The Secret Hour

Rex shook his head, starting to disagree, but stopped. If he was going to say it out loud, he had to be right. As he had a dozen times that day, he lifted his thick glasses an inch, looking at Jessica Day with just his eyes. The cafeteria dissolved into a bright, churning blur, but even from this distance she stood out sharp and clear.

It was after noon, and her Focus hadn’t faded. It was permanent. There was only one explanation.

He took a deep breath. “She’s one of us.”

Dess looked at him, finally allowing an expression of interest to cross her face. Melissa felt the change between her friends and looked up blankly. Listening, but not with her ears.

“Her? One of us?” Dess said. “No way. She could run for mayor of Normal, Oklahoma.”

“Listen to me, Dess,” Rex insisted. “She’s got the Focus.”

Dess squinted, as if trying to see what only Rex could. “Maybe she got touched last night or something like that.”

“No. It’s too strong. She’s one of us.”

Dess looked back up at the ceiling, her expression sliding again into totally bored with the ease of long practice. But Rex knew he’d gotten her attention.

“All right,” she relented. “If she’s a sophomore, maybe she’s in one of my classes. I’ll check her out.”

Melissa nodded too, bobbing her head to the whispered music.

2

2:38 P.M.

DESS

When Jessica finally collapsed behind a desk for her last class of the day, she was completely exhausted. She crammed the wrinkled schedule into her pocket, hardly caring if she was in the right room anymore, and gratefully dropped her book bag onto the floor. All day it had been gaining weight like a new employee at Baskin-Robbins.

No first day of school was ever easy. But at least back in Chicago, Jessica had had the same old faces and familiar halls of Public School 141 to look forward to. Here in Bixby everything was a challenge. This school might be smaller than PS 141, but it was all spread out on ground level, a maze of add-ons and trailers. Every five-minute change of classes had been traumatic.

Jessica hated being late. She always wore a watch, which she set at least ten minutes fast. Today, when she already stood out as the new girl, she’d dreaded having to creep into a class late, everyone’s eyes on her, looking sheepish and too dumb to find her way around. But she’d made it again. The bell hadn’t rung yet. Jessica had managed to be on time the whole day.

The class filled slowly, everyone looking end-of-the-first-day frazzled. But even in their weariness a few noticed Jessica. They all knew about the new girl from the big city, it seemed. At her old school Jess had been just one student out of two thousand. But here she was practically a celebrity. Everyone was friendly about it, at least. The whole day she’d been shepherded around, smiled at, asked to stand up and introduce herself. She had the speech down pat now.

“I’m Jessica Day, and I just moved here from Chicago. We came because my mom got a job at Aerospace Oklahoma, where she designs planes. Not the whole plane, just the shape of the wing. But that’s the part that makes it a plane, Mom always says. Everyone in Oklahoma seems very nice, and it’s a lot warmer than Chicago. My thirteen-year-old sister cried for about two weeks before we moved, and my dad’s going nuts because he hasn’t found a job in Bixby yet, and the water tastes fu

Of course, she’d never said that last part out loud. Maybe for this class she would, just to wake herself up.

The late bell rang.

The teacher introduced himself as Mr. Sanchez and called the roll. He paused a little when he got to Jessica’s name, glancing at her for a second. But he must have seen her weary expression. He didn’t ask for the speech.

Then it was time to pass out books. Jessica sighed. The textbooks Mr. Sanchez was piling onto his desk looked dauntingly thick. Begi

As the books were being passed back, a tardy student entered the room. She looked younger than the others in the class. She was dressed all in black, wearing dark glasses and a lot of shiny metal necklaces. Mr. Sanchez looked up at her and smiled, genuinely pleased.

“Glad to see you, Desdemona.”

“Hey, Sanchez.” The girl sounded as tired as Jess felt, but with much more practice. She regarded the classroom with bored disgust. Mr. Sanchez was practically beaming at her, as if she were some famous mathematician he’d invited here to talk about how trigonometry could change your life.

He went back to passing out books, and the girl sca

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi, I’m Jessica.”

“Yeah,” the girl said, as if that were terribly obvious. Jessica wondered if she’d already met her in some other class. “I’m Dess.”

“Hi.” Okay, that was hi twice. But what was she supposed to say?

Dess was looking at her closely, trying to figure something out. She squinted, as if the room were too bright for her. Her pale fingers played with the translucent, yellowish beads on one of the necklaces, sliding them one way and then the other. They clicked softly as she arranged them into unreadable patterns.

A book arrived on Jessica’s desk, breaking the spell that Dess’s fingers had cast.

“When you get your book,” Mr. Sanchez a

Jessica had been through this drill all day. Apparently textbooks were an endangered species here in Bixby, Oklahoma. The teachers made everyone go through them page by page, noting every mark or tear. Supposedly there would be a terrible reckoning at the end of the year for anyone criminal enough to damage their books. Jessica had helped her dad do the same thing for their rental house, recording every nail hole in the walls, checking every electrical socket, and going into detail about how the automatic garage door didn’t go up the last foot and a half.

Moving had been a

She began going through the textbook, dutifully checking every page. Jess sighed. She’d gotten a bad one. Underlined words, page 7. Scribbles on graph, page 19…

“So, how do you like Bixby so far, Jess?”

Jessica looked up. Dess was leafing through her book distractedly, apparently finding nothing. Half her attention was still on Jess.

The speech was all ready. Everyone in Oklahoma seems very nice, and it’s much warmer than Chicago. But somehow she knew that Dess didn’t want the speech.

Jess shrugged. “The water tastes fu

Dess almost managed to smile. “No kidding.”

“Yeah, to me anyway. I guess I’ll get used to it.”

“Nope. I was born here, and it still tastes fu

“Great.”

“And that’s not all that’s fu

Jess looked up, expecting more, but Dess was hard at work now. She’d skipped to the answers at the back of the trig book. Her pen leapt from one to another in no apparent order while her other hand fiddled madly with the amber beads. Occasionally she would make a change. She noted each one on the form.