The Secret Hour (11 page)

The moon was slipping behind the hills. In the distance ahead the trees were turning green. Jessica realized that it was like sunset, right on the edge of day and night, when the light moved from east to west across the planet. Moonset and normal time—and gravity—were rushing toward them.

“This is not good,” Jonathan said.

They soared helplessly farther into the sky.

Jessica thought furiously. They just needed something to pull them downward. If only they had something heavy….

Then she realized. They did have something heavy: her.

“Give me your chain,” she ordered.

“What?”

“Do it!” she yelled.

Jonathan unwound Obstructively from his fist. She snatched it from him. The stainless steel links looked strong enough. She held one end in her free hand. “Grab the other end. Tight.”

He grabbed it.

With her other hand, she let go of Jonathan.

“Jess, no!”

She fell, yanking the chain taut and pulling Jonathan downward after her.

“Jess!” His eyes were full of terror.

In a few seconds they were falling fast enough, and she yanked on the chain to bring him close to her again. They frantically grabbed for each other’s hands, and with the warmth of his flesh, weightlessness wrapped itself around Jessica again.

Momentum carried them down toward the ground quickly, but with the soft pressure of midnight gravity.

Jonathan wrapped his arms around her. Jessica realized she was shaking.

“I never dropped anyone before,” he said quietly. “And now I’ve dropped you twice in one night.”

The grass below them was turning green. They were at treetop level, and then their feet touched the ground lightly.

Normal weight settled onto them a few seconds later.

“Well, the third time’s a charm,” Jessica said. She was still shaking.

They stood there, looking at each other.

Finally they let go of each other’s hands.

“Ouch,” he said softly.

Jessica giggled, rubbing her hand.
“Ouch
is right.”

Jonathan laughed out loud. “You’ve got one hell of a grip, Jess. My hand feels it got slammed in a door. Talk about clingy.”

“Me?” she retorted, laughing too.
“My
hand feels like a truck ran over it.”

They were both still laughing when the police car pulled up.

The police car crunched onto the roadside, gravel popping out from under its tires as it slid to a stop.

Jonathan clutched Jessica’s hand and instinctively bent his knees to leap, seeing in his mind’s eye the precise jump that would take them safely over the car and onto the roof of the house across the street. He could see the proper angle of landing and how the next leap would take them over to the next block and out of sight. Away to freedom.

But his legs crumpled under him, and Jonathan remembered that he was heavy, leaden, earthbound. Flying time was over.

Jonathan’s exhausted leg muscles could barely push him back to standing again. He doubted he could even make a run for it. For the next few minutes his body would feel like stone as it slowly readjusted to normal weight. Even breathing took effort in these horrible moments after the secret hour ended.

A familiar claustrophobic feeling settled over him. He was trapped here in normal time. Trapped by the cops, by the Bixby curfew, by the suffocating, inescapable blanket that was gravity. Stuck like an insect drowning in glue.

All Jonathan could do was squeeze Jessica’s hand.

The police car’s doors opened, and a spotlight popped on, ripping into his eyes. He spun away, covering his face with his hands.

“Think you can hide, Martinez?” a deep voice called, laughing. “I recognize your pretty face.”

Jonathan’s heart sank, but he tried to make his answer sound brave. “Turn that thing off, St. Claire. We’re not going anywhere.”

He heard the crunch of boots, then felt Sheriff Clancy St. Claire’s hand fall onto his shoulder. It felt like a hairy lump of lead clamping itself onto Jonathan, pushing him down into the quicksand that the ground had become.

“Jonathan Martinez, you have never spoken truer words.”

“Hey, Clancy, where do you suppose Martinez got himself a girlfriend?” another voice called from the car.

“Hmm. Now, that is a puzzle.” Then St. Claire’s voice softened. “Man alive! What happened to you, girl?”

Jonathan managed to open his eyes, squinting against the glare. Jessica looked dazed and battered, her face deathly pale in the spotlight. The knees of her jeans were stained with grass and blood, her hair wild from an hour of flying.

“I fell down,” she said feebly.

“You fell down? Sure, you did.” Jonathan felt the sheriff’s hand tighten on his shoulder. “I don’t believe I know you, honey.”

“Jessica Day.”

“And how old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“So, Jessica Day, I don’t suppose your parents know where you are?”

The spotlight went dark, and Jonathan was blind for a moment in the sudden blackness. He heard Jessica’s breath catch as she tried to think of a way around the question. There was defeat in her voice when she finally answered.

“No. They think I’m home in bed.”

“Well, honey, that’s probably where you should be.”

