Jonathan looked out across Bixby, laid out before them in the even, deep blue glow of the secret hour. He looked in the direction of Jenks, trying to see the rip, but its red tinge didn’t show on the horizon.
Not yet, anyway. It was growing every time an eclipse fell.
“We haven’t been up here in a while,” Jessica said.
“Yeah. I was kind of missing Pegasus.” He looked up. The huge neon Mobil sign in the shape of a flying horse hovered over them protectively.
“That’s not all I missed,” Jessica said, a smile playing on her lips. “You remember what happened here, right?”
Jonathan nodded. “You mean, us hiding from the darklings?”
“Yeah. But not just that.”
He thought for a moment. They hadn’t really been up here since those early days. He shrugged.
Jessica let out a groan. “I can’t believe you. This is where we first kissed!”
“Oh, right!” He swallowed. “But that was around the same time, yeah? I mean, I just said how we were hiding here, and that was when we…” Jonathan stumbled to a halt, realizing that explanations were only making things worse.
He took her hands, hoping that his midnight gravity would bring her smile back.
She just stared at him. “I can’t believe you forgot.”
“I didn’t forget. I just didn’t know what you were talking about.”
“Ugh. That’s even worse!”
“Why?”
“Because it’s like you’ve totally forgotten.” She pulled her hands away, looking out over the blue-lit city. “We haven’t exactly… This last week we’ve hardly touched each other.”
“No, I guess not.” He sighed. “It seems like we’re always in crisis mode.”
“I guess it’s not that big a deal, compared to the whole town getting sucked into oblivion. But shouldn’t that make us closer or something?” She looked at him for an answer, like this was a particularly tricky problem from physics class.
“Look at it this way, Jessica,” he said, putting his arm around her. “Once Samhain comes, we’ll get to spend a whole day flying together.”
“Jonathan!”
“What?” He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying.”
She groaned, turning away from him. “I knew you were thinking that way.”
“What way?”
“You’re excited that this is going to happen, aren’t you?” she cried. “You’d probably be happy if it went on forever: blue time, all the time. No more Flatland. What could be better?”
He rolled his eyes but couldn’t bring himself to contradict her aloud. After all, he’d been thinking that exact thing as midnight fell.
But that didn’t make him a terrible person, did it?
Jonathan took a deep breath. Usually with Jessica, explaining things just seemed to make an argument go downhill. But for some reason, he always tried anyway. You had to keep talking to each other or nothing ever got resolved.
He began nervously. “Listen, Jess. Haven’t you ever imagined the world ending? I mean, kind of fantasized about a nuclear war or a plague or something wiping out everybody—except you and a few friends? And of course it’s all tragic and everything, but suddenly the whole world belongs to you?”
“Mmm… no, actually.” She frowned. “In my fantasies I’m more of a rock star who can fly. And has no little sister.”
He smiled, took her hand, and nudged them both a few feet into the air. “Well, one out of three isn’t bad.”
“Are you saying I’m not a rock star?”
“You don’t even sing.”
“I do in the shower.” A smile finally crossed her face as they settled back to the rooftop, but then she pulled away again. “Jonathan, the problem is that this isn’t a fantasy. It’s real. I feel bad even joking about it.”
“But Jessica, we didn’t make this happen. It’s not our fault. All we can do is try to save as many people as we can.”
“And enjoy the extra flying time?”
“No! If we can stop it, we will. But maybe we should leave the planning to Rex. It’s what he’s good at, even if he’s been a weirdo lately.”
“Even if it means keeping Flatland on its current schedule?”
“Yes.” He was silent for a moment, looking for words. “I don’t hate the world the way it is, Jessica. I don’t want my dad and your family and everyone else sucked into some nightmare. I know the difference between a stupid fantasy and the real end of the world. Okay?” He paused, not quite believing what he was about to say. “And whatever Rex comes up with, I’ll follow his orders.”
“You promise?”
“Sure. I promise. Even if he’s acting totally crazy. Anything to stop this.”
She looked at him, then finally nodded. “Okay.”
He took her hand, felt his midnight gravity connect them. “Let’s not worry about Bixby right now.”
She smiled faintly and leaned toward him. His eyes closed as their lips met, and for a moment the rest of the world really did fall away. Jonathan pushed them up into the air until they seemed suspended in a dark blue void, with only each other to cling to.
When they parted, he said softly, “Whatever happens in the long midnight, we’ll be okay—you and me. You know that, right?”
She shook her head, a sad look crossing her face, then silenced him with another kiss.
22
6:29 A.M.
FIREWORKS
“If Rex doesn’t show up on time, I’ll kill him.”
Jonathan looked tiredly at Dess, then at his watch. “He’s got another minute.”
“One minute to live, you mean.”
“Not really,” Jonathan said. “Either Rex gets here in one minute, in which case he’s on time and you don’t kill him. Or he’s late, which means he won’t be here, so you can’t kill him. Either way he has more than one minute to live.”
Dess cast a cold glance at Flyboy. He was making logical sense, which was totally unfair at this time on a Saturday morning.
“Jess,” she said. “Tell Jonathan to stop making sense.” Jessica, her head leaning sleepily on Flyboy’s shoulder, started to answer, but a yawn consumed her words. She wound up waving her hand noncommittally.
“Wait a second,” Jonathan said. “Is that them?”
Jessica sat bolt upright. “What? In that thing?”
Dess felt her jaw dropping. “No way!”
A pink Cadillac was rumbling toward them through the field, its vast frame bobbing across the furrows.
“Rex said he had a new ride,” Dess said with quiet awe. “But I didn’t think he meant his mom’s car.” She felt a smile break across her face. Teasing him about this was going to be so much more fun than killing him.
Rex’s mother worked selling Mary Kay cosmetics door to door, and in recognition of her millionth facial or whatever, she had received a pink Cadillac. But Dess had never actually seen the fabled machine before; Rex refused to ride to school in it, and she’d never imagined him actually driving it.
Yet there he was, cruising through Jenks at daybreak like he owned the whole town.
It rolled to a stop next to Jonathan’s car, and Flyboy barked out a short laugh as the front window came down. “Wow, Rex. Ding-dong!”
“That’s Avon, actually,” Melissa said as she stepped out of the Cadillac’s passenger side. “You’re not even trying.”
“Oh, right,” Jonathan said. “Well, it’s not like I have to try that hard. I mean…” He spread his arms to indicate the car. “It’s so pink.”
Flyboy’s voice trailed off as Rex stepped out, looked down at the car, and said, “Hey, yeah, it is. I hadn’t noticed.”
Then he turned back to them and cracked a smile.
Dess breathed a sigh of relief; that was the first joke he’d made in days. His messed-up morning hair made him look more human than he usually did. Maybe the effects of Maddy unleashing the darklings in his brain had worn off a little.