Scott Westerfeld: Blue Noon

He made a noise then, right in Timmy’s face, a horrific sound that Rex had never heard before, much less produced himself. His mouth still open wide, the back of his throat cinched tightly closed, a breath forcing its way out with a long and shuddering hisssss —a mix of fingernails on a chalkboard, the shriek of a hawk, and the last rattle of a punctured lung. The noise seemed to coil in the air for a moment, wrapping around Timmy’s shuddering frame, squeezing the breath from him.

The hiss lingered in the empty hallway like the echoes of a shout, disappearing into the buzzing of the fluorescent lights.

Timmy didn’t move. The twisted half smile stayed on his face, muscles frozen, as if some careless surgeon had snipped a nerve and he was stuck with the half-formed expression for the rest of his life.

“Weakness,” Rex said softly, the hiss still ringing in his voice.

His body softened then, whatever demon had slipped into him departing as swiftly as it had come. His jaw relaxed, and Rex’s muscles lost their inhuman rigidity—but Timmy still didn’t move. He looked thoroughly frozen, like a rat that had just lost a staring contest with a python.

He didn’t make another sound as Rex walked away.

Halfway to the gym, Rex’s heart was still pounding with the weirdness of what had just happened. He felt elated, confident, and powerful, finally cleansed of the fear that had stalked him through the halls of Bixby High School every day for the last two years.

But he was also afraid. He’d tried to fend off the darkling part of him, but it had taken control nonetheless.

Still, the experience had left him feeling so good —purposeful and somehow more complete. And he hadn’t really lost it, had he? The predator had drawn its claws, but it hadn’t used them. He hadn’t struck for the pulse in Timmy’s throat, the easy kill of the straggler.

Maybe the darkling side of him maintained a balance with his human half. Perhaps Rex Greene was still sane.

For now.

She watched the pep rally with awestruck fascination.

Melissa had been forced to attend dozens of these things before, of course, but she’d never really seen one. Battered by the mind noise, huddled in the back with eyes closed and fists clenched, the old Melissa had understood pep rallies about as well as a bird sucked through a jet engine comprehended aircraft design.

But the crowd no longer terrorized her, the horde of other minds no longer threatened to erase her own. Using the memories Madeleine had given her, the generations of technique passed on among mindcasters, she could rise above the tempest, ride its swells like a buoy in a storm.

Finally she could taste it all….

The football team strutting in Lycra before the crowd, their testosterone and bluster mixed with a bitter backwash flavor—the growing realization that once again, they were going to lose every game this year. The clique of pretty girls clustered together a few rows down, surrounded by a force field of disdain for all the nobodies around them—unaware of how much the nobodies hated them right back. The bored minds of teachers stationed around the edges of the gym, jonesing for cigarettes and more coffee, quietly relieved that first period had been superseded. The group of freshman boys camped on the first row of bleachers, watching the cheerleaders’ skirts fly up, their horny thoughts as sharp as sweat licked off an upper lip.

Melissa found it all hysterically funny. Why hadn’t she ever understood this simple fact before? Why hadn’t anyone told her? High school wasn’t a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived.

It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track.

Through the crowd noise the minds of the other midnighters reached her, their various flavors coming through loud and clear. The three of them sat together—about as far away from Melissa as they could. In particular, she tasted every cold glance from Dess, who was glowering behind dark glasses, her mind still full of acid hatred for what had happened ten days ago.

Melissa did feel bad about that—no one knew better than she how vile it was having your mind wrenched open against your will. But there hadn’t been any choice. If she hadn’t gone in and dredged up Dess’s secrets, Rex would be a full-fledged darkling now instead of…

Well, instead of whatever he had become.

Jonathan and Jessica sat close to each other, their fingers intertwined, separated from everyone around them by their coupleness. Of course, they would turn and talk to Dess every once in a while, throwing her a bone. Jessica had witnessed what Melissa had done to Dess and felt almost as bad as if she’d done it herself. Her thoughts were often layered with a sickly survivor’s guilt: If only I had stopped Melissa, blah, blah, blah…

Of course, Jessica’s indignation wasn’t nearly as bad as what lurked in Jonathan’s mind. Ever since he’d touched Melissa and felt what it was like to be her, a rancid pity polluted him from head to toe.

Of course, the joke was on him. Because being Melissa didn’t feel like that anymore.

It felt sweet.

“Sucker,” she whispered, and let herself be buoyed again by the chanting crowd.

Loverboy made his way in about fifteen minutes late, slipping easily past the teacher monitoring the door.

Melissa tasted his mind through the chaotic energies of the pep rally. Despite all the confusion he carried now, Rex’s thoughts still reached her on their own special channel, even clearer than those of the other midnighters’. She knew instantly that something unexpected had happened to him in the empty hallways of the school. His mind was bright and buzzing, like just after they’d kissed.

But whatever had happened had also unnerved him. Melissa felt him scan the crowd anxiously, relaxing only when he spotted her atop the closest bleachers to the door. He made his way up with soft, effortless steps, as fluid as a cat across a rooftop.

Melissa smiled. Watching Rex show off his new feline grace was one of her great pleasures.

“Get what you wanted?” she asked as he settled beside her.

“Oh, my English book.” He shook his head. “Forgot all about it, actually. Had some trouble on the way.”

“Yeah, I figured that.” She could taste it more clearly now: Underneath his excitement Rex was bubbling with the darkling flavor he sometimes had now—the sour lemon of a young hunter’s mind jazzed by the smell of prey. “Hmm. Didn’t eat anybody, did you?”

“Not quite. But it was a pretty close thing.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Want to see?” His eyes flashed.

“Of course, Loverboy.” She smiled and placed her hand over his.

The darkling taste redoubled, shuddering through her acid and electric, like kissing an old car battery that still carried some juice. The surging taste of it blotted out the insipid flavors of the pep rally.

She felt Rex’s new predatory confidence, his worries about losing control, the fading buzz of his wild transformation. Someone had threatened him, she realized, had actually dared to get into his face. Sucker.

And there was something else… an unexpected cluster of memories carried on top of Rex’s spinning thoughts.

Not a darkling flavor, but something fearful and human.

Melissa pulled her hand away, staring into the whorls of her palm to puzzle over the strange images: a rattler cut in two by someone’s dad in a backyard, its fangs snapping together in its death throes. The two snake halves squirming for thirty minutes on either side of the shovel that had bisected them, as if trying to rejoin each other and wreak revenge.