They sat Jessica down in the back of the police car while St. Claire talked on the radio for a while, waiting for more cops to arrive. The police in Bixby always liked to do things in overwhelming numbers.

Jonathan wished he could talk to Jessica, even for a few moments. He wanted to explain that this was no big deal, really. The cops just took you home and woke your parents up. He’d been through the procedure seven times in the last two years, and it didn’t seem to get any worse than that. His dad would be grumpier than usual for a couple of days, but he’d told too many stories about his own wild days to stay angry at his son.

“I’ve never been arrested, Dad, only detained and transported to parental custody.” Those were the magic words. Dad couldn’t say the same.

Jonathan had a feeling, however, that Jessica had never taken a ride in a police car before. She sat in the backseat with her head in her hands, forlorn and unmoving, not looking over at him.

It was horrible, being trapped here on the ground, unable to whisk her away. They’d survived being chased by the three biggest darklings he’d ever seen, only to be caught by a doofus like St. Claire. He felt helpless. And worse, he felt guilty, as if he’d dropped Jessica again. Three times in one night.

It had been so wonderful before the darklings had appeared. He’d never had that much fun flying with anyone else. Jessica seemed to know instinctively how to jump, as if she were an acrobat herself, as if they were connected. The thought of them never flying together again felt like ice in his stomach. He doubted that Jessica would even want to talk to him after tonight.

He took a deep breath, telling himself to be calm. He would go to her tomorrow midnight and make sure she was all right.

Finally another pair of headlights crawled up. Two deputies drove Jessica home, and St. Claire pushed Jonathan into the back of the second car, squeezing in beside him.

The weight of the large man flattened the springs of the backseat. Jonathan felt puny next to him. The deputy up front started the engine, and the car jolted onto the road.

“You and me are going to have a talk, Jonathan.”

“Yeah, it’s been too long, St. Claire.”

The sheriff sighed, adjusting his bulk. He clapped and looked at Jonathan intently.

“Now, boy, it’s one thing when you go wandering around all night by yourself. I don’t care much if anything happens to you out here.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“But getting a little girl like that into trouble is serious business.”

Jonathan sighed with frustration. “I was just walking her home. We were okay until you showed up.”

The sheriff’s meaty hand clamped onto his shoulder again, pushing him into the seat like extra gravity. The claustrophobic feeling built inside Jonathan.

“She didn’t look fine, Jonathan.”

“That was an accident, like she told you.”

“Well, if she says any different, or her parents do, you are going to be one unhappy hombre, Martinez.”

Jonathan turned away and stared out the window. The first time he’d taken Jessica flying, and they’d wound up going home in police cars. He couldn’t imagine being unhappier than he already was.

His usual postmidnight hunger descended on him. Jonathan checked his jacket pockets, but the apples were gone. They must have fallen out during the chase. He decided to eat a whole jar of peanut butter when he got home.

The fence around Aerospace Oklahoma was traveling past the police car window, the coiled razor wire pulsing in the passing streetlights. If they’d only jumped a little farther or come down quicker, they would have landed on some other street. The police car would never have seen them.

He saw a street sign and started.

“Hey, which way are we going?”

St. Claire chuckled. “Glad you noticed, Jonathan. See, I already had my little chat with your father, and he and I have come to an agreement.”

A sickening feeling began to come over Jonathan. Breathing became harder, as if the pull of gravity were steadily increasing.

“You see, in the state of Oklahoma, if a parent feels unable to take charge of their delinquent child, they can request that the child remain in police custody.”

“What?” Jonathan cried. “But my dad—”

“Can’t seem to make it down here tonight. Previous engagement, I think.”

“For how long?”

“Don’t worry. It’s just until a judicial hearing officer listens to the particulars of the case. Your dad has to show up for that, and I’m sure he’ll take you home as soon as you’ve met the JHO and promised to be good.”

“Are you kidding?”

The man laughed sharply, the sound as loud as a dog’s bark in the cramped backseat. “Martinez, I never kid. It’s time you learned a little lesson about the perils of breaking curfew.”

The claustrophobic feeling began to overwhelm Jonathan. The car felt tiny and overheated, the barred partition between the front and back seats turning it into a cage. His stomach churned with nerves and hunger. “You mean I’m spending the night in jail?” he asked softly.

“The night? Not just one, Jonathan. You see, unlike your friendly sheriff’s department, judicial hearing officers don’t work on the weekend.”

“
What
?”

“Your butt is mine until Monday morning.”

The strange thing was, Jessica’s dad was a lot more upset than her mom.

