Blue Noon Read Online Free PDF Page A

them?” Rex glanced over his shoulder toward the badlands. “You mean they’re coming this way?”
    Jessica reached for Disintegrator in her pocket, but it wasn’t there; she’d never expected to need the flashlight during the day. She had only Acariciandote, the bracelet Jonathan had given her. She reached to touch it, feeling the thirteen tiny charms dangling from her wrist.
    Melissa shook her head. “Not coming, not moving much at all. Just so loud .” She winced, her face twisting into the pained expression she wore whenever too many people were around.
    “Melissa,” Rex asked, “what do you mean by ‘loud’?”
    “I mean screaming, howling, raising a ruckus.”
    “As in afraid?”
    Melissa shook her head. “No. As in celebrating.”
     
    Jessica’s watch said 9:17 a.m., but it seemed like hours since the blue time had begun. The minutes seemed to drag along, as if time itself had become a formless, limping thing.
    How could she even be sure if her watch was working right or not? It felt like they’d all been standing out there in the parking lot for hours.
    “Get down from there!” Rex yelled again.
    Jessica looked up and sighed. Jonathan was still on the roof of the school.
    “I thought you said this could go on forever,” he shouted down.
    “Yeah, or it could end any second!”
    “Nah, midnight only comes in one-hour slices, Rex. You know that.” Jonathan laughed and took an arcing hop up to the top of the gym. From there he scanned the horizon, as if the Bixby skyline might hold some clue as to what was going on.
    Jessica saw how high he was and swallowed. But she knew yelling at Jonathan was pointless. He always flew until the last moment of midnight, squeezing out every second of weightlessness; it hadn’t taken him long to convince himself that this unexpected blue time would last a solid hour. For Jonathan this wasn’t a terrifying mystery to be solved—it was a double helping of dessert, an extra recess, a free period spicing up an otherwise crappy Monday.
    Jessica wanted to scream at him to quit being stupid, but if she sided with Rex in front of everyone else, Jonathan would probably stay up there until the world ended.
    Unless, of course, it already had.
    “Come on, Jonathan,” Melissa called up to him. “There’s nothing to see, and you really could get hurt.”
    Jonathan frowned at her, but a moment later he stepped from the roof’s edge and floated down.
    Jessica glanced sidelong at Melissa. The mindcaster had sounded so concerned, and Jonathan was listening to her. This was definitely too much weirdness for one Monday morning.
    But at least Jonathan was safely on the ground again. She crossed the parking lot to grab hold of his jacket.
    “Sorry,” he said when he saw her expression. “But it seems like a waste, just standing around.”
    “You could get killed.”
    “But what if this really does last a long time?” He frowned. “Or forever.”
    She took his hand, but the feeling of his midnight gravity flowing into Jessica didn’t help her mood. It would be just like the world to end on a Monday, especially this Monday, the day she was theoretically going to become ungrounded.
    Only theoretically, of course. There had been a fierce debate this morning about what day was exactly one month from the night Jessica had been brought home by the police, tonight or tomorrow. Finally she’d given up arguing about it. Tuesday’s promised freedom wouldn’t take forever to come, after all.
    Except now it might.
    Standing here with the dark moon overhead, it made perfect sense that time had been halted, the darklings decreeing that Jessica Day would remain grounded forever. That’s what she got for being born the flame-bringer.
    “Hey, look! It’s Sanchez,” Dess cried suddenly. She was pointing at a stiff just outside the gym entrance. The frozen Mr. Sanchez was huddled close to the wall, out of sight from anyone coming through the door, a motionless geyser of smoke spewing