She glanced out the window at the motionless world but shivered and looked away. The thought of something looking back in at her was too frightening.
She picked her feet up off the floor, lay back, and stared at the ceiling.
Jessica sighed. This could get very boring.
Not much later, she heard the noise.
It was a very soft thud, barely audible even in the absolute silence. Jessica immediately thought of panther paws and jumped off her bed.
She picked up Jurisprudence and jingled Fossilization and Deliciousness to check that they were still in her pocket. From the end of the bed Jessica couldn’t see very much of the street, but she was too scared to get any closer to the windows. She maneuvered around her bedroom, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was outside.
A dark shape moved on the front walk. Jessica backed out of its view and gripped the car antenna tighter. Rex and Dess had promised she would be safe here. They had said she knew enough to defend herself.
What if they were wrong?
Her back was pressed against the door now. She imagined the great cat squeezing through the front door and down the halls of the house, stealing up behind her. It seemed incredibly unlikely that the thirteen thumbtacks stuck into the wood of her door would be a match for its powerful muscles.
No more sound came from outside. Was whatever it was still out there?
She had to take a look.
Jessica sank to her hands and knees and crept along the floor against the wall until she was just below the window. She sat there, listening as hard as she could. The total silence seemed to roar quietly, like the sound of the ocean trapped in a shell.
She inched her head up to peer over the windowsill.
A face looked back at her.
Jessica jumped away, swinging Jurisprudence in an arc before her so that it cracked against the glass. She scrambled backward until she bumped against her bed. The window began to slide open.
“It’s okay, Jessica. It’s just me,” a voice called through the gap.
Her car-radio antenna thrust out before her like a sword, Jessica blinked, forcing her brain to put together the familiar voice and the face she had glimpsed. After a few seconds of fear, recognition came, along with a wave of relief and surprise. It was Jonathan.
Jonathan perched at the window, evidently a bit reluctant to come inside. He seemed to think that Jessica was going to take another swing at him. Jurisprudence was still in her grip, passed nervously from hand to hand.
Jonathan sat with one leg folded under him, his other knee drawn up under his chin. He certainly didn’t seem very scary now.
He hadn’t said much since arriving at the window. He seemed to be waiting for her to calm down. Unlike in the lunchroom at school, Jonathan’s eyes were open wide. He didn’t look sleepy at all. Maybe he was photophobic in the daylight too.
She was glad he didn’t hide his eyes behind dark glasses, though. They were very pretty eyes.
He watched as Jessica slowly gained control of her breathing, his gaze intent but silent.
“I didn’t know you were a midnighter,” she finally managed.
“They didn’t tell you?” He laughed. “That figures.”
“They know about you?”
“Sure. Since the day I moved here.”
Jessica shook her head in disbelief. Six hours of midnighter lore and neither Rex, Dess, nor Melissa had bothered to mention the fifth midnighter in town.
“Wait a second,” Jess said as something occurred to her. “Are you the only one they didn’t tell me about? How many of you are there?”
Jonathan grinned. “Just one of me,” he said.
She stared back at him, still too overwhelmed to make sense of anything.
“No, there aren’t any others,” he said, more seriously. “I’m the only person they didn’t mention.”
“What, don’t they like you?”
He shrugged. “I’m not in the club, you know? I mean, Rex is okay, I guess, and Dess is actually pretty cool.” He paused, obviously not wanting to get started on Melissa. “But they take the whole thing way too seriously.”
“Too seriously?”
“Yeah. They act like they’re on a mission from the Midnighters World Council or something.”
“There’s a Midnighters World Council?” Jessica asked.
He laughed. “No, but I bet Rex wishes there was. He thinks this whole midnight thing has some deep and mysterious meaning.”
Jessica blinked. It had never occurred to her to doubt that there were deep and mysterious forces at work. It all seemed pretty deep and mysterious to her.
“So what do you think, Jonathan?”
“I think we’re lucky to have a whole world to ourselves. To play in, explore, do whatever we want. Why mess it up with some big purpose?”
Jessica nodded. Since the darkling had attacked her, the secret hour had become a crisis, a deadly challenge. But that first, beautiful dream had been something else entirely. Something… easy.
“For Rex,” Jonathan continued, “the blue time is like some big textbook, and he’s always studying for the final exam. For me, it’s recess.”
She gave him a sour look. “There are some pretty big bullies on the playground.”
He shrugged. “I’m faster than the bullies. Always have been.”
Jessica wondered how that could be true. But Jonathan seemed perfectly at ease. He dangled his foot outside the window, never checking over his shoulder, unafraid.
“You guys all seem to enjoy the secret hour,” she said sadly. “You all think it’s exciting, for one reason or another. For me, it’s just been a nightmare. This thing—these things—tried to kill me last night.”
“That’s what Dess told me.”
“She told you about me?”
“Yeah, back when Rex first spotted you. And this morning she gave me your address. What, did you think I used superpowers to find you?”
“The phone book, actually.”
He smiled. “You’re not in information yet. I checked. But Melissa got the psychic 411 on you last night, so Dess called me.”
“Dess gave you my address, but she didn’t tell me about you?”
“She would have, but not in front of Rex. He and I have this… personality conflict. Namely, I think he should get a new one. But Dess prefers to stay out of it.”
“Oh.” Jessica leaned back against the wall. “This gets more complicated every minute.”
“Yeah, it’s awful that you ran into a darkling so soon,” Jonathan said. “But last night was weird all over town. It was probably just darkling New Year’s Eve or something. Was that your first time out?”
She started to nod, then shook her head. She’d almost forgotten the first night. With Rex and Dess cramming her head with midnighter lore and history all day, she’d only thought about the dangers of the blue time, not the splendor of the frozen storm.
“It must be nice,” she said quietly, “being happy to be a midnighter.”
“Quit calling me that,” he softly chided. “I’m not a ‘midnighter.’ That’s Rex’s word.”
Jessica frowned. “It seems pretty appropriate to me. Kind of makes the point and sounds better than ‘twelve o’clocker.’ ”
“I guess it does,” Jonathan admitted with a smile. “And I do like the word midnight. Since I moved to Bixby, anyway.”
Jessica took a breath and dared to look past him to the blue-lit street. Even before the secret hour had come, it had been a beautiful night, gusty and dramatic. She could see falling autumn leaves trailing from the giant oak trees like flocks of dark and frozen birds. Their brilliant reds and yellows had turned black in the blue light.