Last time, some investigation and sex metaphors. Now, Machiavelli.
12
2:58 P.M.
PATIENCE
This title is better since it can refer to the chapter as a whole as well as to the title drop occuring during a conversation.
Jessica is worried over Jonathan and Dess not returning after school and thinking the worst. Since we know what happened, however, her worries are just annoying.
Constanza runs into her on her way out and asks what’s wrong. Jessica is unsure what she can tell Constanza, given the secrecy and all, so she talks about her trouble with Jonathan. She doesn’t get very far before school bus starts to leave, and she runs to catch it. Constanza stops her, however, and suggest a ride home since they don’t see each other that often now that Jessica is grounded.
Jessica agrees, and on their way they discuss Jonathan being inattentive during the day. Constanza says she gets it, and suggest Jessica should be patient (hey, title drop) and not bring it up until Jonathan does something really stupid he knows is stupid, so Jessica can hit him with all of her complains at once.
‘The problem with boys
is, you can’t tell them every time something annoys you. If you complain every
single second that Jonathan isn’t holding your hand, you look feeble and whiny
and desperate. So you have to hit him with all his flaws at once. Which means .
. .’ She put the car into gear. ‘Waiting until he does something that he knows
is bad and having a tally of all your complaints ready in your mind. Be
patient, but be prepared -that’s my motto.’
Ah… I’m really not sure Machiavelli’s advice on delivering all your grievances at once really applies to relationships. Seems like a better idea would be, I don’t know, have an honest talk about the issues bothering Jessica. Then again, they are teenagers.
Either way, before Jessica could give the advice much thought, they nearly run into Jonathan’s car, stopping just short of it. Jonathan and Dess look shaken, so Jessica quickly parts with Constanza and goes to them, still thinking it’s about the previous night.
13
11:45 P.M.
INTRUDER
Jessica lies in bed waiting for midnight and being paranoid. All lights are turned off, light on a clock is concealed by clothes, all to make it difficult for anyone to see into her window. She hears a noise inside the house and sees a shadow under her door where the light outside creeps in. Imagining the worst, she digs in her box of weapons for heavy bicycle lock and sneaks to the door, preparing to hit the intruder.
It’s Beth, however, not the man with the camera. Beth explains that she noticed things being weird: Jessica’s clothes are always dirty in the morning, she had moods unusual to her, especially since she’s grounded, some other stuff.
Jessica tries to bullshit her way out of it and make Beth leave, complaining about her sneaking around and spying on her and worrying Beth would talk about it either with their parents or with someone at school.
Beth switches gears halfway through the conversation, though:
‘Beth, you don’t know what you’re talking
about.’
‘That’s right, I don’t. I’ve never met this
guy; he could be a total psycho for all I know’ Her eyes fell to the floor.
Jess, I’m worried about you.’
Jessica blinked. ‘You’re what?’
‘Worried. About. You.’ Beth pulled her knees up
onto the bed and hugged them. The superior smile had faded from her face. ‘You
never got brought home by the cops before, or snuck around, or lied to me.’
That’s a nice sentiment. Beth so far isn’t really a fleshed out character. She is mostly around to be bratty and demonstrate Jessica being good by trying to reach out to her. Getting her involved in the plot is a good opportunity to expand her characterization and maybe make her relevant to the story.
Jessica remembers how they were never lying to each other before and prepares to tell Beth everything, but then…
“The words didn’t come, of course. She would
hate herself if she said them. For years the others had kept the secret from
everyone – friends, family, the police who enforced Bixby’s merciless curfew.
It wasn’t convenient, but what else could they do? Rex said that lots of people
used to know about midnight, but look what had happened – one day the
midnighters had all just disappeared. Secrecy was their only real protection.
Her shades were drawn and windows locked right now because someone out there
knew.”
Ah… no. Secrecy is your enemy. Didn’t you listen to Rex at all? Everything was fine back when everyone in Bixby knew about the secret hour. It’s when the population exploded and there suddenly were a lot of people who didn’t know the truth troubles started. At this point, the most logical conclusion is that someone stumbled upon a way to communicate with darklings without knowing what they are and made a deal based on misinformation.
You aren’t in danger now because somebody knows. You are in danger because wrong people know while the police is in the dark, so you can’t ask them for protection. (Well, you can’t ask them for protection from a darkling cult or whatever they are, you totally should ask them for protection from a creepy guy with a camera you’ve noticed under your window.)
So, is this a new reason for Midnighters to protect their secrecy? Them being afraid of whatever happened to the previous generations? Because I’m disappointed in it. The apparent reason for secrecy in the previous book – Midnighters hoarding the secret hour for themselves – I liked. It was stupid and selfish and short-sighted, but it was exactly what a bunch of ostracized teenagers would do if they had an access to a cool secret world with only minimal danger all to themselves. The current situation, though? It’s different. The danger bled out of the secret world into the normal reality, and against that kind of danger normal authorities can protect you. So go tell them about this stuff.
“And there were worse things than the man with
the camera. Jessica’s imagined vision of the half-thing came into her mind.
Midnight wasn’t just secret; it was full of horrors. She couldn’t dump her
nightmares on her little sister – it wasn’t fair. The whole idea was stupid and
selfish.”
Yes indeed. Tell your parents. Tell the police. Tell people whose job is to be in charge and make decisions affecting lives of people.
