Scott Westerfeld

by The Secret Hour

  “No,” Jessica sobbed, pounding the hood of the car.

  She rolled over to face the panther, exhausted, defeated.

  The beast was only a few strides away. It paused, growling, and the two long fangs glinted in the dark moonlight. Jessica knew that she was dead meat.

  Then something happened.

  A tiny flying saucer came screaming past Jessica, headed toward the panther. The object left a wake of blue sparks and electrified air. Jessica felt her hair stand on end, as if lightning had struck close by. The panther’s eyes flashed, wide and panicked, reflecting gold instead of indigo.

  The projectile burst into a blue flame that wrapped itself around the giant cat. The creature spun around and leapt away, the fire clinging to its fur. It bounded farther down the street, howling a menagerie of pain—lions’ roars and stricken birds, cats being tortured. The beast passed from sight around a corner, its cries finally fading into a hideous, tormented laugh like that of a wounded hyena.

  “Wow,” came a familiar voice, “Hypochondriac killed the cat.” The nonsense words were followed by a giggle.

  Jessica turned to face the voice, blinking away tears and disbelief. A few yards away, somehow invading her dream, was Dess.

  “Hey, Jess,” she called. “How’s it going?”

  Jessica opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

  Dess was astride a rickety old bike, one foot resting on the pavement, the other on a pedal. She wore a leather jacket over her usual black dress and was flipping what looked like a coin in the air.

  Jessica heard a hissing noise from below. A few dark squiggles were wriggling their way toward Dess.

  “Snakes,” she managed to croak.

  “Slithers, actually,” Dess said, and flipped the coin into the dark shapes.

  It pinged against the ground among them, raising a single bright blue spark, and, with a chorus of thin screeching noises, the snakes scuttled back under the car.

  Two more bikes rolled into view.

  They were ridden by Dess’s friends from the cafeteria. The boy with the thick glasses pulled up first, only he wasn’t wearing glasses now. His long coat billowed around him as he halted, and he was breathing hard. Then the other girl who’d been at Dess’s table, whom Jessica had never met, pulled up.

  Jessica looked at the three of them blankly. This dream was getting weirder and weirder.

  “You’re welcome,” said Dess.

  “Be quiet,” the boy said breathlessly. “Are you okay?”

  It took a moment for Jessica to realize that the question was directed at her. She blinked again and nodded dumbly. Her feet hurt and she was out of breath, but she was okay. Physically, anyway.

  “Sure, I’m fine. I guess.”

  “Don’t worry about psychokitty; it’s gone for the night,” Dess said, looking after the departed panther. She turned to the boy. “What was it, Rex?”

  “Some kind of darkling,” he said.

  “Well, duh,” Dess said.

  Both of them looked at the other girl. She shook her head, rubbing her eyes with one hand. “It tasted very old, maybe even from before the Split.”

  Rex whistled. “That’s old, all right. It must be insane by now.”

  The girl nodded. “A few fries short of a Happy Meal. But still crafty.”

  Dess dropped her bike to the ground and walked over to where the cat had stood. “Whatever it was, it turned out to be no match for the mighty power of Hypochondriac.”

  She knelt and plucked a dark disk of metal from the ground.

  “Ouch!” Dess passed it from hand to hand, grinning. “Still sparky.”

  It looked like an old hubcap, blackened by fire. Was that the dazzling flying saucer of a minute ago?

  Jessica shook her head, dazed but slowly calming down. She was breathing evenly now. Everything was moving into more familiar dream territory: total craziness.

  Rex rested his bike on the street and walked to the side of the car. Jessica shrank from him a little, and he put up both palms.

  “It’s okay,” he said softly, “but you should probably get off the car. It looks like it’s going pretty fast.”

  “Come on,” Dess said, looking up at the sky. “It’s like a quarter till.”

  “It’s still not a good habit, Dess,” he said. “Especially when you’re new.”

  He offered his hand. Jessica looked down suspiciously at the ground, but there were no snakes apparent. She saw the same shiny ankle bracelets that Dess wore looped around Rex’s boots. The other girl had them too, rings of metal piled up around her black sneakers.

