The Secret Hour (9 page)

“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.

She remembered the raindrops that first night, how her fingertips had released them from midnight’s hold. Would the leaves also fall at her touch? She wanted to run through them, knocking handfuls out of the air. Back in Chicago she had never been able to resist snapping off icicles, breaking winter’s spell.

But among the black leaves Jessica could still imagine the darkling that had attacked her. Its cruel form might be lurking anywhere among the frozen shapes outside. She shuddered and turned away from the window.

Her bedroom still seemed alien. It looked wan in the blue light, like a fading memory. Motionless dust hung in the air.

“Midnight is beautiful,” she said. “But cold, too.”

Jonathan frowned. “It never feels cold to me. Or hot, either. It’s more like a perfect summer night.”

Jessica shook her head. “I didn’t mean that kind of cold.”

“Oh, I see,” Jonathan said. “Yeah. It feels kind of empty sometimes. Like we’re the last people on earth.”

“Thanks. That makes me feel much better.”

“You shouldn’t be scared of midnight, Jessica.”

“I’m only scared of being eaten.”

“That was just bad luck.”

“But Rex said—”

“Don’t worry about what Rex says,” Jonathan interrupted. “He’s way too paranoid. He thinks no one should explore the blue time until they know all ten thousand years of midnighter lore. That’s like reading a whole VCR manual just to watch a movie. Which I’ve seen Rex actually do, by the way.”

“You should’ve seen the darkling that attacked me,” Jessica said.

“I’ve seen darklings. Lots of them.”

“But—”

Jonathan disappeared from the window, and Jessica’s breath caught short. He had slipped out of sight so quickly, so gracefully, rolling backward like a scuba diver off a boat. A moment later his head and shoulders reappeared.

He extended his hand through the window. “Come on. Let me unscare you.”

Jessica hesitated. She looked at the row of thirteen thumbtacks that Dess had told her to line up under the window. As Jessica had stuck them into the window frames and door of her bedroom, she’d felt incredibly stupid.
Thumbtacks
were supposed to protect her from the forces of evil?

But the kind of object didn’t matter, Dess had explained, only the number.

Jonathan saw where she was looking. “Let me guess. You’re protected by the mighty power of paper clips?”

“Uh, no. Mighty power of thumbtacks, actually.” Jessica felt herself starting to blush and hoped it wouldn’t show in the blue light.

Jonathan nodded. “Dess does know some pretty cool stuff. But I know a few tricks too. You’ll be safe with me, I promise.”

He was smiling again. Jessica decided that she liked Jonathan’s smile.

And she realized that he was totally unafraid. She considered his offer. He had lived here in Bixby for more than two years and had managed to survive, even to enjoy himself. Surely he must understand midnight as well as Rex or Dess.

And before he had appeared, she’d been afraid just sitting here in her room. Now she felt secure. She was probably safer with an experienced midnighter—or whatever he called himself—than on her own.

Jessica telescoped Jurisprudence down to its shortest length, put it into her pocket, then pulled on her sneakers.

“Okay, unscare me.”

She put one foot up on the windowsill and reached for Jonathan’s hand.

As his palm pressed against hers, Jessica’s breath caught short. She felt suddenly light-headed…
light-bodied,
as if her whole bedroom had turned into an elevator and headed for the basement.

“What—,” she started.

Jonathan didn’t answer, just pulled Jessica gently out the window. She floated up and out easily, as if she were full of helium. Her feet landed softly, bouncing a little before settling softly onto the ground.

“What’s going on?” she finished.

“Midnight gravity,” Jonathan said.

“Uh, this is new,” she said. “How come I never—”

Jonathan let go of her hand, and weight returned. Her sneakers pushed into the soft dirt.

Jessica reached for Jonathan’s hand again. When she took it, the buoyant feeling returned.

“You’re
making this happen?” she said.

Jonathan nodded. “Rex does lore. Dess does numbers. Melissa does… her stuff.” He faced the house across the street. “And I do this.”

He jumped. Jessica was pulled after him, like a kid’s balloon tied to a bike. But she didn’t feel as if she were being dragged. It hardly seemed as if they were moving at all. The world dropped softly away, the ground rolling beneath them. The road passed by below, frozen leaves brushing against them, the neighbor’s house sliding closer like some big, stately ship pulling into dock.

“You…
fly?
” Jessica managed.

They settled on the neighbor’s roof, still featherlight. She could see the whole motionless street now, two parallel rows of roofs stretching away in either direction. But strangely there was no sense of height, no fear of falling. It was as if her body didn’t believe in gravity anymore.

Jessica found a leaf clutched in her free hand. She must have grabbed it out of the air as they’d passed through the frozen swirl of leaves.

“It’s okay,” Jonathan said. “I’ve got you.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But… who’s got
you
?” The soles of Jonathan’s shoes barely brushed the slate roof, as if he were a hot-air balloon anxious to get off the ground.

In response he took the leaf from her hand. He held it with two fingers and released it. It didn’t fall, just stayed where Jonathan had placed it in the air.

Jessica reached out her hand. When her fingertips brushed the leaf, it fell softly to the roof, then skittered down the steep angle. Just as it had the raindrops, her touch released it. But Jonathan’s was different.

“Gravity stops when time does,” Jonathan said. “Time has to pass for something to fall.”

