Scott Westerfeld: Touching Darkness

Four: Never let go of Jonathan’s hand. (She’d learned that one the hard way. Two weeks later the last bruises on her knees and elbows were just beginning to fade.)

“How about up there?” Jonathan pointed toward a gas station sign that towered over the interstate. A clear view in every direction, no possibility of a sneak attack.

“Perfect.”

They landed on the gas station’s roof, then pushed off at a high angle, floating upward to the edge of the darkened sign, their feet alighting softly on the rusty metal. When Jonathan released Jessica’s hand, real-life weight pressed down on her. She swallowed and steadied her feet, a fear of heights returning along with gravity.

Something strange caught Jessica’s eye. Half visible in the open field behind the gas station, a hazy column rose from the scrub grass.

“Hey, what’s that ?”

Jonathan chuckled. “That’s a real-life Oklahoma dust devil.”

Jessica peered through the darkness. Motionless, glowing fragments were scattered throughout the apparition, suspended on a blurry, crooked tower of blue. “It looks like the ghost of a tornado.”

“Dust devils are tornadoes, sort of. Really weak ones. When I first moved here, I used to go out in the desert and stand in them.”

“Hmm.” Jessica could see paper cups and a sheet of newspaper suspended in the vortex. “Looks kind of like a garbage devil, actually.”

“Maybe here close to town. Not out in the desert, though. Just pure Oklahoma dust.”

“Sounds… dusty.” Jessica glanced upward. The dark moon was just visible through the patchwork clouds. She sighed. The midnight hour was half over already.

They sat at the edge of the sign, legs dangling over the precarious drop. With her arm through Jonathan’s, his lightness filled her again, and the distance to the ground didn’t seem so terrible.

Another beautiful view, she thought. The highway to Tulsa stretched out before them, dotted with eighteen-wheelers pulling all-nighters. She saw another owl high above them, balancing on the air currents that fed the dust devil.

Jessica pressed her shoulder against Jonathan’s, realizing they’d only kissed once tonight, when he’d landed.

“We should probably talk about that physics test,” he said.

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “You actually like physics, don’t you?”

“What’s not to like?” He pulled a candy bar from his pocket and started to inhale it. Flying made Jonathan hungry. Breathing made Jonathan hungry.

Jessica sighed. “Uh, lots of formulas to remember, lots of homework.”

“Yeah, but physics answers all the important questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like if you’re driving a car at the speed of light and turn your high beams on, what happens?”

Jessica shook her head. “Yeah, how did I survive without knowing that one?” She frowned. “And I’m only three months from a license. You think that’ll be on the written?”

Jonathan laughed. “You know what I mean. Physics is full of crazy stuff like that, but it’s also real .”

“With you it is.” Jessica pulled his hand to her lips. “Here at midnight.”

She thought of the quarter suspended in the air back in her bedroom and smiled. “So, here’s a physics question for you, Jonathan. When you flip a coin in the air, does it stop moving for a second right at the top?”

“That’s easy: no.” He sounded absolutely confident, annoyingly so.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s on the earth, which is spinning and orbiting the sun, and the sun’s moving through space at like six hundred meters per—”

“Wait, stop.” She sighed. “Okay, let’s say the earth wasn’t spinning or any of that other stuff. Wouldn’t the coin stop for a moment right at the top?”

“Nope,” he said without any pause, staring into the frozen vortex of the dust devil as if seeing the answer there. “The coin would be spinning around its own axis and would probably travel in an arc.”

“Not this coin,” Jessica said firmly. “It goes straight up and down and isn’t spinning. So right at the top, there’s a moment where it stops moving, right?”

“Wrong.”

“Why the hell not?”

Jonathan said with maddening surety, “Well, there is a point right at the top where the coin’s vector is zero. When gravity cancels out its upward momentum.”

“So it’s not moving.”

He shook his head. “Nope. The coin is going up, then the next instant it’s going back down. Zero time passes when it’s not moving, so it’s always moving.”

Jessica groaned. “Physics! Sometimes I think the darklings have the right plan. All these new ideas can only give you brain damage. Anyway, you’re wrong. The coin does stop.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

She reached for his hand, lifting him to his feet. “Come back to my room. I’ll prove it to you.”

He frowned at her. “What about—?”

She pulled him closer and kissed him. “Just come.”

They sped straight across town, shooting across the dust covered lot of a derelict car dealership and down an empty stretch of Division Street. Jessica pulled Jonathan along in determined silence. She didn’t care if she failed the test on Monday or not. She’d spent so much of her time with Jonathan in motion, running for her life or avoiding the winged things sent to watch her. Even when they rested, she and Jonathan were always balanced on some dizzying summit—the top of a building, a grain silo, or in the cold, precarious struts of an electrical tower. She just wanted to be somewhere normal with him.

Even if it was her bedroom. In twenty-five minutes he’d have to head home anyway.

The familiar sight of her street opened up below them, wide and lined with oaks scattering their last few leaves. They made a turn from the house on the corner (black tar paper shingles gave the best friction). One last jump would carry them to her lawn.

She pulled him close.

“Jessica…” His voice was cold.

“Just come in for a few—”

“Jessica!”

He twisted his body, spun them in the air, his free hand pointing at the ground below.

Jessica looked but saw nothing. Her blood ran cold. She reached instinctively for Demonstration and brought it to her lips, ready to whisper its name.

They descended to the grass, and he clutched her tight and pushed off again. She didn’t know where Jonathan was headed; he’d taken over their flight completely, as if she were just baggage. Jessica scanned the skies for darklings, slithers, anything. But there were only clouds and the setting moon above them.

The jump was low and hard and sent them scrambling to a stop on the roof of the house across the street. Jessica felt a fingernail break as her palms rubbed raw against the slate. This was the first place Jonathan had ever flown her, she remembered for a moment, and like that first time, she was being pulled along like a balloon on a string.

They came to a skidding halt at the apex of the roof.

“Down there!” he whispered, pointing at the dense bushes that ran along the edge of the yard.

“A darkling?” A mere slither wouldn’t have alarmed him like this.

“I don’t know. It looked… human.”

A midnighter? she wondered. Why would one of the others be spying on them?

They crept forward and peered over the edge of the roof.

The figure was crouched in the bushes, a human shape huddled in a long coat against the autumn chill, holding some dark object up to its face. Jessica counted to ten slowly; it remained absolutely still.

“It’s just a stiff,” she said aloud, then realized she had used Melissa’s word. “Someone normal.”