The Secret Hour

One minute to go.

Jessica picked up Jurisprudence and pulled it out to its full length. She swished it through the air like a sword. The radio ante

Jessica smiled. It was the oddest gift she’d ever gotten, but she had to admit it felt good in her hand.

The secret hour arrived.

The overhead light seemed to wink out, replaced by the familiar blue glow from every corner of the room. The sound of wind among the trees ceased abruptly. Her first time completely awake for the change, Jessica could feel as well as see and hear it. Something invisible seemed to pull at her, tugging her forward, as if she were finishing a roller-coaster ride, the car gradually coming to a halt. A sense of lightness came over her, and she felt a subtle flutter of arrested motion throughout her body.

The tingle of the whole world, stopping around her.

“Okay,” Jessica said to herself. “Here we go again.”

However real she knew it was, the blue time still seemed like a dream.

She walked around her room, touching things to reassure herself. The rough edges of cardboard boxes felt the same, the pinewood boards of the floor were as smooth and cool as always.

“Real, real, and real,” she affirmed quietly as her fingers brushed clothing, desk, the spines of books.

Now that midnight was here, Jessica found herself wondering what she was going to do with this extra hour. A few minutes ago she had heard her parents talking in the kitchen. But she didn’t want to see them pale and frozen; she was staying in her own room.

There was plenty of unpacking to do. She opened a few of the boxes and looked into their chaotic depths. But the blue, shadowless light seemed too alien for anything so mundane. She sat on her bed, picked up the dictionary she’d unpacked when she got home, and opened it to look for tridecalogisms.

She’d found only one—splendiferous—when her head started to hurt from the light. The other midnighters could probably read in the blue time just fine. Maybe Melissa was right; Jessica’s eyes did feel wrong, at least here in the secret hour.

She glanced out the window at the motionless world but shivered and looked away. The thought of something looking back in at her was too frightening.

She picked her feet up off the floor, lay back, and stared at the ceiling.

Jessica sighed. This could get very boring.

Not much later, she heard the noise.

It was a very soft thud, barely audible even in the absolute silence. Jessica immediately thought of panther paws and jumped off her bed.

She picked up Jurisprudence and jingled Fossilization and Deliciousness to check that they were still in her pocket. From the end of the bed Jessica couldn’t see very much of the street, but she was too scared to get any closer to the windows. She maneuvered around her bedroom, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was outside.

A dark shape moved on the front walk. Jessica backed out of its view and gripped the car ante

What if they were wrong?

Her back was pressed against the door now. She imagined the great cat squeezing through the front door and down the halls of the house, stealing up behind her. It seemed incredibly unlikely that the thirteen thumbtacks stuck into the wood of her door would be a match for its powerful muscles.

No more sound came from outside. Was whatever it was still out there?

She had to take a look.

Jessica sank to her hands and knees and crept along the floor against the wall until she was just below the window. She sat there, listening as hard as she could. The total silence seemed to roar quietly, like the sound of the ocean trapped in a shell.

She inched her head up to peer over the windowsill.

A face looked back at her.

Jessica jumped away, swinging Jurisprudence in an arc before her so that it cracked against the glass. She scrambled backward until she bumped against her bed. The window began to slide open.

“It’s okay, Jessica. It’s just me,” a voice called through the gap.

Her car-radio ante

Jonathan perched at the window, evidently a bit reluctant to come inside. He seemed to think that Jessica was going to take another swing at him. Jurisprudence was still in her grip, passed nervously from hand to hand.

Jonathan sat with one leg folded under him, his other knee drawn up under his chin. He certainly didn’t seem very scary now.

He hadn’t said much since arriving at the window. He seemed to be waiting for her to calm down. Unlike in the lunchroom at school, Jonathan’s eyes were open wide. He didn’t look sleepy at all. Maybe he was photophobic in the daylight too.

She was glad he didn’t hide his eyes behind dark glasses, though. They were very pretty eyes.

He watched as Jessica slowly gained control of her breathing, his gaze intent but silent.

“I didn’t know you were a midnighter,” she finally managed.

“They didn’t tell you?” He laughed. “That figures.”

“They know about you?”

“Sure. Since the day I moved here.”

Jessica shook her head in disbelief. Six hours of midnighter lore and neither Rex, Dess, nor Melissa had bothered to mention the fifth midnighter in town.

“Wait a second,” Jess said as something occurred to her. “Are you the only one they didn’t tell me about? How many of you are there?”

Jonathan gri

She stared back at him, still too overwhelmed to make sense of anything.

“No, there aren’t any others,” he said, more seriously. “I’m the only person they didn’t mention.”

“What, don’t they like you?”

He shrugged. “I’m not in the club, you know? I mean, Rex is okay, I guess, and Dess is actually pretty cool.” He paused, obviously not wanting to get started on Melissa. “But they take the whole thing way too seriously.”

“Too seriously?”

“Yeah. They act like they’re on a mission from the Midnighters World Council or something.”

“There’s a Midnighters World Council?” Jessica asked.

He laughed. “No, but I bet Rex wishes there was. He thinks this whole midnight thing has some deep and mysterious meaning.”

Jessica blinked. It had never occurred to her to doubt that there were deep and mysterious forces at work. It all seemed pretty deep and mysterious to her.

“So what do you think, Jonathan?”

“I think we’re lucky to have a whole world to ourselves. To play in, explore, do whatever we want. Why mess it up with some big purpose?”

Jessica nodded. Since the darkling had attacked her, the secret hour had become a crisis, a deadly challenge. But that first, beautiful dream had been something else entirely. Something… easy.

“For Rex,” Jonathan continued, “the blue time is like some big textbook, and he’s always studying for the final exam. For me, it’s recess.”

She gave him a sour look. “There are some pretty big bullies on the playground.”

He shrugged. “I’m faster than the bullies. Always have been.”

Jessica wondered how that could be true. But Jonathan seemed perfectly at ease. He dangled his foot outside the window, never checking over his shoulder, unafraid.

“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.”