Last time, all of the exposition, all of it. Now, sloppy teenage make-outs. Thankfully interrupted.

13
11:55 P.M.
ACROBAT

The chapter starts with Jessica recalling an experiment for Biology in her old school. Two classes were tending to flatworms. One class would light up a lamp every time the worms were about to be fed, and throw food under the circle of light, so worms learned to associate light with food. Another class was just throwing food into the terrarium. After a while, the worms of the first class were gathered, powdered and fed to the worms from the other class. Afterwards, those worms were reacting on light the same as their food, basically absorbing the knowledge of the eaten worms.

Quick search tells me that there were actually experiments to that effect (worms learned to associate light with shocks, actually, rather than food, but the principle still applies), but they couldn’t be reproduced afterwards, so there most likely was some flaw in the methodology.

The purpose of this section is to serve as a lead on to this line:


“Tonight, sitting on her bed, waiting for midnight, surrounded by unpacked
boxes, Jessica Day had the aftertaste of midnighter in her mouth.”

So, Jessica has eaten one of the others. Probably Rex. Girls don’t like her much, so it would be hard to lure them somewhere isolated, especially since Melissa can read minds, but Rex would be willing to meet with Jessica alone.

OK, truth be told, I didn’t expect such a twist from a YA book. A villainous cannibalistic protagonist is an interesting choice, especially considering all of the comments about how she’s “so daylight” and Midnighters generally appearing vaguely creepy with their eyes and such. It should be interesting to see where the book goes from there.

Cannibalism, ho!

Now, she lies in bed, digesting new knowledge and thinking about the approaching midnight. She is armed with three weapons, though they are only moderately powerful. We are informed that  Midnights are going to go to a “lore site,” where apparently knowledge of previous generations of Midnighters was recorded. Not sure why they didn’t just write some books on the subject.

Of course, the decision was made before Jessica ate one of them, so whether or not the remaining two would follow through with that plan is unclear.

Either way, Jessica is anxious over approaching secret hour and wonders if things she has learned and weapons she was given would be enough to protect her.

Then, it’s midnight.

Jessica isn’t planning to actually do anything. At first she tries to do some unpacking, but such a mundane task feels wrong in the blue light. She tries to read a dictionary for words with thirteen letters, but only finds one before her eyes start to hurt from the light. So, she just lies in bed, waiting for the hour to pass.

She hears a noise outside and checks the window, fearing the monsters coming. Instead, she discovers Jonathan. The dark times of a romantic subplot are upon us.

Once Jessica calms down from the shock of Jonathan’s sudden appearance and lowers her enchanted antenna, he explains that yeah, he’s another Midnighter. He learned about Jessica being one and where she lives from Dess. Dess would have told Jessica about him, too, but not in front of Rex, since Rex and Jonathan has some tensions between them, and Rex doesn’t like to talk about him.

I think we can take it as a confirmation that Dess wasn’t Jessica’s victim.

As for the tensions…


“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?”

Ah, yeah, I’m with Rex on this one. I mean, seriously, you are surrounded by monsters who literally served as the source of humanity’s fears, monsters powerful enough to fuck with the very fabric of time and space. Monsters that hunt humans, I should add. I say you are unlikely to find anything more serious in your whole life.

“Don’t worry about what Rex says,” Jonathan interrupted. “He’s way too
paranoid. He thinks no one should explore the blue time until they know all ten
thousand years of midnighter lore. That’s like reading a whole VCR manual just
to watch a movie. Which I’ve seen Rex actually do, by the way.”

Ah, no, it’s like driving a car without knowing traffic laws. Sure, for the most part just going with the flow works: watch out for cars before you slowing down, don’t slow down suddenly if there are cars behind you, make sure there are no cars blocking you if you want to change lines – that’s all a pretty intuitive stuff. But the moment there is a situation, like, say, a red light ahead of you, well, running blind would just get you killed, and you won’t have anyone else to blame but you.

God, what a dumbass.

