The Secret Hour (16 page)

Rex and Melissa were late.

Dess looked at her watch. Only three minutes past, but the timing for getting out to the snake pit was getting tight. Melissa’s rusty old heap could only get them so far. They’d have to walk the last half mile across the Bottom.

The three of them had gone out to the snake pit after school to set up her hardware. Dess wished now that they’d stayed there; coming home and waiting for all the parentals to go to sleep had been a dumb idea. Getting in trouble with Mom and Dad was nothing compared to getting caught by hungry darklings halfway across the Bottom.

But Rex had to make sure his crazy dad was in bed before he left. As if taking care of Melissa weren’t enough.

Dess counted to thirteen, forcing herself to relax. She reached into the guts of Ada Lovelace’s music box and pulled out a few gears, rearranging them and visualizing the resulting choreography. She gave the mechanical ballerina a windup and watched her dance, checking her predictions.

Ada jumped into motion, always ready to dance, but the new steps didn’t come out as expected. The final, stuttering lift of her left arm went forward instead of back. Dess shook her head. She could see it now: she’d turned one of the gears around the wrong way.

It was Rex and Melissa’s fault she was so anxious. If they’d been here on time, Rex would be the one getting all nervous, and she and Melissa could rag on him and be the calm ones. They’d be on their way to the snake pit, where Dess’s masterpiece in metal would draw oohs and aahs from all concerned as slithers burned themselves to cinders.

She looked out the window again. Still no crappy Ford cruising to a stop in front of the house two doors down, the usual spot for premidnight rendezvous.

Dess kicked her duffel bag, and it made a reassuring metal clank. All ready to go, filled with state-of-the-art antidarkling weaponry, backups in case the defenses around the snake pit failed. And she’d left a very special new toy on the roof for Jonathan to pick up on his way out. She’d done her bit.

So where were Rex and Melissa?

Dess itched to call, but that would be totally stupid. Melissa’s parents let her do whatever she wanted, but Rex’s dad was a major psycho. If Rex was creeping out his window this very moment, it would be a bad time for the phone to ring.

Besides, they’d
better
already be on their way.

Eleven-oh-six. In forty seconds it would be exactly forty thousand seconds after noon. More importantly, it would be a mere thirty-two hundred seconds until midnight. Dess could feel the blue time—full of darklings—rushing toward her at a thousand miles per hour.

Okay,
she thought.
A bit faster than that, really.
The earth’s circumference was 24,860 miles, and a day was twenty-four hours. So midnight would have to move at about 1,036 miles per hour to make it all the way around the earth once per day.

She’d seen it on the Discovery Channel, from cameras on the space shuttle: the terminator line, the edge of darkness that marked dawn or sunset, sweeping across the earth. True midnight must work the same way, an invisible edge cutting across the world, bringing the blue time.

Right now midnight would be about nine hundred miles east of here, in the next time zone. Of course, as far as any of them knew, there weren’t darklings or midnighters or blue time anywhere but Bixby. Rex had never figured that one out. Dess wondered if a little less lore and a little more math might solve the puzzle.

She looked out the window. Still no Rex and Melissa.

For a horrible moment she wondered if they had left her behind. Just taken off for the snake pit without her. The old feeling of isolation gripped her.

It was all Melissa the Mindcaster’s fault. She’d tracked Rex down when they were both eight years old. Dess was only a year younger, but it had taken Melissa another four years to find her. Melissa’s excuse was that Dess lived too close to the badlands and that back then all the darklings and slithers had confused her unformed talent.

That sounded like a load of crap to Dess. Melissa could pick Rex up from a mile away even in daylight; in the blue time another midnighter was like a flare on a dark horizon. She’d found Jonathan and Jessica within days after they’d arrived. But for the four years that Rex and Melissa had been alone together, all Dess had known was slithers, the lonely surety of math, and Ada Lovelace.

She reached into Ada’s box and switched the errant gear around, wound her up again. “Dance, my pretty.”

Dess was sure that her isolation in those early years had been purposeful. Melissa had played for time while she and Rex explored midnight together, grew up together. The scheme had worked. By the time Melissa finally “found” Dess, Rex and Melissa were so tight that nothing could ever come between them. And Melissa’s psychic hold on Rex made it impossible for him to even
think
about what Melissa had done.

Dess swallowed and stared out the window.

They wouldn’t dare leave her behind tonight. Even with the snake pit already set up to repel darklings, they needed her in case something went wrong. When it came to steel, only she could improvise. Without her this whole mission would be impossible.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Jonathan Martinez hadn’t been such a disappointment, flying off to his own little world instead of bringing the group together. Maybe Jessica would bring him around, once the two of them reappeared from the couple zone.