  She looked at her own bare feet.

  “Don’t worry, the slithers are gone.”

  “They departed somewhat overzealously,” Dess said, giggling. Her eyes were wide, as if the encounter with the panther had been some exciting fairground ride.

  Jessica ignored Rex’s hand and slid off the car hood toward the front. She pushed off from the bumper and took a few quick steps away, peering into the shadows beneath it. But the snakes did seem to have disappeared.

  “I wouldn’t stand in front of it either,” Rex suggested mildly. He looked at the tires. “It’s probably going about fifty miles an hour.”

  Jessica followed his gaze and saw that the tires weren’t actually round. They were oval, compressed out of shape and tipped slightly forward. They looked how wheels in motion were drawn in cartoons. But the car was absolutely still. The driver still wore the exact same expression, oblivious to the strange events going on around her.

  Rex pointed up at the dark moon. “And when that bad boy goes down, it’ll jump back into regular motion. No hurry, like Dess said, but good to keep in mind.”

  Something about Rex’s calm voice annoyed Jessica. Possibly the fact that nothing he said made any sense whatsoever.

  She looked up at the moon. It was still moving across the sky quickly, almost half set.

  A gasp came from the other three. She dropped her gaze to them. They stared back at her.

  “What is it?” Jessica asked sharply. She’d had enough of their weirdness.

  The girl whose name she didn’t know took a step closer to Jess, peering closely at her face with an appalled expression.

  “Your eyes are wrong,” the girl said.

  10

  12:00 A.M.

  MIDNIGHTERS

  “My eyes are what?”

  “They’re…” The girl took a step closer, peering into Jessica’s eyes. Jessica raised a hand to her own face, and the girl flinched as if afraid of being touched, then looked up at the sky with a puzzled expression.

  As her eyes met the moon, Jessica cried out. They flashed a deep indigo, just like the panther’s.

  Jessica took a step back from the three of them. Those reflecting eyes belonged to cats or raccoons, owls or foxes—things that hunted in the dark. Not people. The girl’s eyes looked normal now, but after that momentary reflection, she seemed less human.

  “Melissa’s right,” Dess said.

  Rex quieted the other two with a wave of his hand. He took a step closer, peering into Jessica’s eyes with a calm intensity.

  “Jessica,” he said quietly, “look up at the moon, please.”

  She did so for a few seconds but dropped her eyes back to Rex suspiciously.

  “What color is it?” he asked.

  “It’s…” She looked up again, shrugged. “No color. And it gives me a headache.”

  “Her eyes are wrong,” repeated the other girl, whom Dess had called Melissa.

  Dess piped up. “Today she said the sun doesn’t bother her. I told you she was totally daylight. No dark glasses or anything.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Jessica suddenly cried, surprising herself. She hadn’t meant to shout, but the words had launched themselves out of her.

  The startled looks on the others’ faces were somehow satisfying.

  “I mean—,” she sputtered. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?
And what are you doing in my dream?”

  Rex stepped back and put up his hands. Dess giggled but half turned away as if embarrassed. Melissa cocked her head.

  “Sorry,” Rex said. “I should have told you: this isn’t a dream.”

  “But—” Jessica started, but sighed, knowing suddenly that she believed him. The pain, the fear, the feel of her heart pumping in her chest had all been too real. This was not a dream. It was a relief not to pretend to herself anymore.

  “What is it, then?”

  “This is midnight.”

  “Say again?”

  “Midnight,” he repeated slowly. “It’s 12 A.M. Since the world changed color, this has all happened in a single moment.”

  “A single moment…”

  “Time stops for us at midnight.”

  Jessica peered through the car windshield at the frozen woman at the wheel. The look of concentration on her face, the hands tight on the wheel…She did look as if she were driving but trapped in a frozen instant.

  Dess spoke up next, her voice without its usual nasty edge. “There aren’t really twenty-four hours in the day, Jessica. There are twenty-five. But one of them is rolled up too tight to see. For most people it flashes by in an instant. But we can see it, live in it.”