So, anyway, Jonathan insist that darklings being after Jessica is just bad luck, and now everything should be OK. Jessica really wants to believe him, really wants that first day of the secret hour, when everything was beautiful instead of scaring to be back, so he manages to convince her to leave the safety of her bedroom (the room is protected by thirteen thumbnails being stuck around the window and the door) and go with him. Then his power is revealed: gravity has less of a hold on him during the secret hour, allowing him to jump really high. Everything he touches becomes light, too. Also, normal stuff he touches apparently returns into the frozen state after he releases it.

So, they fly around for some time, having fun, and come to a water tower at the edge of town where they land to rest a bit. They proceed to have an awkward conversation which I won’t bother to retell. It’s revealed that Jonathan eats a lot after flying. Indeed, in a previous scene with him, he was eating quite a lot, too. Now, he eats apples.

Yeah, he doesn’t live up.

Then a flying darkling appears:

“It wasn’t at all like the one from the night before. It shifted as it flew,
muscles rippling as it transformed from one shape to another—first a snake, then
a tiger, then a bird of prey, scales and fur and feathers all blurring together
on its crawling skin, the huge wings beating with the sound of a flag whipping
in the wind.

It could fly too, and quickly. It was headed straight toward them.

But Jonathan had seen lots of darklings before, Jessica reminded herself. He
had been out in midnight hundreds of times. He was faster than the bullies.

She looked back at his face. Jonathan’s mouth had dropped open.

Jessica knew instantly that he’d never seen a darkling like this one.”

I do so love when dumb decisions are followed by richly deserved consequences.

And that’s our thirteenth chapter, by the way. The book should have saved it for something more climatic, I say.

14
12:00 A.M.
BEASTS OF PREY

A chase ensues, with two Midnighters jumping and the darkling flying after them. At first it goes well, but as they get into town proper, they quickly discover they are too slow: various obstacles make it hard for the two of them to time their jumps, so they end up spinning in the air, allowing the darkling to get closer. They move back towards badlands and the desert, with plenty of open space.

At some point Jessica realizes her mother works near where they are, so they turn there. Her mother works on plane engineering, so her workspace has plenty of open space to move test planes around. As the two Midnighters jump through it, they hear screeches coming from badlands: slithers and more darklings are waiting for them.

As they jump over the place, Jessica wants to turn, but decides too late, so they didn’t have time to time their jump and are pulled apart. Jessica lands on the ground hard, and slithers quickly go after her. Jonathan appears a few moments later, but Jessica is sore all over, so their speed is minimal, plus they are surrounded on three sides. Jessica then notices a tall building made of steel, and they jump there.

They land on the building, and Jessica gives it the thirteen letter name she’s found earlier. The whole building lights up, burning slithers and briefly dispelling the blue light, turning night into day.

“The
world shifted into full color, the metal beams suddenly a dusty red. Jessica’s
face and hands turned pink, Jonathan’s light brown.”

So, the cast isn’t fully white, after all? Or is he just tanned?

Anyway, the moon is starting to set, and slithers with darklings retreat to badlands. Does that mean that they do freeze during normal time after all and don’t want to be around humans during that time?

Jonathan is impressed and surprised by what just happened. He explains that it’s pretty much impossible to enchant a whole building like that. Normally Midnighters are limited to chains and such. Dess can do more if the objects have “the right form,” whatever it may be. They chulk it up to the building being made of some really new alloy and possibly the moon setting affecting it.

Either way, they are safe now, but have a problem:

“Jonathan glanced at the moon. “Only a minute or so until the blue time runs
out. I guess we’ll be walking home tonight.”

“Not unless we get out of here.”

“What?”

“They do classified defense work here, Jonathan,” she said hurriedly. “My mom
got background-checked, interviewed by the FBI, and fingerprinted twice. There
are security guards all over and a big fence all around.”

So, is her mother a member of Delta Green?