Mom had answered the door in her unpacking clothes—she must have still been working on the kitchen. She had talked to the police quietly and thanked them for bringing her daughter home. Never raising her voice, she’d told Jessica to wait in the kitchen while she woke Dad up.

Dad had flipped.

He was still wide-eyed, his hair standing on end from frantically running his hands through it. Mom had repeatedly told him not to wake Beth up, but Jessica couldn’t imagine her little sister sleeping through his yelling. What freaked him out the most was the bruise on her face, which she could feel was just starting to show.

There were times, though, when it was good to have an engineer for a mother. Mom had quickly noticed that every bang and bump on Jessica was accompanied by a grass stain. Even the skinned patch on her bare elbow was marked by a circle of green. There was still grass in her hair.

She looked like a ten-year-old after a long summer day.

“So, you really did fall, didn’t you, sweetheart?”

Jessica nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak yet. She’d already been such a wimp when the police had come, bawling her eyes out in the back of the car. Jonathan had been totally calm.

She’d messed everything up. Being the world’s worst darkling magnet, not hanging on to Jonathan’s hand and falling from their jump, looking like this when the cops showed up.

“You look like you rolled down a hill, Jessica.”

“Yeah,” she managed. “Just playing.”

“Just
playing,”
Dad repeated loudly. He started up again every time she said anything, as if he couldn’t bear to hear her voice.

“Don.” Mom’s voice sometimes had an edge with Dad that she never used on Jessica or Beth. He didn’t say another word but sat there pulling on his hair.

Jessica took a breath, looking down at her knees. They hurt. The overall ache of her body was dividing up now into individual pains. One of the bumps would hurt for a while, then take a rest while another took over, like a bunch of smaller tag-team wrestlers whaling away on one of the big guys. Right now the bruise on her cheek was throbbing with her heartbeat, making her face feel lopsided and grotesque. She touched it gently.

Mom sprayed some ouchy stuff on a washcloth and rubbed it again.

“Jessica, tell me what happened. When did you leave?”

Jessica swallowed. The last time she’d seen her parents was right after dinner. “Jonathan came by about ten. I thought we were just going for a short walk.”

“But the police said you were over by Aerospace around midnight. People can’t walk more than a couple of miles an hour.”

Jessica sighed. There were other times when having an engineer for a mom could be a pain. Bixby wasn’t that big, but Mom worked on the other side of town. Jessica didn’t know exactly how many miles away.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, it was right after I went to bed.”

“That was way before ten, Jessica. Right after dinner,” her father said. “I thought it was weird how early you went to bed. Did you know he was coming over?”

“No. He just came by.”

“And you just went for a walk with him?”

“He’s in my physics class.”

“The police said he’s a year older than you,” Mom said.

“My
advanced
physics class.”

That shut her up. But Dad was going again.

“Why did you go to bed so early?”

“I was tired from working today.”

“Were you really at the museum all day? Or with him?”

“I was at the museum. He wasn’t there.”

He nodded. “Doing a whole day’s worth of homework in the first week of school? Can we
see
this homework?”

She swallowed. There was nothing to show them. She’d taken a few notes but had solemnly promised Rex never to show them to anyone. When had she started lying to her parents? When the world had stopped making sense, maybe.

“I was doing research.”

“On what?”

“On the possible connection between the tool-making techniques of Solutrean Stone Age culture in southern Spain and certain pre-Clovis spear points found in Cactus Hill, Virginia,” she blurted.

Dad’s mouth dropped open.

Jessica blinked, surprised at her own words. Apparently some of her crash diet of midnighter lore had managed to stick in her head. She remembered Rex showing her the long case of gradually evolving spear points and the gap in the middle where everything had changed at once.

“There was a technological leap in New World spear points around twelve thousand years ago,” she said with quiet focus. At least talking about this stuff didn’t make her want to cry. It made her feel in control. “An improved meridian groove and a sharper edge. Some people think that the advanced technique somehow came over from Europe.”

“It’s okay, honey. We believe you,” Mom said, patting her hand. “You’re sure Jonathan didn’t take you anywhere in a car?”

“I’m positive. We just wound up walking much farther than I thought we would. Really.”

“You know this boy’s been in trouble with the police before.”

Jessica shook her head. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, you do now. And you are never going to leave this house again without telling us, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And you’re not going
anywhere
except school for the next month,” Dad added.

Mom looked unhappy with this for a split second, but she nodded.

“I’d like to go to bed now,” Jessica said.

“Okay, sweetie.”

Mom led her back to her bedroom and kissed her good night.

“I’m just glad you’re okay. It’s dangerous out there, Jessica.”

“I know.”