessica. Dess rode in slow circles around them, like a bored kid forced to travel too slowly.
“Tomorrow we’ll have time to tell you more,” Rex said. “Meet us at the Clovis Museum? Noon?”
“Um.” Jessica thought about her plans to unpack tomorrow. To finally get her life under control. Of course, it didn’t look as if it were going to be that simple anymore. “Yeah, sure. Where’s that?”
“It’s close to the main library. Just follow Division.” Rex pointed toward downtown. “Meet us downstairs.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t worry, Jessica. We’ll figure out what happened tonight. We’ll make sure you’re safe here.”
Jess looked into Rex’s eyes, seeing the concern there. He seemed confident that he could figure out whatever had gone wrong. Or maybe he was just trying to make her feel better. It was strange. Even though nothing he said made sense, Rex managed to sound as if he knew what he was talking about. Here in the blue time he stood straighter and the thick glasses didn’t hide his calm, serious eyes. The guy seemed like much less of a loser than he did in the daylight.
“So, you don’t really need those glasses, do you? It’s an act, like Clark Kent?”
“Afraid not. In daylight I’m blind as a bat. But here in the blue time I can see perfectly. Better than perfectly.”
“That must be nice.”
“Yeah. It’s great. And I can see more than…” He paused. “We’ll explain it all tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
Jessica looked at the three of them. Dess circling happily on her bike, Rex’s eyes clear and confident, Melissa silent, but without her usual headphones and pained expression. They all seemed to actually like this midnight time.
Of course, why wouldn’t they? It didn’t seem like their lives were going so great during the “daylight” hours. Here there was no one to push them around or notice how weird they were. For this one hour a day the whole world was their private clubhouse.
And now she was in the club. Great.
They took Jessica right to her door. She realized that the light was slowly changing. The dark moon had almost set, now mostly hidden behind the houses across the street.
“So how are you guys getting home?” she asked.
“The usual way. During regular time,” Rex said, mounting his bike and reaching into his shirt pocket. He pulled out his glasses.
Jessica looked around, her eyes searching for any sign of the panther. “And you’re sure this blue thing is almost over?”
“Happens every night, as regular as sundown,” Rex said.
Jessica realized that they must be miles from home. “What about the curfew? I mean, everyone’s going to wake back up, right? What if the police see you?”
Melissa rolled her eyes. “We’ve been dealing with curfew for years. Don’t worry about us.”