Anyway, they do manage to jump out of the territory in time, though on the last jump they are nearly caught by the end of the secret hour while still in the air. Apparently, Jonathan’s power doesn’t transfer through a chain, so Jessica holds onto it, he holds another end, Jessica falls a few meters, Jonathan catches her, and they fall the rest of the way harmlessly, but with a greater momentum. That does rise a question of how her stuff is affected? I mean, Jonathan only holds her, so, by the same logic that his power doesn’t work on her when they both touch the same chain, his power shouldn’t work on weapons Jessica has with her that he doesn’t touch, so they would drag them down. Other items, too. Yet, it doesn’t appear to be the case.

But moving on before Beatrice appears again.

They laugh, relieved that they have escaped danger, and don’t even notice approaching police car.

15
12:01 A.M.
CURFEW

“Jonathan’s exhausted leg muscles could barely push him back to standing
again. He doubted he could even make a run for it. For the next few minutes his
body would feel like stone as it slowly readjusted to normal weight. Even
breathing took effort in these horrible moments after the secret hour ended.

A familiar claustrophobic feeling settled over him. He was trapped here in
normal time. Trapped by the cops, by the Bixby curfew, by the suffocating, inescapable blanket that was
gravity. Stuck like an insect drowning in glue.”

With this, the book attempts to explain Jonathan’s attitude and earn some sympathy for him. That would have worked fine if he weren’t actively dragging other people down with him. As it is, eh, he’s still a dumbass. At least with both darklings and now the police after him it seems to be treated as an actual flaw rather than a virtue.

“Think you can hide, Martinez?” a deep voice called, laughing. “I recognize
your pretty face.”

Hm. So, between the name and the skin color, it seems Jonathan is Latin American. It’s a shame that our one (or so it seems so far) token non-white character among the main cast is, well, him. Also pretty sure that between devil may care attitude and the troubles with police he plays into stereotypes.

We learn that Jonathan was detained a few times in the past, though never arrested. Breaking curfew doesn’t carry any punishment with it, even repeated offenses, kids just get delivered to their parents. So, Jonathan is calm since his father is mostly OK with it. He told Jonathan far too many tales about his own youth, during which he was actually arrested, so he can’t really object. No mention of Jonathan’s mother.

Jessica, naturally, takes the situation harder, not talking through the ride and burying her face in her palms.

She is dropped at her home, Jonathan drives some more with the police.

“She didn’t look fine, Jonathan.”

“That was an accident, like she told you.”

“Well, if she says any different, or her parents do, you are going to be one
unhappy hombre, Martinez.”

That’s kinda racist here at the end, Sheriff. On the other hand, given a situation with two kids alone in the dark, girl bruised all over and saying that she fell, it’s not exactly jumping to conclusions, so I can’t disagree with the general sentiment.

Anyway, it turns out that they don’t drive to Jonathan’s home. Rather, he’s going to spend two nights in police’s custody because in Oklahoma apparently parents can decide their kids should remain with the police if they can’t fetch them. The father is obligated to show up for hearing before a judicial officer, though, but he doesn’t work on weekends.

Jonathan is devastated over the news. Yeah, it’s like there are consequences for breaking the rules or something. I mean, with darklings around the curfew actually does serve a purpose. People probably disappear from time to time, which would be known to the police. So, it’s important to teach kids to follow that rule. Now, granted, Jonathan knows more about what’s going on and can defend himself, but it’s not like anyone knows about it. I understand why Midnighters don’t tell anyone about themselves: their lives kinda suck, and the secret hour serves as a sanctuary for them, a place where they can relax. Being intruded upon by other people, even indirectly, well, I understand why it doesn’t appeal for them. But on the other hand, they can’t exactly object to the logic of people trying to keep kids safe, either.

In good news, Jonathan actually feels guilty over getting Jessica in trouble and generally botching their first meeting during the secret hour, which makes him more sympathetic than he was at the beginning. It seems he at least can recognize his mistakes. Let’s see what he’ll learn out of them.

“The night? Not just one, Jonathan. You see, unlike your friendly sheriff’s
department, judicial hearing officers don’t work on the weekend.”

“What?”

“Your butt is mine until Monday morning.”

…OK, combined with the comment about pretty face earlier, that’s rather unnecessary creepy.

Well, that’s it for now. Tune in next time to find out who was Jessica’s victim.