  “And ‘we’ includes ‘me’?” Jessica said quietly.

  “When were you born?” Rex asked.

  “Huh? You mean this is because I’m a Leo?”

  “Not your birthday, what time of day?”

  Jessica pondered the question, remembering how many times Mom and Dad had told this story.

  “My mom went into labor in the afternoon, but I wasn’t born until thirty-something hours later. Not until late the next night.”

  Rex nodded. “Midnight, to be exact.”

  “Midnight?”

  “Sure. One out of every 43,200 people is born within one second of midnight,” Dess said, smiling happily. “Of course, we’re not exactly sure how close you have to get. And we’re talking real midnight here.”

  “Yeah. My birth certificate says 1 A.M.,” Melissa said glumly. “Lousy daylight savings time.”

  Rex looked up at the moon, his eyes catching its nonlight with that inhuman flicker. “In a lot of cultures people believe that those born at the stroke of midnight can see ghosts.”

  Jessica nodded. That actually sounded familiar. One of those pirate books she’d read for English last year—Kidnapped? or Treasure Island?—had been about that. Some kid was supposed to find treasure by seeing the ghosts of dead men buried with the gold.

  “The real story is a bit more complicated,” Rex continued.

  “I’ll say,” Jessica said. “If that panther was a ghost, we seriously need new Halloween decorations.”

  “Midnighters don’t see ghosts, Jessica,” Rex continued. “What we see is a whole secret hour, the blue time, that zooms right past everyone else.”

  “Midnighters,” Jessica repeated.

  “That’s the word for us. Midnight is ours alone. We can walk around while everything else in the whole world is frozen.”

  “Not everything,” Jessica said.

  “True,” Rex admitted. “The darklings and slithers, and some other stuff, live in the blue time. For them the blue time is like normal daylight and vice versa. They can’t get into the other twenty-four hours, like most humans can’t get into the twenty-fifth.”

  “Only us midnighters get to live in both,” Dess said happily.

  “Yay,” Jess said. “I’m thrilled.”

  “Come on, haven’t you ever wished for an extra hour in the day?” Rex asked.

  “Not an extra totally weird hour! Not an extra hour where everything tries to kill me! No, I don’t think I ever wished for that.”

  “Wow, you are so daylight,” Melissa said.

  “I’ve got to admit, things have been bad for you,” Rex said, using his Mr. Calm voice again. “But it’s usually not like this. Normally the slithers only watch us, and darklings don’t care much about us at all. They’re like wild animals. They can be dangerous if you do something stupid, but they don’t go out of their way to mess with humans. A midnighter being attacked for no reason is new to me.”

  “It’s pretty much new to me too!” Jessica said. “And I didn’t do anything stupid, all right? One of those…slithers led me out here on purpose. Then the big cat thing tried to kill me. Twice.”

  “Yeah, we should try to figure this out,” Rex said mildly, as if Jessica had been assigned a locker at school that wouldn’t open. She guessed that none of those darklings had ever come after him.

  “I knew you were different,” Melissa said, “even before psychokitty tried to eat you.” She closed her eyes, tipping back her head as if smelling the wind. “There’s something funny about the way you taste.”

  Melissa’s face went blank, almost as lifeless as Beth or the woman driving the car. Jessica rolled her eyes. Melissa was calling her different?

  “But right now we should get you home,” Rex said, glancing up at the sky. “There’s only about five minutes left.”

  Jessica started to speak, a million questions on her tongue. But she just sighed. Nothing was getting explained. Everything these people said confused her more.

  “Fine.” As she said the word, Jessica realized how good home sounded. The panther must still be around somewhere.

  Rex and Melissa pushed their bikes, walking next to Jessica. Dess rode in slow circles around them, like a bored kid forced to travel too slowly.

  “Tomorrow we’ll have time to tell you more,” Rex said. “Meet us at the Clovis Museum? Noon?”

