Sorry for current delays. All work and no play makes illhousen a dull boy.
11:10 A.M.
MONDAY BLUES
The chapter starts with Constanza telling Jessica about the new rumor. It quickly becomes apparent that the rumor is about Rex and Melissa’s doings last night. The family living in the house they vandalized found their home trashed, twelve knives stuck in a door. Naturally, they called police, and then someone working with the cops told the story to their kid. From there, it’s spread across the school, with details added with each iteration. The most popular version is demonic worshiping.
Jessica is worried over the number of knives combined with Rex and Melissa being absent from school. Which would be nice if the previous chapter has ended with Rex preparing to face the darkling. As it is, we know they are fine, so this attempt to build up tension is kinda pointless.
Jessica meets with Dess in the library and shares the news. Dess is unconcerned at first, saying rumors like that are always circulating in Bixby, and most of it is nonsense. Then Jessica says Rex and Melissa didn’t show up to help her with the stalker problem and aren’t in school now, which does make Dess worried. They meet with Jonathan on lunch break, and Dess goes to make a call to Melissa and Rex to find out if they are OK.
So far this chapter was pretty meh. The knowledge that Melissa and Rex are fine drains away any tension, and not much happens otherwise. Still, there are a few interesting moments.
“In the secret hour it was always automatic – fingers brushing, the light pressure of shoulder against shoulder, or arms intertwined. But in daylight Jonathan didn’t seem to see the point of physical contact. As if he didn’t realize there was more to life than flying.
Still, Jessica told herself, it wasn’t like she couldn’t hold his hand, right now. Just reach over and take it. How lame was this? Waiting for him to do everything and hating him for not reading her mind?
Of course, if she did reach out and he pulled away, no matter how slightly, it would really, really suck.”
Jonathan continues to regard normal time as ephemeral, it seems. I heavily suspect that the resolution for this conflict would be lame “and then Jessica brought it up, and Jonathan started enjoying her company regardless of time of day,” but the potential for something interesting is here, especially if the book were to emphasize Jessica’s dislike of the secret hour. She would be happy without knowing any of Bixby’s secrets, without entering that secret world, while Jonathan can truly be happy only in it. So, if they want their relationship to work, some middle ground must be found, which would make for a nice subplot. As it is, though, Jessica is way too chill about the secret hour now that she has the power to fight back, so the only conflict is expanding her relationship with Jonathan beyond that time, which is less interesting.
Returning to the plot, such as it is, Dess returns, reporting that Melissa doesn’t answer, and Rex’s father is incoherent.
“Rex must have doubled his meds.”
…Pretty sure teenagers are not allowed to regulate medication of mentally ill people. What’s the situation here legally, anyway? Does Rex’s father still has custody over him even though he’s obviously unsuited to the task? Is his condition a secret from the authorities? That’s the only sensible explanation here, but then how Rex gets the meds? You’d think someone would get suspicious over a teenager wearing all black, with hair dyed black and skull rings on his fingers buying lots of anti-depressants or whatever he uses.
Plus, Rex himself said in the previous book he was detained a few times by the police, and the way it works, he must have been dropped off to his father, so the police has to be aware of the situation at least somewhat.
So, is it ignored? It’s not impossible, worse shit gets ignored sometimes when people don’t want to deal with it, but some exploration of it would be nice.
Especially since…
‘What’s the deal with Rex’s dad, anyway?’Jessica said. ‘It’s so sad, the way he is.’
Jonathan cleared his throat.
‘Him, sad?’ Dess snorted. ‘It was sadder before the accident.’
‘What do you mean?’
An unpleasant look crossed Dess’s face. ‘Well, all of it happened before I met Rex, but I know he wasn’t the world’s greatest dad.’
‘Oh. Still.’ Jessica remembered the drool on the old man’s chin, the lost expression in his eyes.
Dess shook her head. ‘No, really. Save your pity. Ask Rex about the spiders under the house sometime.’
