Touching Darkness

There was an awkward moment’s silence.

“I mean, besides you guys,” she added lamely.

Rex and Jonathan just looked at her. She tried to make her mouth work, to come up with something that would change what she’d said.

“We’re your only friends, Jessica.”

The three of them stared at Melissa, unable to believe that she’d really said the words. Even Rex was struck speechless.

“We’re the only ones who know how the real world is,” Melissa continued. “I mean, Rex and I barely made it out of Las Colonias. When you first got here, almost getting killed was a nightly thing.” She snorted, a measure of her usual contempt returning. “You think Constanza Grayfoot’s ever faced anything like that? Ever had a darkling come after her?” She turned away. “So we understand you like nobody else. We’re your friends.”

Jessica’s eyes fell to the street, where windblown leaves hovered a few inches above the asphalt. “I didn’t mean you guys weren’t my friends,” she said softly.

“Don’t sweat it,” Melissa said. “Rex and I will look into this. Maybe follow her around after school lets out, do some mind reading.”

“Sure,” Rex added. “No problem.”

“Thanks,” Jessica said. “And yeah, I’ll talk to her.”

“I wish you’d told me this afternoon.”

Jonathan didn’t respond.

“It’s just that I might not have been such a bitch in front of them if I’d already had time to think about it,” she explained.

“I’m sorry,” he said flatly. “For the tenth time.”

Jessica sighed. The way she felt, she wouldn’t have minded another ten. Not that it was his fault totally. Anyone who managed to look like a selfish, immature bitch diva next to Melissa had to take some of the credit herself.

They sat together on the gravel roof of the Bixby Shop Mart, surrounded by the black shapes of exhaust vents and industrial air conditioners.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Jonathan said, finally breaking the silence.

“About what?”

“About you. For you, I mean.” He picked up a rock and threw it out over the empty parking lot. After it left his hand, it slowed gradually, as if falling through an invisible foam in the air. The rock finally came to a halt, joining the floating galaxy of gravel he had tossed out across the asphalt plain. Jonathan was different than the rest of them when it came to gravity. Something about time and space warping… something about physics.

She sighed again. “I still don’t understand.”

Jonathan threw another rock. “I mean, it was one thing when it was darklings. I could help you with that. I could fly you away. But this time the bad guys come from Flatland.”

“Come from where?”

He frowned. “I thought you had Sanchez for trig. He makes all his advanced classes read this book, Flatland.”

“Oh, wait,” she said. “Dess showed it to me. Flatland’s this two-dimensional world, right? Where everyone’s a triangle or a square, and this three-D sphere guy shows up.” She threw a rock of her own, which soared through the others and crashed to the ground, skittering across the parking lot. “It failed to improve my understanding of trigonometry.”

“That’s the one,” Jonathan said. “So when I’m in normal gravity and I can’t fly, can’t jump, can’t see the angles…”

“Can’t look down on everyone?” she asked.

He threw another rock and snorted, his brown eyes flashing violet in the dark moon’s light. “Sure, that too. All that stuff is Flatland. It’s like being squashed down into two dimensions.” He turned to face her for a moment. “I can’t do anything to protect you from these guys. Melissa can still read their minds, Dess can still do the math, Rex can still… I don’t know, look stuff up. But I’m useless.”

“Useless?” She shook her head. “You’re not useless.”

“They could drive up to school tomorrow and haul you away, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Except possibly limp after their car.” He stood, favoring one foot, and threw another rock, flinging it so hard that it disappeared into the darkness.

“Thanks for the mental image.” Jessica frowned. “Is the Flatland thing why you never hold my hand?”

“What?” He looked down at his palm, which he’d been absentmindedly massaging. “We hold hands all the time.”

She shook her head. Darkling groupie or not, maybe Constanza had given the right advice. Maybe now, when things were all screwed up anyway, was the right moment to talk to him. “Not in normal time. Not in Flatland.”

Jonathan looked dumbstruck for a second, staring at his hand as if expecting it to confess something to him. “Really?” he finally managed.

“Really.”

He sat down again, still wearing a baffled expression. “Oh, great. Something else I suck at in Flatland.”

She groaned. “It’s not that you aren’t good at it. It’s that you don’t ever do it! It’s like we don’t exist there.”

His muscles writhed for a moment under his jacket, as if his clothes were too tight or if something invisible were binding him. “Sorry,” he muttered.

She lifted her shoulders. “That’s eleven.”

They were silent for a while, but at least Jonathan had stopped throwing rocks. The moon began to set before them, dark light glinting from broken glass on the parking lot and Jessica realized they’d have to start home soon. She still had an about-to-scream Beth to deal with when midnight ran out.

What a great night this had turned into.

Jessica stared at the dark moon until her head began to hurt. She didn’t want tonight to end this way. Taking Jonathan’s hand, she softly began to massage it.

“I like you all the time, Jonathan,” she said. “Twenty-five seven.”

He smiled back at her.

“Anyway,” she added, “if there’s a useless-during-daylight club, I’m the president. Unless you tremble before the mighty power of the flashlight carrier.”

He laughed, then looked into her eyes for a moment. She saw a decision flicker across his face.

“What?”

He reached into his jacket. “I brought you something.”

“A present? Why? For complaining so much?”

“No. Because I knew you’d be upset about Constanza. And because I should have told you. I couldn’t think what else to do.” He pulled out a slender strand that glimmered blue, coursing fire in the light of the dark moon. “Like you and me, it has no powers whatsoever in normal time.”

He handed it to her, a delicate silver chain, its links so small that it came like sand into her palm. Charms dangled from it; she recognized a tiny house, a curled cat, praying hands…

“It’s beautiful.”

“It was my mom’s. I took off a couple of… the miracles, those little charms, so there’s thirteen now.”

“Oh, Jonathan.” She drew it around her wrist, closing the minuscule clasp carefully. “I promise never to throw it at a darkling. What’s its name?”

“Acariciandote.”

“Um, say again?”

“Acariciandote. It’s Spanish. My dad doesn’t speak it anymore, but Mom always did.”

She tried the syllables slowly, wincing as they went terribly wrong in her mouth. “Does Spanish work on darklings?”

“Gringa.” He shook his head, smiling. “Spanish was kicking darkling ass in Oklahoma about four hundred years before English got here.”

“Oops, sorry. I never thought about that.” She tried to say the name again, getting lost after three syllables. “What does it mean?”

“Fu

She smiled. “Like always, you mean.” She held the bracelet up to the light. “It’s absolutely…” Jessica paused, staring past the dangling charms at the moon.

It was already half set.

“We’ve got to go.” She stood. “I can’t be late. My little sister’s in my closet.”

“Huh?”

She grabbed his wrist and pulled him into a dead run along the roof, heading for the edge. “I’ll tell you on the way.”