Scott Westerfeld: Touching Darkness

At last, everything was sorted out.

Her clothes had finally found their way into the right drawers. Books lined their new shelves in alphabetical order, and her computer’s tangled mop of cables had been subdued with rubber bands into a thick ponytail. The moving boxes were out in the garage, folded flat and wrapped with twine for Monday’s recycling truck. Only one last box, labelled CRAP in black marker, sat in the corner of her room, filled with a dozen boy-band posters, two pink sweaters, and a stuffed dinosaur, all of which seemed way too childish for her new life.

Jessica Day wondered if she’d really changed that much since packing the box in Chicago. Maybe it was getting arrested that had suddenly made her feel older. (Okay, officially she’d been “detained and transported to parental custody.” Whatever.) Or maybe it was having a boyfriend. (Although that wasn’t official yet either, come to think of it.) Or maybe it was the secret world that had opened up around her here in Bixby and then had tried so hard to kill her.

But everything was organized now, she told herself again.

For example: thirteen thumbtacks were lined up under each window in her room, and thirteen paper clips rested on the lintel of the door. She wore a thirteen-pointed star around her neck, and in a shoe box under her bed were Anfractuously, Explosiveness, and Demonstration (also known as a bicycle lock, a highway flare, and a heavy flashlight). All their names had thirteen letters, and all three objects were made of bright stainless steel.

Looking at her bedside clock, Jessica felt the flutter of nerves that always came at this time of night. Excitement, an anxiousness to get started, and a suddenly dry tongue, as if she were about to take a driver’s test at a hundred miles an hour.

She took a deep breath to calm herself and sat down carefully on her neatly made bed, unwilling to disturb anything. Even taking a book down from the shelf might unbalance the whole night. The room’s neatness felt precarious, though; it could only go downhill from here.

Jessica got that feeling a lot these days.

Cross-legged on the bed, she felt something in the front pocket of her jeans. She fished it out: the quarter she’d found in the closet while cleaning up. The previous tenants must have left it behind. Jessica flipped it in the air, the metal flashing as it spun.

On the third flip, at the top of the coin’s arc, a shudder seemed to pass through the room…

No matter how carefully she watched her clock, the exact moment of change always startled Jessica, like the jolt of the L train back in Chicago when it began to roll. Color bled from the world, the light turned cool and flat and blue, and the low moan of the Oklahoma wind fell suddenly silent. Suspended in the air before her, the quarter shone softly, a tiny and motionless flying saucer. She stared at it hard for a while, careful not to get too close and break the spell.

“Heads,” she finally declared, then reached under the bed to free Explosiveness and Demonstration from their shoe box. She stuffed them into the big front pocket of her sweatshirt and crawled out the window.

Out on the front lawn, Jessica waited again. She didn’t bother to hide, although she was still grounded for another two weeks (one result of the whole getting-arrested thing). The houses around her glowed with a faint blue light. No one was watching, nothing moved on the street; even the scattering of falling autumn leaves hovered motionless in the air, trailing from the dark trees like long dresses. The world was Jessica’s now.

But not hers alone.

A shape grew against the cloudy sky, arcing from rooftop to rooftop, gracefully and silently bounding toward her. He hit the same houses every night, like a pinball following a familiar route down the bumpers. Just like Dess said she could see numbers in her head, Jonathan claimed he could see the angles of his flight, the most elegant path appearing before him in bright lines.

Jess touched the reassuring weight of the flashlight through the sweatshirt’s cotton. They all had their talents.

As Jonathan softly corkscrewed to the earth before her, Jessica’s nervous energy began to turn into something more pleasurable. She watched his body coil, knees flexing and arms spreading, absorbing the impact of his scant midnight weight against the grass, and felt herself pack the last threads of her anxiety away in a box labelled CRAP at the back of her brain. Fear had been necessary for her first two weeks here in the secret hour—her survival had depended on it. But she didn’t need it anymore.

“Hey,” she said.

Jonathan swept his gaze around the horizon, checking for anything with wings. Then turned to her and smiled. “Hi, Jess.”

She stood still, letting him cross the lawn to reach her. His steps carried him in soft arcs a foot high, kind of like an astronaut taking a stroll on the moon.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Just watching you walk.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s harder than it looks, you know. I prefer flying.”

“Me too.” She leaned forward carefully, not reaching out with her hands, gently closing her eyes. As her lips brushed his, gravity lifted from Jessica, a familiar lightness flowing through her body.

She pulled away and sighed, her sneakers settling back into the grass.

His long, dark lashes blinked. “You’re in a funny mood.”

Jessica shrugged. “I’m just… happy.” She turned around, taking in the softly glowing houses, the empty sky. “This all seems safe, finally.”

“I get it. So you don’t need me to protect you anymore?”

She whirled to face Jonathan. He was smiling broadly now.

“Maybe not.” She patted Demonstration again. “But we do need to study for that physics test.”

He held out his hand. Jessica took it, and the lightness filled her again.

Flying with Jonathan had become like breathing. They hardly spoke, negotiating their course with a gesture toward an open stretch of road. Just before each jump, Jess tightened her right hand around his. She loved seeing the world as he did, looking down from the peaks of their arcing path onto Bixby’s grid of dusty streets and autumn-thinned lawns, frozen cars, and dark houses.

They didn’t head for downtown tonight; she tugged him into a winding course around the edge of Bixby. Without saying so out loud, Jessica wanted to test how close she could get to the badlands without attracting attention. Since she had discovered her talent (not as wonderful as Jonathan’s, but far more formidable), none of the things that lived in the frozen time had dared to challenge her.

The badlands were visible from here, a dark bruise stretching across the blue horizon, but she and Jonathan were alone in the sky, except for a lonely, motionless owl riding the stilled winds.

The darklings and their kin were still very afraid of her, Jessica told herself.

“Need a break?” Jonathan asked.

“Sure. Soon.”

It was hard work, flying. Jumping with all her strength again and again, wrapping her brain around the strange rules of Jonathan’s midnight gravity. In physics they’d just learned about Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion. Jessica had four.

One: Jump at the same time as Jonathan. Otherwise you go spinning.

Two: Push off forward, not straight up. You want to get somewhere, not hang around in midair.

Three: Flat is good. Aim to land on rooftops, parking lots, and roads. Lawn ornaments can be painful.