Touching Darkness

The tire sagged as he jumped, but his hands managed to grasp the top spikes of the fence. The spitting tires of the car sounded as if they were right under him. Jonathan pulled himself up and over and dropped to the other side, every ounce of his normal-gravity weight landing on his bad ankle.

“Finally,” Dess said as he limped up. “I was getting bored.”

Jonathan started the car, looking back at the security guards. They slewed to a halt on the other side of the fence, their car immediately swallowed by its own dust cloud. The two rent-a-cops emerged, coughing in the dirt storm, and looked at him forlornly through the fence. One tested the tire with his foot, but it sagged almost flat under his weight.

Jonathan took a deep breath. No reason to rush.

“Hey, it’s those buttheads again,” Dess said. “Were they chasing you?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. You’re not really a total loser in normal time, you know.”

“Right.” His heart was pounding, his throat was scraped raw from inhaling dust, and his ankle was throbbing. He never felt this way at midnight, half dead from ru

“It better,” she said, flicking it on. She stared at the numbers recorded on the little readout. A moment later a grin of satisfaction spread across her face. “Oh, this is so good!”

Jonathan felt himself smiling too. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, getting his heart beating. Not as good as flying, of course. “That’s from right under the balcony, just like you said.”

“I can see it…” Her eyes were open wide like those of a four-year-old girl entranced by her first butterfly. “I’ve got the pattern now. This is so freaky.”

She turned and leapt across the front seat, kissing him on the right cheek, hard and wet.

Jonathan laughed, then glanced at the cops again. They were getting slowly back into their car. It was miles back to the gate and then back here. He was enjoying just sitting here, ignoring them.

Then Jonathan remembered the letter in his pocket. He pulled it out, and the smile dropped from his face.

It wasn’t good news. Not at all.

“You think that’s freaky, check this out.” He tossed it to Dess.

She lifted it to her eyes as he pulled the car back onto the road, heading for the highway fast. They had to get back to school.

“What the hell…?” she murmured.

“It was in the mailbox at Darkling Manor. That must be the owner’s name, courtesy of Oklahoma Power and Light.”

“Oh, man, Jonathan,” Dess exclaimed. “With a name like that, they’ve got to be related.” She started to shake her head. “Jessica isn’t going to like this.”

“No. And I don’t either.”

He drove fast and hard toward school.

12

2:58 p.m.

PATIENCE

They hadn’t come back.

Jessica’s eyes swept the student parking lot, trying to find Jonathan’s car among the throngs escaping Bixby High. Everyone was full of last-bell energy, jumping up on hoods and playing catch across the lot, angling for rides home. On the street a line of school buses sat spewing gray smoke, their windows filling with impatient faces.

But nowhere did she see Jonathan or Dess.

“Hey, Jess. What’s up?”

She turned to find Constanza Grayfoot beside her.

“Oh, just looking for someone.”

Constanza smiled. “Mr. Gorgeous?”

“Yeah.” She turned back toward the parking lot. “He left school earlier, but I thought he was coming back.”

“Skipping, huh?” Constanza shook her head. “I thought you two were going to keep a low profile after getting arrested.”

“Not arrested. Detained and transported to parental custody,” Jessica said. “But yeah, we were.” She would’ve explained that Jonathan was making sure that two of her friends hadn’t been eaten alive, but somehow she couldn’t find the appropriate words. “He kind of had to do something.”

“Sure, I know the feeling.” Constanza waved to a cluster of cheerleaders headed across the parking lot.

As more and more cars departed, Jessica became even more certain that Jonathan’s was nowhere to be found. What did it mean that he and Dess hadn’t come back? That everything was fine? That their worst fears had been true? It seemed like they could have bothered to tell her if Rex and Melissa were okay. Unless by not going along to Rex’s she had proven herself irredeemably lame and the four of them had decided to ditch her permanently.

“What’s wrong, Jess?”

Jessica turned and gave Constanza a tired smile. She wished she could share her anxiety with someone, but as the only midnighter who hadn’t skipped school today, she was on her own.

“It’s just…” What could she say?

“Trouble in Coupleville?”

Jessica nodded. “I guess.”

“So tell me what’s wrong.” Constanza smiled. “You know you want to.”

Jessica realized that she did want to, and she wasn’t sworn to secrecy about everything in her life. “Well, Jonathan’s really great, some of the time. Like, at night.”

“But not so great the morning after?”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “It’s not about morning afters, of which there have been none, by the way. I’m just talking out here at school. We never seem all that co

“Oh, got you. He’s afraid of PDA.”

“Yeah. Not too much into public or private displays of affection, actually. Except at night. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

Constanza snorted. “Not that hard.”

“I mean, it’s not what you think.”

“What do you think I think?”

Jessica felt a smile on her face. “What do you think I think you think?”

Constanza raised an eyebrow. “I think you know what I think.”

The release of hydraulic brakes squealed across the parking lot, and Jessica looked up to see the first bus in line begin to roll.

“Oh, crap. I need to run.”

“Hang on, Jess.” Constanza took her arm. “That was just getting interesting. Let me give you a ride home.”

Jessica looked at her. “Really? It’s miles out of your way.”

Constanza shrugged. “So what? Since you’ve been grounded, I’ve hardly seen you.” She put her arm around Jessica and started walking her between the few remaining cars. “You never hang with us at study hall anymore.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that.”

It’s okay. I know you have this weird affliction where you believe that study hall is for actual studying.” She giggled. “And it’s not like I would be jealous of Miss Gothoid over in the corner.”

Jessica sighed. “Dess is pretty cool, really.” Of course, she couldn’t imagine having a conversation about Jonathan’s hand-holding phobia with Dess. And forget Rex or Melissa

“Yeah. Super-cool,” Constanza said. “But I guess she does know her trig. Isn’t she one of Sanchez’s math groupies?”

“Sort of.”

Constanza opened her purse and pulled out a key chain jangling with a mini flashlight, a fingernail clipper, a rabbit’s foot, and a host of keys. She squeezed it, and the powder blue Mercedes ahead of them let out a chirp.

“Whatever and who cares? We’re going to spend this ride talking about you and your boy problems. Miss Day.” Constanza made her way around the car.

Jessica smiled and opened the passenger door, relaxing a little for the first time since the physics test had hit her desk that morning. Ru

Inside, Constanza began to fiddle with the radio.

“So, your boy’s PDA-shy in daylight. Sort of an affection vampire?”

“Yeah.”

“Very common syndrome. And it’s pretty clear what to do.” Constanza started the car, put both hands on the steering wheel, and looked across at her.