Scott Westerfeld - Blue Noon

Everyone was quiet for a moment as Constanza’s words gradually sank in. Jessica felt her own pulse pounding in her fingertips and saw Dess lower her book slowly so that she could see the other girls. Even Ms. Thomas shot them a glance, intrigued by their sudden silence.

Liz spoke first. “Right away?”

“Like… when?” Maria asked.

Constanza shook her head, her mouth slightly open, as if she still couldn’t believe it herself. “Well, they’re holding auditions in a couple of weeks, right about when Grandpa and my cousins are all moving out there. So he said I have to be there before the end of this month or the whole thing’s off. So in a couple of weeks or so, it’s goodbye, Bixby!”

“You’re kidding!” said Jen.

“You are so psychotically lucky !” said Maria.

“I repeat: I hate you!” said Liz. “And you’ve got to have a going-away party!”

Jessica didn’t say anything. Suddenly the library’s fluorescent lights were buzzing too loud for her to think clearly. The old man and his family moving, this agent for Constanza—all of it was happening way too fast for any innocent explanation to be believed.

Constanza’s last words rang in her ears: Goodbye, Bixby…

Jessica glanced over at Dess and saw the polymath drop her trig book onto her lap and pull out a few pieces of paper. She hunched over them, scribbling furiously, filling page after page with grids drawn in blue ink. One of the pages fell to the floor….

Jessica squinted and saw that it was divided into seven squares across and five down, like a wall calendar. Each of the squares was filled with cryptic formulas in tiny, manic handwriting.

She closed her eyes and did a few simple calculations herself.

It was the eighth of October today and she knew from her father’s annoying little rhyme that October had thirty-one days.

The end of the month was just over three weeks away.

“Okay, guys,” Dess said. “There’s some good news and some bad news.”

The others looked at her tiredly, already shell-shocked from the weirdness of the last fifty-three hours. Dess was glad she’d waited until all five of them were here; no sense explaining this twice.

Dess found it oddly comforting to be sitting here at the old corner table, the one farthest from the windows, where she and Rex and the Vile One had always eaten together, back before Melissa had revealed her totally evil side. The lunchroom rumbled along around them in its familiar state of chaos, daylighters jockeying for prime table space, unaware of the major trouble that was on its way.

Rex, of course, spoke up first. “Okay. What’s the bad news?”

Dess shook her head. “Sorry, Rex. But it’s one of those things where the good news has to come first. Otherwise there’s no punch line.”

“Come on, Dess,” Jessica said. “This is serious. Don’t you think this is serious?”

“Good question.” Dess stared down at her pile of extremely rough calculations. On the one hand, all their information had come from Constanza Grayfoot, which made it inherently suspect. Her instant TV-star status had sounded more like a psycho-cheerleader wet dream than a prophecy of the end times. Dess often wondered how the same family that had managed to undo thousands of years of midnighter rule in Bixby had also produced Constanza.

But as the girl’s revelations in study hall had gotten weirder and weirder, Dess had stopped smirking and done her own calculations. The numbers were grim.

The four of them stared at her expectantly, but she just waited. That was the good thing about being the one who actually did the math. Other people had to play by your rules.

Finally Jessica sighed. “Okay, Dess. What’s the good news?”

Dess allowed herself a victorious smile. “Well, it doesn’t look like the whole world is going to end.”

That got a reaction. Rex raised both eyebrows, and Jonathan managed to stop eating for five whole seconds. Jessica was already freaking out, of course, but her expression angsted up a notch. And Melissa… Well, the bitch goddess looked like she always did at lunch: a bit pained by all the mind chaos of the cafeteria, even though she was supposedly in control these days.

“Of course, the math isn’t 100 percent sure at this point,” Dess admitted.

“So wait,” Rex said. “What’s the bad news, then?”

“The bad news is that Bixby County, including the whole area of the blue time as we know it, plus definitely a big chunk of Broken Arrow and probably Tulsa, and possibly the top half of Oklahoma City—and hell, let’s just throw in everything from Wichita to Dallas to Little Rock while we’re at it—might very well get sucked into the blue time. In about three weeks.”

Dess took a deep breath, feeling a rush of relief now that the proclamation had been made. It was sort of like being the first astronomer to spot one of those big dinosaur-extermination-sized asteroids on its way toward Earth. Sure, this was majorly unpleasant news for everyone, including Dess personally, but at least she got to announce it. Doing the calculations always gave Dess a feeling of control. After all, it was better to be one of the astronomers headed for the hills than, say, one of the dinosaurs.

“And you just found this out,” Rex said slowly, “in study hall?”

“The library is a wonderful place to learn new things, Rex.”

“It was Constanza,” Jessica said.

“You got this from that cheerleader?” Jonathan snorted. “Well, that makes me feel a lot better.”

Jessica gave him a nasty look. “This isn’t about Constanza. Her grandfather—who’s definitely not a cheerleader—knows something. He’s evacuating his whole family.”

“Evacuating?” Rex said. “But they don’t even live in Bixby.”

“That’s the point, Rex.” Dess spread her hands. “Remember when I said the blue time might be expanding? Well, it looks like Broken Arrow isn’t far enough away from the darklings anymore. So the Grayfoots are bailing out, running away, heading for the hills. Got it?”

Rex paused for a moment before saying, “That’s… interesting.”

“And how far away is the old guy going?” Dess continued. “Tulsa? Nope. Oklahoma City? Sorry, too close. What about Houston, oilman’s paradise? Five hundred miles away but still not far enough, apparently. Because he’s taking himself and his whole extended family, including his annoying granddaughter, all the way to California.”

“Yeah,” Jessica added. “And there’s not much oil business in LA.”

Dess leaned back and crossed her arms, waiting for their tiny little brains to catch up. She wished she had a map to show them. When astronomers in movies had to explain that the world was getting clobbered, they always had those fancy computer simulations to make the disaster come to life, or at least a whiteboard.

“But how does he know anything?” Flyboy asked, his jaws still working on a peanut butter sandwich. “Anathea’s dead. There’s no other halfling to translate for them. So the Grayfoots are cut off from the darklings, aren’t they?”

“Exactly,” Rex said. “And probably that’s why Grandpa’s freaking out. Maybe since the darklings have stopped answering his messages, he believes those words we left for him: YOU’RE NEXT.”

Jessica shot Dess a puzzled look. Apparently she hadn’t thought of that one.

Dess had, though. “I admit he’s afraid of the darklings, Rex. You made sure of that. But he’s not just nervous; he’s working on a schedule.”

“A schedule?” Rex leaned forward. “How do you mean?”