Dess shook her head. She had to stop thinking about this stuff before they got here. She didn’t want to give Melissa the satisfaction of knowing she felt this way.

As she always did to hide her thoughts, Dess let the numbers take over her brain. “
Ane, twa, thri, feower
…”

Seconds later something pinged in the back of her head: another mathematical mistake. “Two in one night,” she muttered.

Midnight wasn’t coming toward Bixby at 1,036 miles per hour. It would only move that fast at the equator, the one line of latitude that went around the earth’s true circumference, like a tape measure around the widest part of a fat man’s belly.

Dess could see it in her head now. The farther north you were, the slower midnight (or dawn, or whatever) swept across the earth. A mile from the North Pole the daylight would move as slowly as a sick turtle, taking a whole day to crawl in a small circle.

She looked out the window. Still no rusty Ford, and midnight 2,978 seconds away.

Now it was really bugging her: How fast was midnight moving toward Bixby? Why wasn’t her brain just telling her, giving her the answers like it always did?

She counted to thirteen, relaxing and letting the calculations move into the conscious part of her mind. Of course: to figure it out, she needed to know how far away from the equator Bixby was.

She turned from the empty window and pulled her social studies textbook off the shelf, opening it to the back. Flipping through it, she found a map of the midwestern United States. A postage stamp like Bixby wasn’t on it, of course, but she knew the town was just southwest of Tulsa.

This was easy: a latitude and a longitude line crossed right where Bixby would have been if anyone had bothered to put it on the map. Thirty-six degrees north and ninety-six west.

“Oh boy,” she said softly as the numbers rattled around in her head. All thoughts of midnight’s speed disappeared. This was serious.

Thirty-six was a multiple of twelve. Ninety-six was a multiple of twelve. The numerals all added up (three plus six plus nine plus six) to twenty-four,
another
multiple of twelve.

She closed the book and whacked herself on the head with it. Dess had played with the zip code, the population, the angles of the architecture, but it had never occurred to her to look up Bixby’s coordinates before.

Maybe it wasn’t just the mystical stones and untouched desert that made Bixby different; maybe it was the spot on the globe itself. Just like the thirteen-pointed stars everywhere, the clue had been hidden right out in the open, on every map in the world.

Dess’s heart beat faster as the numbers roiled through her. If she was right, this discovery might also answer the other trillion-dollar question: Were there other blue times in the world? Dess closed her eyes, picturing a globe in her mind. The seas and landmasses disappeared until only navigational lines remained, a glowing wire-frame sphere. When you switched around the directions, there would be seven more places with the same numbers as Bixby: thirty-six south by ninety-six west, thirty-six west by ninety-six north, etc. And probably more combinations with other numbers. Forty-eight by eighty-four followed the same pattern, as did twenty-four by twenty-four. Of course, most of these places would be in the middle of an ocean, but some of them were bound to be on land.

There might be another dozen Bixbys out there.

Or the whole thing might be a coincidence.

Dess bit her lip. There might be a way to check the theory.

She opened the social studies book again and stared at the map of Oklahoma, willing her eyes to become microscopes, to expand the map until she could see Bixby and the surrounding badlands. Where
exactly
did the two lines intersect?

Her dad could find out. As a rig foreman, he had detailed survey maps of the oil fields surrounding town, including the badlands.

Dess looked out the window. Nothing. Sitting here waiting was driving her insane. She had to find out where the center of midnight was. If her theory was right, she had a pretty good idea of where the lines would intersect.

She stood up and crept to her door, opening it a crack. The usual flicker of TV light was absent down the hall, the house silent and still. Dad was working tomorrow, like he did most weekends, so her parents were already in bed. Dess stepped out into the hall, careful not to put any weight on the long-memorized pattern of squeaky boards, moving slowly toward the living room. She left the door open behind her, listening with one ear for the sound of impatient tapping on her window.

This was really stupid, she realized. It could wait until tomorrow. Things were behind schedule enough without a parental confrontation.

But she had to know for sure.

Dad kept his maps in the wide flat file that doubled as a coffee table in the living room. Dess knelt before it and pulled out the top drawer, a yard across. Just folders, pens, and crap in this one. The next one down opened onto maps on thin paper that tried to curl up as she pulled out the drawer, bearing black fingerprints and giving off the familiar smell of Oklahoma crude.

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.

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.

“So, you don’t sound like you’re from Bixby.”