“I guess so.”

“Remember the intro chapter to our physics book? Gravity is just a warp in space-time.”

Jessica sighed. Another advanced class she was already behind in.

“So,” Jonathan continued, “I guess I’m a little bit more out of time than the rest of you. Midnight gravity doesn’t have a real hold on me. I weigh something but not much.”

Jessica tried to get her head around his words. She supposed that if raindrops could hover in the air, it made sense that a person could too.
Why should any of the midnighters fall?
she wondered.

“So you can fly.”

“Not Superman fly,” Jonathan said. “But I can jump a long way and fall any dista—
hey
!”

Without thinking, Jessica had let go of his hand. Normal weight hit her all at once, as if someone had suddenly dropped a necklace of bricks around her head. The house reared up under her, and she collapsed onto its instantly treacherous slope. She was no longer made of feathers but solid bone and flesh. A sudden terror of heights struck her like a punch in the stomach.

Her hands reached out instinctively as she slid downward, fingernails grasping at the slate roof tiles. She half rolled and half skidded toward the edge of the roof.

“Jonathan!”

The edge loomed up toward her. One foot went off into space. The toe of her other sneaker caught in the rain gutter, and she halted for a second. But she had only a tenuous grasp on the roof tiles. Her fingers, her foot, everything was slipping….

Then gravity let go again.

Jessica felt Jonathan’s hands gently grasping both shoulders. The two of them floated down to the ground together.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

Her heart still pounded, but she wasn’t scared anymore. The featherlight feeling had returned so quickly, like a wave of relief when some horrible test was over.

Their feet settled onto the ground.

“Are you okay?” Jonathan said. “I should have warned you.”

“It’s all right,” she said, shaking her head. “I should have realized. I was just thinking that it’s too bad we can’t all fly.”

“No, just me. Although when you turned up, I was kind of hoping.”

She looked at Jonathan. His eyes were still wide with alarm. And Jessica could also see his disappointment that she had fallen, that she wasn’t like him.

“Yeah, I was kind of hoping too, I guess.” She took his hand firmly. “But take me up again. Please?”

“You’re not scared?”

“Kind of,” she admitted. “So unscare me.”

They flew.

It was true, Jonathan wasn’t Superman. Flying was hard work. Jessica found that they went much higher if she jumped with him, pushing off as hard as she could. The timing was tricky—if one of them pushed too soon and too hard, they would fly apart and be jerked to a halt at arm’s length, then spin helplessly around each other, laughing until the ground caught them again. But they got better with every jump, coordinating their leaps to soar higher and higher.

She gripped Jonathan’s hand hard, nervous and excited, terrified of darklings and thrilled to be in the sky.

Flying was beautiful. The pale blue streets glinted like rivers beneath them as they crashed through high, wind-borne columns of autumn leaves. There were birds up here, too, their wings outstretched in arrested flight and angled to catch the frozen winds. The dark moon glowered over them, almost risen all the way, but it didn’t seem to crowd the sky as oppressively as it had last night. From up here Jessica could see the band of stars that stretched around the horizon, bright pinpoints whose white light hadn’t been leached blue by the moon.

The layout of Bixby was still unfamiliar to her, but now that Jessica could see the town from above, laid out like a map, it started to make sense. From the highest jumps the houses and trees looked small and perfect, a city of doll-houses. Jonathan must see the world completely differently from everyone else, she realized.

They drew closer to the edge of town, where the houses thinned and wilderness encroached on the city. It was easier going out here, not having to negotiate houses, stores, and tree-lined streets. Soon Jessica could see all the way out to where low, scrubby trees dotted the rough, low hills.

The badlands.

As they got closer to the desert, her eyes nervously scanned the ground for any movement, imagining the skulking shapes of darklings under every tree. But everything below seemed motionless, tiny and insignificant as they soared over it. She realized that they were moving much more quickly than the panther could even at full speed, taking leaps a hundred times as great as the giant cat’s.

Jonathan really was faster than the bullies.

He took her to one of the big water towers outside of town. They alighted on it, the city on one side, the black badlands on the other. It was flat on top, with a low guardrail around the edge.

“Okay, hand-rest time,” he said.

They let go of each other. Jessica was prepared this time, bending her knees as normal weight settled back onto her.

“Ow,” she said, rubbing her fingers. She realized that every muscle in her hand was sore. Jonathan stretched his own hand with a pained expression. “Oops, sorry. Didn’t mean to be all clingy.”

He laughed. “Better clingy than splatty.”

“Yeah, totally.” She stepped carefully to the edge of the tower, keeping one hand on the rail. As she looked down, her stomach did a back flip. “Okay, fear of heights still in working order.”

“Good,” Jonathan said. “I worry that one day I’ll forget that it’s not midnight and jump off a roof or something. Or I’ll forget what time it is and still be flying around when gravity comes back.”

Jessica turned toward him, put one hand on his shoulder, and the lightness returned. “Please don’t.”

She blushed and let go. Her voice had sounded so serious.

He smiled. “I won’t, Jessica. Really.”

“Call me Jess.”

“Sure. Jess.” His smile grew broader.

“Thanks for taking me flying.”

“You’re welcome.”

Jessica turned away shyly.

She heard a crunch. Jonathan was eating an apple.