  “Um.” Jessica thought about her plans to unpack tomorrow. To finally get her life under control. Of course, it didn’t look as if it were going to be that simple anymore. “Yeah, sure. Where’s that?”

  “It’s close to the main library. Just follow Division.” Rex pointed toward downtown. “Meet us downstairs.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t worry, Jessica. We’ll figure out what happened tonight. We’ll make sure you’re safe here.”

  Jess looked into Rex’s eyes, seeing the concern there. He seemed confident that he could figure out whatever had gone wrong. Or maybe he was just trying to make her feel better. It was strange. Even though nothing he said made sense, Rex managed to sound as if he knew what he was talking about. Here in the blue time he stood straighter and the thick glasses didn’t hide his calm, serious eyes. The guy seemed like much less of a loser than he did in the daylight.

  “So, you don’t really need those glasses, do you? It’s an act, like Clark Kent?”

  “Afraid not. In daylight I’m blind as a bat. But here in the blue time I can see perfectly. Better than perfectly.”

  “That must be nice.”

  “Yeah. It’s great. And I can see more than…” He paused. “We’ll explain it all tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  Jessica looked at the three of them. Dess circling happily on her bike, Rex’s eyes clear and confident, Melissa silent, but without her usual headphones and pained expression. They all seemed to actually like this midnight time.

  Of course, why wouldn’t they? It didn’t seem like their lives were going so great during the “daylight” hours. Here there was no one to push them around or notice how weird they were. For this one hour a day the whole world was their private clubhouse.

  And now she was in the club. Great.

  They took Jessica right to her door. She realized that the light was slowly changing. The dark moon had almost set, now mostly hidden behind the houses across the street.

  “So how are you guys getting home?” she asked.

  “The usual way. During regular time,” Rex said, mounting his bike and reaching into his shirt pocket. He pulled out his glasses.

  Jessica looked around, her eyes searching for any sign of the panther. “And you’re sure this blue thing is almost over?”

  “Happens every night, as regular as sundown,
” Rex said.

  Jessica realized that they must be miles from home. “What about the curfew? I mean, everyone’s going to wake back up, right? What if the police see you?”

  Melissa rolled her eyes. “We’ve been dealing with curfew for years. Don’t worry about us.”

  “But we should get going,” Rex said. “You’ll be okay here, Jessica. And it’ll all make more sense in the morning.” He pedaled down the walk and into the street. “See you at noon.”

  Dess’s bike rattled across the lawn. “See you in 43,200 seconds, Jess,” she called as she passed. “And wear shoes next time!” She laughed and pedaled to catch up with Rex. Jessica looked down at her bare feet and had to smile.

  Melissa stayed a moment longer, her eyes narrowing.

  “You don’t belong,” she said softly, her voice almost a whisper. “That’s why the darkling wanted to kill you.”

  Jessica opened her mouth, then shrugged.

  “I didn’t ask to be a midnighter,” she said.

  “Maybe you’re not,” Melissa said. “Not a real one, anyway. Something about you is so…11:59. You don’t belong.”

  She turned and rode away without waiting for an answer.

  Jessica shuddered. “Great, the biggest weirdo in the weirdo club says I don’t belong.”

  She turned and went into the house. Even in the strange light of the dark moon it seemed welcoming as it never had before. Just like home.

  But Jessica sighed as she walked down the hall toward her room. Melissa’s words were still with her. The darkling hadn’t seemed like a wild animal to her—more like something that hated her with all its heart. The slither had led her into a trap because it wanted her dead.

  “Maybe Melissa’s right.”

  This blue time didn’t feel like a place she was meant to be. The alien light pulsed from every corner of the house, haunting and wrong. Her eyes stung from an hour of it, as if she were about to cry.

  “Maybe I don’t belong here.”

  Jessica paused at Beth’s door. Her white shape was still there, unmoving, sprawled on the bed in its anxious pose.

  She went in and sat next to her sister, forcing herself to look, to wait for the end of midnight. She had to know that Beth wasn’t dead. If Rex had been telling the truth, she was only stuck for a moment in time.