Blue Noon

Not that Jessica could blame her. Or blame Rex for being freaked out by his transformation into a halfling. And the scars on Melissa’s face from her accident still carried pink stitches.

But everyone seemed to have forgotten that Anathea, the young seer who’d been turned into a halfling back in the old days, had died that night. Which was a lot worse than anything that had happened to the rest of them.

Sometimes when Jessica watched the other midnighters interact, she felt like wearing a T-shirt with big letters on the front: GET OVER IT.

“They’re awake, all right,” Melissa said slowly. “I’m surprised you guys can’t hear them.”

“Hear them?” Rex glanced over his shoulder toward the badlands. “You mean they’re coming this way?”

Jessica reached for Disintegrator in her pocket, but it wasn’t there; she’d never expected to need the flashlight during the day. She had only Acariciandote, the bracelet Jonathan had given her. She reached to touch it, feeling the thirteen tiny charms dangling from her wrist.

Melissa shook her head. “Not coming, not moving much at all. Just so loud.” She winced, her face twisting into the pained expression she wore whenever too many people were around.

“Melissa,” Rex asked, “what do you mean by ‘loud’?”

“I mean screaming, howling, raising a ruckus.”

“As in afraid?”

Melissa shook her head. “No. As in celebrating.”

Jessica’s watch said 9:17 a.m., but it seemed like hours since the blue time had begun. The minutes seemed to drag along, as if time itself had become a formless, limping thing.

How could she even be sure if her watch was working right or not? It felt like they’d all been standing out there in the parking lot for hours.

“Get down from there!” Rex yelled again.

Jessica looked up and sighed. Jonathan was still on the roof of the school.

“I thought you said this could go on forever,” he shouted down.

“Yeah, or it could end any second!”

“Nah, midnight only comes in one-hour slices, Rex. You know that.” Jonathan laughed and took an arcing hop up to the top of the gym. From there he sca

Jessica saw how high he was and swallowed. But she knew yelling at Jonathan was pointless. He always flew until the last moment of midnight, squeezing out every second of weightlessness; it hadn’t taken him long to convince himself that this unexpected blue time would last a solid hour. For Jonathan this wasn’t a terrifying mystery to be solved—it was a double helping of dessert, an extra recess, a free period spicing up an otherwise crappy Monday.

Jessica wanted to scream at him to quit being stupid, but if she sided with Rex in front of everyone else, Jonathan would probably stay up there until the world ended.

Unless, of course, it already had.

“Come on, Jonathan,” Melissa called up to him. “There’s nothing to see, and you really could get hurt.”

Jonathan frowned at her, but a moment later he stepped from the roof’s edge and floated down.

Jessica glanced sidelong at Melissa. The mindcaster had sounded so concerned, and Jonathan was listening to her. This was definitely too much weirdness for one Monday morning.

But at least Jonathan was safely on the ground again. She crossed the parking lot to grab hold of his jacket.

“Sorry,” he said when he saw her expression. “But it seems like a waste, just standing around.”

“You could get killed.”

“But what if this really does last a long time?” He frowned. “Or forever.”

She took his hand, but the feeling of his midnight gravity flowing into Jessica didn’t help her mood. It would be just like the world to end on a Monday, especially this Monday, the day she was theoretically going to become ungrounded.

Only theoretically, of course. There had been a fierce debate this morning about what day was exactly one month from the night Jessica had been brought home by the police, tonight or tomorrow. Finally she’d given up arguing about it. Tuesday’s promised freedom wouldn’t take forever to come, after all.

Except now it might.

Standing here with the dark moon overhead, it made perfect sense that time had been halted, the darklings decreeing that Jessica Day would remain grounded forever. That’s what she got for being born the flame-bringer.

“Hey, look! It’s Sanchez,” Dess cried suddenly. She was pointing at a stiff just outside the gym entrance. The frozen Mr. Sanchez was huddled close to the wall, out of sight from anyone coming through the door, a motionless geyser of smoke spewing from his mouth.

Jonathan pulled his hand away from Jessica and bounded across the lot. “Oh my God—he’s sneaking a cigarette. I didn’t know he smoked!”

“Well, well, Mr. Sanchez,” Dess said. “Your secrets are revealed at last.” She stepped into the smoke and laughed, waving it away. Released from the dark moon’s spell by her touch, it drifted slowly upward in the still air.

“Get away from him, you two,” Rex shouted. “Don’t stand where he can see you. What if time starts up again?”

Jonathan got out of Sanchez’s face, but Dess just stood there giggling. Rex sighed.

The sight of the frozen teacher caused a trickle of nerves to crawl up Jessica’s spine. If time did start again, there was a good chance they could be caught out here, busted for skipping the pep rally. Then, like the seasons, the mighty grounding cycle would begin again….

“Maybe we should wait inside?” she said quietly.

“Were you talking to someone in there?” Rex asked. “Or in front of anyone who’ll notice if you suddenly disappear?”

“No,” Jessica answered. “We were in the back row, like you guys.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, you know,” Jessica said. “Just in case time starts again, we don’t want to get busted for cutting.”

Rex looked at her like she was crazy. “Time is frozen during broad daylight for the first time in recorded history, and you’re worried about skipping a pep rally?”

“Um, well…”

“Hey, maybe this is like an eclipse!” Dess called across the parking lot.

“How do you mean?” Jonathan said.

Dess stared at Mr. Sanchez as she spoke, as if drawing inspiration from the trig teacher’s harried expression. “You know, an eclipse looks like a little bit of night that happens in the middle of the day. But it’s not really night, it’s just the moon blocking out the sun.”

“And a long time ago,” Rex added, “people used to freak out about eclipses, like it was the end of the world.”

“Exactly. But it’s not a big deal, just a totally random thing—two objects lining up. Doesn’t even last that long.” Dess crossed the lot as she spoke, Jonathan bounding along beside her. “The trick is not to have a heart attack about it.”

“Can’t you go blind from eclipses?” Jonathan said.

“Yeah, true.” Dess glanced up at the dark moon. “If you’re stupid enough to stare at the sun for too long.”

Rex thought about this for a second, then shook his head. “But you can predict eclipses years in advance, right?”

“Centuries, Rex,” Dess said, rolling her eyes, as if eclipse prediction was something she did for fun in study hall. (Of course, Jessica realized, it probably was.) “Thousands of years, even. You just do the math, and they happen right on schedule.”

“So where’s the schedule, then?” Rex said. “I repeat: nothing like this has ever been recorded in the lore.”

“The lore’s not perfect. Rex,” Jonathan said, bouncing a few feet into the air. “You can’t look up everything. I thought by this point you’d have figured that out.”

Jessica waited for an outburst. Those were fighting words as far as Rex was concerned. And a big fight was just what they needed right now.

But Rex only nodded and scratched his chin. “Yeah, you could be right. Maybe it is just an eclipse or something like that. Totally random.” He looked up into the sky, squinting as his eyes flashed purple.