She heard a sound outside and froze, holding her breath.
The car passed by, rattling on the unpaved road and off into the distance.
Dess rifled through the maps, peering at the coordinates in the streetlight glow angling through the front window. The maps were incredibly detailed, showing individual houses and oil rigs. She realized that all of Bixby was contained within a single degree of latitude and longitude, which was subdivided into smaller units called “minutes,” about a mile across. Her fingers raced to find the exact point of intersection.
The maps weren’t in any particular order. “Thanks, Dad,” she whispered to herself.
A sound came from her parents’ bedroom, and Dess closed her eyes, heart pounding. Dad hated anyone touching his stuff. But no light went on, and silence slowly settled across the house again.
Finally she found it.
Dess pulled the map out slowly, letting it curl up into a scroll, and carried it with quick, silent steps back to her room.
After a glance out the window at the still empty street, she unrolled the map on her floor, pinning its corners down with four pieces of steel. Her shaking fingers followed the dotted lines to their intersection.
“I knew it,” she said.
Thirty-six north by ninety-six west was right in the middle of Rustle’s Bottom.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. The snake pit really was darkling central. And if a certain longitude and latitude was all it took, there were probably other places in the world where the blue time came at midnight.
A horn sounded outside her window.
“Don’t honk at me!” she hissed, grabbing her duffel bag.
Morons. Dess was keeping this to herself for the moment. She could check it out on her own. If nothing else, she’d make Rex wish he listened to her more.
Before Dess pulled herself out the window, she glanced at the clock: 11:24.
They weren’t going to make it in time.
24
11:25 P.M.
RUSTLE’S BOTTOM
The party was just getting started.
Rustle’s Bottom was a broad, flat plain, stretching as far as Jessica could see. It seemed blank and featureless all the way to the mountains, a range of low peaks dimly silhouetted against the dark horizon. It was completely barren, except for the cars parked on the hard-packed dirt. According to Dess, it was the bed of a lake that had dried up hundreds of years ago. Jessica kicked at the dry ground. There was no hint that it had ever been anything but cold, windy desert.
She gathered herself up in the jacket, which wasn’t nearly as warm as her own back at Constanza’s house. Out here there was nothing to block the wind. The reason why Oklahoma was so windy was its flatness: the air just kept building up speed as it moved across the plain, like a lead-footed driver alone on a long, straight highway. It blew without any change in speed or direction, cutting through the unlined jacket. At least her feet were warm. Constanza had tried to lend her shoes with heels, but she had stuck with a pair of old, reliable boots, which she hoped were snakeproof.
Pulling the coat around her, Jessica looked up, and her eyes widened with awe. The sky in Chicago had never been filled with so many stars. This far from the lights of town, there seemed to be millions of them. For the first time Jessica could see how the Milky Way had gotten its name. It was a winding river of white that ran from east to west (she’d checked her compass as they’d gotten out of the car), full of bright stars and mushy swirls of light.
“Brrr. It’s practically winter already,” Constanza said. “Come on. Let’s go get warm.”
A couple of miles back they had driven off the road and right across the lake bed, which was like driving across a huge parking lot. Constanza had navigated toward a flickering light, finally pulling up to where a dozen or so cars and pickups were already parked in a ragged line. A hundred feet away was a group of people clustered around a bonfire. The shallow pit was ringed with stones that showed the marks of many previous fires. Someone had dumped in a pile of kindling, a few tree stumps, and what looked like some broken furniture. The fire was still sputtering to life, popping and hissing as new wood dried out.
Jessica followed Constanza over toward the fire.
A big spark popped and flew into the air and was carried away by the wind. The crowd laughed as the flaming projectile bounced crazily across the desert before burning itself out a few seconds later. Music played from a small CD player sitting on the dirt.
“Isn’t this excellent?” Constanza said.
“Yeah.” The night was beautiful, Jessica had to admit, and dramatic. She wished that a bonfire and a desert sky were the only dramas she would be facing tonight.
“Hey, Constanza.” A boy detached himself from the crowd.
“Hey, Rick. How’s it going? This is my friend Jess.”
“Hey, Jill.”
“Hi, Rick. It’s Jessica, actually.”
“Sure. Come on and grab some fire.”
They huddled up around the fire pit. Jessica pulled her hands from her pockets to warm them. Rick offered them a plastic cup of beer each, and Jessica said no thanks. More cars arrived, and their passengers dragged over more wood for the fire. Broken chairs, dried-out tree limbs, a bale of old newspapers that ignited a few pages at a time and lifted up into the sky, carried by the hot air. Someone brought over a stop sign with a clump of concrete clinging to its base, and everyone laughed and applauded when it went on the fire and blackened. Jessica hoped that nobody was going to have a car accident because of this party. Constanza was having fun, and it was a beautiful night, but Jessica felt too young to be here, as if someone was going to ask for ID and throw her out any second.
She looked at her watch: 11:45. In five minutes it would be time to take her walk. Dess had said the snake pit was only a few minutes away, but the idea of being late was too scary to contemplate. She wanted to be safely inside the snake pit before midnight fell.
Jessica rubbed her hands nervously, not looking forward to leaving the warmth of the fire, to being alone out on the desert. She shivered and realized that although the front half of her was roasting, her back was freezing. Jessica turned around and faced out toward the desert. The fire at her back felt like a fur coat slipping on, and she sighed.
“You’re pretty quiet.”
Jess blinked. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she made out the shape of a boy in front of her.
“I guess I am. I don’t really know that many people here.”
“You’re a friend of Liz and Constanza’s?”
“Yeah. Jessica.”
“Hey, Jessica. My name’s Steve.”
Jessica could see the boy’s face now, lit by the flickering fire. He looked younger than a lot of the guys here.
She smiled. “So, Steve, you’re from Broken Arrow?”
“Yeah. Born here. You’re standing in downtown Broken Arrow, actually. As you can see, it’s a city that never sleeps. Kind of like Bixby but without the skyscrapers.”
Jessica laughed. “A burgeoning metropolis.”
“Yeah, except I don’t know what ‘burgeoning’ means.”
“Oh. It means, um…” She shrugged. “Really flat and windy?”
Steve nodded. “Broken Arrow definitely burgeons, then.”
Now Jessica’s face was getting cold. “I think I’m done on this side,” she said, making a space for him next to her as she turned around. She checked her watch again. Two minutes. She held out her hands, trying to store up the fire’s warmth for her walk.