But of course we can’t have it, so Jessica tricks Beth into looking into a closet. At first she just wants to distract her for a minute, so she wouldn’t look when midnight comes, but Beth senses something wrong and refuses to look away from Jessica, so Jessica shoves her into the closet, locking her inside.
“Looking back at the room, she was momentarily
proud of herself for resisting the temptation to tell secrets. She had done the
adult thing and protected Beth from the truth. Maybe she would even apologize
when her littie sister emerged from the closet.”
To be fair, it almost seems like the book is aware it’s a stupid thing to do, judging by the tone. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it, and the book just fucks with me again. Time will tell.
14
12:00 A.M.
ACARICIANDOTE
Jonathan and Jessica are flying and looking at Melissa’s car from above. Melissa and Rex aren’t there. Jonathan and Jessica talk briefly about the recent event, revealing that Jessica is finally clued in the mystery of the darkling house and related stuff. Jessica notices Jonathan is wearing a jacket. In case he would need to follow the stalker or something, he explains. Jessica tells him he should go to her room instead of walking all the way home should he get delayed after the secret hour, though soon she remembers Beth being stuck in the closet.
Before she can explain, Rex and Melissa arrive on the scene, being unusually cheery and holding hands (though Melissa still wears gloves). They talk about recent events some more.
‘Looks like my grand theft domino has things on
hold for the moment,’ Rex said.
Jessica frowned. Leave it to Rex to be
convinced the threat was over because he had his hands on the flamebringer
domino. It figured. That was the way he saw the world: control the symbols,
control everything.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’Jonathan said. ‘All we
really know is that they’re not hanging around tonight. And anyway, midnight’s
not the natural time for them to pull something. If they really wanted to hurt
one of us, wouldn’t they do it in the middle of the day?’
Well, good to see that Rex’s overconfidence is acknowledged by the text.
Rex then finally reveals the receiver of the letter. He does it casually, assuming Jessica already knows, revealing Jonathan didn’t tell her. Jonathan excuses himself by saying there was a lot to tell for one car ride.
The letter was addressed to Ernesto Grayfoot. Jessica puts two and two together and objects to the idea Constanza could be involved. Rex assures her that she probably isn’t, but her family most likely is. He also wants Jessica to ask Constanza about Ernesto under a pretense of researching local history, since Grayfoot is an old name and all. Jessica is still upset.
‘But it won’t make sense to me,’Jessica cried.
‘I don’t want to use her. Constanza’s my only friend . . .’
There was an awkward moment’s silence.
‘I mean, besides you guys,’ she added lamely.
Yeah, not the best thing to say. Here we finally see the conflict of Jessica being stuck between two worlds getting some development, though it would have been stronger if there were more moments with Constanza. She doesn’t really get enough screen time to serve as a centerpiece of a conflict.
Surprisingly, Melissa is the one to smooth things over, relatively speaking.
‘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.’
So, yeah, it’s clear Melissa has a very strong “Us vs Them” mentality, hence her general dismissal of normal people, and apparently Jessica made her way into the “Us” group.
With that the discussion ends. Rex assures Jessica everything’s fine. He’ll look into the situation himself. Jessica thanks him, but promises to speak with Constanza. Two groups part ways.
In the next scene Jonathan and Jessica sit on the roof of a shop mart, moping about their respective faux pas. Not telling Jessica the news sooner for Jonathan and saying the stupid thing for Jessica. Jonathan also throws rocks in the air.
“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.”
Technically, it’s consistent with how it was in the previous book, when Jonathan picked a leaf out of the air, let it drop, and it became frozen again. It’s possible that the leaf merely fell a very short distance before losing its impulse. Still a rather weird thing for Jonathan to have, and so far it wasn’t really important to the plot. At least the book acknowledges it doesn’t really know what’s up with that instead of inventing some explanation like with coordinates.
Jonathan laments that he feels useless during the normal time, explaining to Jessica his metaphor of Flatland.
‘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.’
Yeah, a rather contrived comparison.
Jessica, remembering Constanza’s advice to bring your grievances all at once, asks if that’s why he never holds her hand during normal time. Jonathan apparently wasn’t really aware of it and apologizes.
He then gives Jessica a present he prepared as an apology for not telling her about Grayfoot family earlier. It’s a silver chain which belonged to his mother (who’s apparently dead. No mention of the cause, so I would assume it’s YA Protagonist Parent Syndrome, a deadly and common disease). There are thirteen charms on the chain – tiny house, a cat, etc. It’s apparently enchanted, though I don’t think silver could be enchanted very well, if gold and aluminum couldn’t. Well, maybe it’s silver in color only.
As you may guess, the chain is named after the chapter title. Apparently, it’s a Spanish word meaning “touching you.” I don’t speak Spanish, so I don’t know if it’s in any way accurate.
Jessica likes it and drops heavy subjects in favor of flying back to her home. They arrive safely with five minutes to spare and part with a kiss. Jessica takes position right before the secret hour ends and lets Beth out before she can scream. Beth instantly notices the differences: a stray leaf in Jessica’s hair, her face being red from climbing around, the chain on her wrist. Jessica bullshits that she wanted to show the chain given to her by Jonathan to Beth but didn’t want her to see where she hides it, making Beth think she hides it outside and question her sanity with window-climbing. But she seems to buy the story and soon leaves the room.
Well, that’s it for now. Tune in next time for some historical revelations.