Yeah, I would like some elaboration on what’s going on. I do know that the story of accident and how it was before is going to be revealed, but I don’t remember if it would be explained how the authorities regarded the situation. Were they willfully ignorant? Did Rex and Melissa go out of their way to conceal the truth? Something else?
In any case, Jonathan and Dess decide to skip class and go see Melissa. Jessica remains in school.
Also, I think it’s the first chapter so far where the title refers to the chapter as a whole rather than to a specific and often minor event. There were chapters before without a blatant title drop, and this is one of them, too.
10
12:14 P.M.
DESSOMETRICS
Dess and Jonathan drive to Rex’s house, Dess mostly thinking about her projects of mapping the city and finding patterns in coordinates. They arrive and are greeted by a weirdly upbeat Rex and melissa.
“Dess frowned. Rex seemed weirdly upbeat, especially if they’d had a messy rumble last night. And Melissa’s hair was wet, as if she’d just showered. She wasn’t in headphones and was even managing to smile behind her sunglasses. If it were any other two people . . . Dess shivered and reminded herself that Melissa might be listening. Plus there was no way – as in literally No Possible Way anything like that had happened.”
You know, in the previous readthrough I’ve joked about flying being a metaphor for sex, but here the books speaks about sex nearly openly, as well as when it talks about Melissa and Rex touching. It’s relatively rare for YA, though I guess Melissa being unable to have a prolonged physical contact is how the books gets away with it.
Anyway, Rex tells what happened, and Dess concludes that he isn’t so much giddy as nearly hysterical after spending all night thinking about what happened. Same goes for Melissa.
Jonathan wants to warn Jessica about the darkling supporters right away since they may very well go after her, but Rex shows one of the dominoes and says he’s stolen dominoes with symbols related to Jessica and the ones that could be used to spell names. There are hundreds of dominoes, so a few of them missing wouldn’t be noticed for some time, and darklings wouldn’t be able to give orders related to Jessica.
I don’t know, can’t they just rephrase stuff without using a few symbols? Like, instead of ordering “Go after Jessica/Flame-bringer,” couldn’t they order “Go after the girl we’ve talked about” or something? Seems like a glaring mistake to me.
Dess brings up another possibility: since the “halfling” is a human, she can just write stuff. Rex shoots the possibility down, though.
‘Even through her, the darklings couldn’t think in anything as new as English. The lore symbols are ten thousand years old, older than any language spoken today’ His voice grew soft. ‘That’s why they had to use a seer.’
Hm, you know, if understanding those symbols is a part of seer’s power, it at least explains why they are used instead of normal languages. Preservation of knowledge: even ten thousands years after, seers can still understand what the first Midnighters wrote. That’s actually neat.
Anyway, they talk about the darkling house and the people there some more, speculating they are the ones who took down the old generation of Midnighters, especially since it seems they have safe houses invisible for Melissa: she can’t mindcast there properly.
Dess perks up at it and says they should go there with her, explaining her little project and saying that the house’s coordinates would help her to crack the system.
‘I just need a paradigm!’
Dess confirmed for a mage.
Rex and Melissa are reluctant to return there, confirming they are indeed spooked, which pleases Dess. They try to distract her by saying Melissa got some numbers from Angie’s head related to something being build for the halfling. Dess still insist on going to the darkling house, however, and pushes Jonathan to follow her.
At the end of the chapter the title comes up:
“Trying not to think any more about what had passed between the two of them, Dess imagined having a whole branch of mathematics named after her. Dessology? Desstochastics?”
Welcome back, pointless title drops, I didn’t miss you.
11
1:45 P.M.
MORE FLATLAND
…The book doesn’t even try now, does it? If I encounter a chapter titled FLATLAND: LAND HARDER, I’m going to kill someone.
Dess and Jonathan drive on his father’s car towards the darkling house. Jonathan complains that “Flatland” at sixty miles per hour is still “Flatland,” killing any hope that the chapter title would have anything to do with its content.
On the way, they talk about Melissa and how Rex touched her before by accident. Apparently, Jonathan didn’t tell Dess or Jessica (especially Jessica, he notes) that he touched Melissa before, back during the climax of the previous book.
