Scott Westerfeld - Blue Noon

She looked at her watch, which she’d reset to regular Bixby time—it had gained twenty minutes during the eclipse. Her bus would be leaving soon. If she got on it and her father showed up looking for her later, he would go ballistic and ground her again. Of course, maybe this was all a trick to make her miss the bus, forcing her to walk home so then she could be re-grounded for showing up late.

Unless she’d forgotten something. Jessica searched her memory for any change in plans. Since the weird events of this morning, her mind had been a little vague. All day she’d kept expecting time to freeze again and blue amber to capture everyone around her. Every lull in the noise of lunchtime had made her jump as she’d wondered if the world of motion and sunlight and other human beings was fading out for good.

Finally Jessica spotted the familiar car, Beth’s head visible in the front seat next to her father’s, and suddenly she remembered why he was late. Beth had demanded to be picked up at the junior high school on the other side of town so she wouldn’t have to walk home in her humiliating new marching band uniform.

“Oh, right,” Jess said, smiling. Her little sister was a majorette again.

She ran through the horde of cars, opened the door, and slid herself into the backseat.

Beth whirled around. “Not one word.”

Jessica smiled at her. “I was just going to say that you look ravishing in purple and gold.”

“Dad! She’s making fun of me!” She turned to him. “You said she wasn’t supposed to make fun of me!”

“Jess…”

“I just said ravishing. Ravishing is not a bad thing. Dad, explain to Beth how poor kids in Bangladesh would love to wear such a ravishing costume.”

“Stop talking about it, Jess!” Beth cried.

“Girls …” Don Day’s tone was still only vaguely threatening as he concentrated on guiding the car out of the traffic jam.

“Could you just ground her again and get it over with!” Beth shouted.

“Beth! That is so not cool!”

“Will both of you please be quiet!” their father pleaded. In an attempt to be scary he fixed Jessica with a stern look as he backed the car up into the clear, then put it into forward gear, and stared at Beth for a meaningful second before accelerating out onto the road.

Jessica settled back into her seat, unbeaten. “Anyway, I’m not even really grounded right now.”

“Yes, you are,” Beth said.

“Okay, I am.” Jessica waited for a moment, then played her final trump card. “So, Dad, you know my one night a week off from my grounding? Could I have it, say… tonight?” She sat back and smiled. Her parents had granted her this limited reprieve a few days after she’d been brought home by the police. One day a week—a solemn promise. It had been a little suspicious, Mom agreeing to change a punishment once it had been meted out, especially now that Jessica knew what Rex and Melissa could get up to with people’s minds.

But at the moment Jessica was willing to use the exception for all it was worth.

“That is so lame,” Beth said. “Dad, tell her that’s lame.”

“That is pretty lame, Jess.”

“But you said one day a week.”

“And you’ve taken four free days. And you were grounded a month, which is four weeks.”

Jessica’s jaw dropped open at this unjust change of definition. “But you said, and I quote, ‘Thirty days hath—’ ”

“That’s enough, Jessica.” His voice had suddenly moved to fully threatening mode. “Or September will have sixty days this year.”

Jessica swallowed. For once, he sounded like he really meant it.

Beth turned from the front seat and gave Jessica a worried look, hostilities briefly suspended by their father’s outburst. Since coming to Bixby, Don Day had been jobless, a condition that had gradually turned into shiftless, then shirtless, and finally spineless. It had been a while since he’d gotten up the energy to raise his voice.

In fact, Jessica realized, it had been exactly thirty days—he’d yelled a lot when the police had brought her home for breaking Bixby’s curfew with Jonathan. Maybe the end of the grounding was freaking him out and the concept of her being free to wander the streets of Bixby between the hours of three and 10 P.M.. was too much for him. He wasn’t like Mom, too tired out from having to impress her new bosses to obsess over anything but work.

Maybe it was time to change the subject.

“So, Beth, how was band practice?” she asked.

“It was lame.”

“You used to like it.”

Beth turned toward the front of the car again and didn’t answer.

Jessica frowned, wishing she hadn’t made fun of Beth’s uniform. It was an old habit, from the days when Beth could take being teased without exploding.

Two years ago, back in Chicago, Beth had been a champion majorette. She could stick a three-turn every time and do a hundred thumb flips per minute, and she came home from camp every summer with tons of ribbons. But halfway through being eleven years old, she’d declared majorettes totally lame and exchanged marching band for being Ms. Social. Since the move down to Bixby, she hadn’t even unpacked her baton-twirling trophies. Jessica had found herself missing the little silvery majorettes lined up on their marble pedestals, just like she missed the younger, happier Beth of the old days.

But having made zero friends in Bixby had apparently changed Beth’s mind about majorettes. Maybe being in the marching band was a big deal at Bixby Junior High. Or maybe at this point she simply didn’t know what else to do.

Seeing Beth in a gaudy costume after two years was so strange, as if time had broken down completely this morning and was heading backward now.

“Listen, you want to practice together later?” Jessica said. “I mean, I think I’m allowed to go in the backyard.”

“Sure,” her father piped up.

“Yes, Jess, that would be great.” Beth turned around to face her again. “Because it’s so important to have an assistant while baton twirling.”

“All right. Fine. Just trying to be helpful.”

“And mature. Don’t forget mature.”

“I said fine.”

Beth kept looking at her, the gold piping around her collar flashing in the sun.

“What’s your problem?” Jessica finally asked.

“Why do you think I had Dad pick me up today?”

Jessica sighed. “Because you look so ravishing?”

“No, retard. I could have changed at school.” She dropped her voice. “It was because of you.”

Jessica shot a puzzled look toward the back of her father’s head. Was Beth talking about Jonathan? Since Jess had introduced the two of them, she’d figured Beth was on her side on the secret boyfriend front. At least Beth hadn’t told Mom and Dad about his late-night visits or how Jessica skipped out at night sometimes.

“What do you mean, Beth?”

“Just to make sure you know.”

“Know what?”

“That even though you’re not grounded anymore, I’ve still got my eye on you.”

Jessica sighed again. “Beth, quit being weird. Dad, tell Beth to quit being weird.”

Don Day was silent for a moment. Finally he said, “Well, Jessica, I kind of know what she means. After all, I’ve got my eye on you too.”

“Milk, no sugar, correct?”

“Yes, please.” Dess smiled politely, but the bitter taste of Madeleine’s tea was already trickling through her imagination, the acid flavor of betrayal on her tongue.

By rights, this secret place should have been her playground. Dess was the one who had found Madeleine, after all. She’d struggled through sleepless nights to decode the weird dreams the old mindcaster had sent her; she was the one who’d done the math.