“I just moved here from Chicago.”

“Chicago? Wow. Real skyscrapers. Oklahoma must seem completely weird to you.”

“It’s different, yeah. Except for the wind, which is pretty much
just
like Chicago.”

“You’re really cold, aren’t you? You want my coat?”

Steve was wearing a down jacket. It looked incredibly warm.

Jessica shook her head. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” She checked her watch. “Actually, I’ve got to go.”

Disappointment flashed in Steve’s eyes. “You’re leaving the party already? Something I said?”

“No, not at all. I was just going to take a walk. Over to the snake pit.”

Steve nodded. “For midnight, huh? You know where it is?”

“Sort of. I mean, I have a map.”

“I’ll take you.”

Jessica bit her lip. She’d never thought of bringing a non-midnighter along. But what would the problem be? Steve would be safe no matter what happened at the snake pit. He’d be frozen for the whole thing. And in the featureless darkness, the idea of walking away from the fire alone wasn’t a pleasant one. At least with Steve along she wouldn’t get lost.

He was half smiling, waiting anxiously for an answer. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The cold clutched her body from the moment they left the fire, creeping into the borrowed jacket like chilly fingers. Jessica’s legs, protected only by tights, were freezing, and her hands grew colder and colder no matter how deep she thrust them into her pockets.

“So who told you about the snake pit?” Steve asked.

“Um, everyone. Constanza was talking about it one day, and it sounded, you know, interesting.”

“And you were going alone? Wow, you’re one brave girl.”

“I have my moments of stupidity,” Jessica agreed. She could hear her teeth chattering.

“You
are
cold, Jessica.” Steve put his arm around her. The down jacket around her shoulders actually helped, even though it didn’t really feel right to be this close to a guy who wasn’t Jonathan.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

As they walked across the desert, Jessica wondered how Steve knew where he was going. There were no landmarks that she could see except the Milky Way, which ran in the direction they were walking. That meant that they were headed either east or west. She’d have to check the compass to be sure.

“You sure you know where we’re going?”

“Oh, yeah. Born and bred in Broken Arrow, I’m not very proud to say.”

“Okay.”

She looked at her watch. Five minutes.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get there by midnight,” Steve said. “Right on time for the evil spirit show.”

She smiled ruefully. “Wouldn’t want to miss that.”

There was a flicker of light at the corner of her eye. It was the bonfire, off to their right. She wondered why it wasn’t behind them anymore.

Jessica looked up into the sky. Now the Milky Way was spread out sideways across their path. They had turned either north or south.

“Steve? How far is the snake pit?”

“Oh, maybe another ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes? But it’s almost midnight.” A shiver traveled through Jessica, more chilling than the cold. “My friend said it was really close to the fire pit.”

“Are you cold? We can stop off in my car if you want.”

“Your car?”

“It’s right up here,” Steve said, pulling her closer to him. “We could warm up.”

She pulled away. “But I have to get there by midnight!”

The row of parked cars was visible now in front of them. He’d led her in a circle.

“Listen, Jessica,” he said. “The snake pit’s no big deal, all right? It’s just this old sinkhole full of rainwater and snakes. That’s Broken Arrow’s idea of magic, I’m afraid.” He moved closer. “I can show you something much more interesting.”

Jessica whirled around and walked quickly back toward the fire, thrusting a hand into her pocket for the map and flashlight. Her fingers fumbled, made numb and clumsy by the cold.

“Jessica…” She heard his footsteps following her.

She ignored him, unfolding the map. It showed the snake pit almost due east of the fire pit. Jessica pointed the flashlight at Dess’s compass and turned away from the fire, heading east.

She heard Steve’s footsteps behind her but ignored them, hoping he would lose interest and go away.

Jessica shoved everything back into her pockets, quickening her stride. Dess had said she couldn’t miss the snake pit. Supposedly the sinkhole stood out on the desert as a long dark patch.

Steve’s hand grabbed her shoulder. “Hey, wait up, Jessica. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that big a deal.”

She yanked herself away. “Go mess with someone else.”

“I wasn’t…” He stopped walking, and his voice faded. “You’ll get lost out there, Jessica. The snakes’ll get you.”

“Better them than you,” she said to herself.

“And the evil spirits too, Jessica,” Steve called. “It’s almost midnight. Do you want to be out here all a—”

His voice was silenced as suddenly as a radio being switched off. The light changed, the familiar blue sweeping across the desert like dawn. The air became still and silent. It was instantly warmer, but Jessica shivered.

Midnight had come.

She started to run.