I must say, touching telepath as a metaphor for sex starts to creep me out, given how it’s described.
“‘Touched her.’Jonathan felt a faint shadow of the dizziness come over him again – the nauseating rush of thoughts and emotions, the despair that permeated Melissa, her revulsion at those few seconds of human contact. Since that night he hadn’t seen her the same way. He could detect something behind her scowl other than her hatred for humanity — something fragile.”
Basically, it’s not pleasing for everyone involved, and when you combine it with sex, well, it goes places. I’m not even sure where the book goes with that metaphor, and I kinda half-suspect it’s mostly accidental: the author came up with an idea of telepaths being touch-adverse, then noticed the “touch+teenagers” connection and ran with it. Certainly would explain the lack of subtlety.
Moving on.
‘Rex says in the old days, mindcast-ers could control their ability. They could tolerate crowds, even transmit information through a handshake. They were the ones who passed on the news, who bound everyone together.’
“We are army of one.”
More titbits from history. I mostly like how it’s handled: the information is spread out through the book, intersected by the plot, so it’s not one giant info-dump. It could be better, though, as right now some of those bits are only tangentially connected to the topic of conversation (like Rex explaining the old days in response to Jessica’s stalker problems), or the book clearly creates artificial plot points for the purpose of bringing them up (like here, where Rex just happened to touch Melissa the night before a new bit of information was supposed to be revealed instead of a year before). Basically, the book knows you are supposed to integrate exposition into text, but has some trouble with executing the concept.
Anyway, basically Rex wants to see if Melissa can build up tolerance to her powers, so they experiment with touching.
On their way to the darkling house, they are stopped by some security guys. Due to the whole thing with “demonic rituals,” the area is closed for non-residents, so they are turned away. Jonathan circles the area, finding a spot with a termite mound near a fence allowing him to jump over. Dess reluctantly gives him her GPS thing to capture the house’s coordinates, and he goes inside.
He locates the right house quickly as it’s right across the house that Melissa and Rex vandalized, which still has a broken window. Jonathan captures the coordinates, but then decides that maybe there is some clue to be found about house owners. He spots a mailbox with mail inside and retrieves a letter. However, he is noticed by a woman from the vandalized house. He tries to act natural, but it’s clear she’s suspicious, which is not surprising given her situation. A security car heads their way, attracting woman’s attention, and Jonathan runs behind the darkling house, jumping over a fence to some other house’s backyard, then repeating the process a few times.
“The overweight rent-a-cops would never catch him on foot, even with his ankle screaming with every step.”
Yeah, that’s what I call “pity injuries.” His ankle was damaged when he jumped from the roof all the way back in the first chapter. The book remembers it, but it doesn’t actually prevent him from doing stuff he does, it doesn’t hinder him in a real way. It’s just here so we can feel sorry for him, same as catching cold, which book also references from time to time and which also has little effect on the plot.
Anyway, he successfully evades the guards trying to follow him in their car and makes his way back to the spot of the fence he jumped over earlier. There is no termite mound on this side, however, neither there is anything else to help him jump. Yeah, should have seen it coming and maybe throw a spare wheel over the fence or something.
He does find a tire just when the security car gets near, and uses it to jump, which is a rather cheap resolution.
The guards give up since they are so not going to jump over a fence, and it’s miles away from proper entrance. For some time, Jonathan and Dess just sit in their car, Jonathan telling her about what happened and handing over the GPS receiver. Dess checks out the coordinates and exclaims she gets the pattern now.
“Jonathan felt himself smiling too. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, getting his heart beating. Not as good as flying, of course.”
Yeah, that little conflict seems to be heading towards resolution without even being properly developed. Disappointing.
While Dess is busy thinking about numbers, Jonathan checks the letter. He doesn’t like what he sees, and neither does Dess when she reads it too. The letter itself is not important: some bill. But the house owner is apparently related to someone Jessica knows. Yeah, I wonder who it could be.
Well, with that little cliffhanger, the chapter ends. Tune in next time for, you won’t believe it, more false tension courtesy of Jessica.