Blue Noon

11

11:13 A.M.

GOODBYE, BIXBY

"So the weirdest thing happened yesterday."

Jessica nodded. She'd been expecting Constanza Grayfoot to tell her all about it. "Yeah, I heard."

Constanza came to a sudden halt in the hall, letting lesser mortals flow around them. "You did? From who?"

Jessica shrugged. For once she'd known what everyone would be talking about way ahead of time. "I don't remember who told me. Wasn't it on TV last night or something? How that lost kid just turned up in her bed yesterday morning, totally okay?"

"Oh, that. Ancient news, Jess. Pay attention here, please. I'm talking about something much weirder and much more likely to affect our lives. Especially my life."

Jessica blinked. "Okay. What are you talking about?"

"My grandfather called me last night."

Cold, dry fingers walked down Jessica's spine. "He did what?"

"Called me, with the most incredible news. Come on, let's get to study hall. And I hope you don't have any stupid trig homework today because I'm going to need everyone's full attention."

"You've got it."

As they made their way up to the library, Jessica's heart pounded. Any mention of Constanza's grandfather definitely got her attention.

Grandpa Grayfoot was like anyone else not born at midnight - frozen during the secret hour. But as a kid he'd been a sort of super-evil version of Beth, spying on everyone and uncovering Bixby's secrets. He'd figured that the darklings were ghosts, or ancient spirits, or something equally creepy and had tried to communicate with them in secret midnight rituals. Eventually the darklings had answered, exchanging messages with him through a half-human, half-darkling creature - a translator between the two worlds.

Years of doing the darklings' bidding made his family rich and powerful, but the things that the midnight creatures asked him to do got more and more hideous. Fifty years ago the Grayfoots and their allies had been ordered to wipe out an entire generation of midnighters. They had all but succeeded; only Madeleine remained.

Just two weeks ago the translator who had made the whole thing possible had been close to death. The Grayfoots had tried to kidnap Rex so the darklings could turn him into a replacement, another halfling.

But the other midnighters had rescued Rex, and Anathea - the halfling - had died, destroying the old man's link to his masters. If he and his pals were still trying to contact the darklings, they were leaving messages that would never be returned.

Jessica followed Constanza into the library, wondering what on earth the old guy was up to now.

"Okay, this is absolutely top secret. I'm not even supposed to be telling you guys, so everyone here must swear never to tell a soul. Well, at least not until this is all final."

"Until what's all final?" Liz asked.

"Whatever she's going to tell us," Maria said. "Duh."

"So, do you all swear?"

They went around the library table one by one, promising to keep the secret: Jen, Liz, Maria, and finally Jessica. By the time it got to her, Jess managed to get away with just a nod. She was pretty sure that she was going to have to tell the other midnighters about this in a big way, promise or no promise.

"Okay," Constanza began once the ritual was complete. "Remember when my house got trashed by those weirdos?"

Everyone nodded, eyes wide. Jessica tried to put on her not-guilty face. She'd witnessed the aftermath of Rex and Melissa burgling Constanza's house, back when they'd first been looking for evidence about the Grayfoot-darkling conspiracy. Not that the damage had all been their fault; there was nothing like a horde of midnight monsters showing up to leave a mess.

"Well, you probably remember how that totally freaked out my grandfather. He's always had this thing about not living in Bixby."

"You guys stayed with him in Broken Arrow after that happened, right?" Liz asked.

"We did. And let me tell you, I was totally sick of commuting to school. So..." Constanza leaned closer, indicating that the top secret part was coming up, and Jessica dared a glance at Dess, sitting in her usual corner. Dess held her trig book up to cover her face, which meant she was listening to every word. She needed to study trigonometry about as hard as a darkling needed to study scary.

"Well, Grandpa must have had a slow leak about me coming back to Bixby," Constanza continued. "You know, he cut my dad out of the family oil business when he and Mom moved here, ages ago. He still hardly talks to them, even when we were staying out there. So anyway, he called me last night, trying to convince me to leave town."

"What's his problem with Bixby, anyway?" Maria asked.

Constanza shrugged. "He never tells anyone what happened. He grew up here, but something weird went down when he was a teenager. I think the Anglos chased the family out of town during the oil boom because we're Native American and everything. He hasn't set foot in Bixby in, like, fifty-something years."

Except for slipping across the edge of the midnight border to leave his little messages, Jessica thought. Then a horrible notion occurred to her.

"He wants you to go live in Broken Arrow?" Jessica asked. She'd always wondered if the old man knew that Constanza and she were friends. Maybe he planned to finally bring his granddaughter into the real family business - working for the darklings.

"Excuse me, Jess? Me, living in puny little Broken Arrow?" Constanza shook her head and snorted. "No way."

"So where, then?" Liz asked. "Tulsa?"

"No." Constanza lowered her voice still further, and Jessica saw Ms. Thomas, the librarian, straining to hear. "You know how I'm going to be an actress?"

Everyone nodded, a few of them exchanging glances. You only had to know Constanza for about ten minutes to hear about that aspiration.

"Well, my grandfather said that if I wanted to start right now, I could come stay with him. Because in a couple of weeks he and a whole bunch of my cousins are moving to... now get this... LA!"

"Los Angeles?" Maria cried.

"No, Maria," Liz said with a sneer. "Lower Argentina. That's the new LA. Haven't you heard?" She turned to Constanza. "Los Angeles? I hate you. You are so lucky."

"You've got to be kidding," Jessica said. Her mouth had gone dry.

"Grandpa's got it all worked out," Constanza said. "He's already found a school for me there, and this movie agent who's a business friend of his wants to meet me. And he says I can have an awesome allowance to pay for acting lessons and stuff."

"I can't believe you!" Liz said. "I'm going to kill you. After I come visit, of course. I can come visit, right?"

"So why exactly is he going to LA?" Jessica asked.

Constanza shrugged. "I don't know. There must be oil wells there. Right?"

"In Los Angeles?" That didn't seem likely. Nor did it seem very likely that the old man was concentrating on his oil business anymore. He seemed more focused on getting himself and his family as far away from Bixby as possible.

"Who cares why he's going there, Jess? As long as the result is" - Constanza pointed both her index fingers toward herself - "movie star!"

"Girls!" Ms. Thomas called from her desk. "Could you please keep it down to a dull roar?"

Jen turned to the librarian. "But Constanza's going to - "

"Shhh!" Constanza hissed. "Could we please all remember about the top secret thing?" Then she turned and called out in a normal voice, "Sorry, Ms. Thomas. We'll try to be more quiet." She glared at Jen. "Especially you."

"Wait a second," Jessica said. "Why is this all a big secret?"

"Well, believe it or not," Constanza said. "I haven't mentioned the weirdest part of this yet." She paused, waiting until all eyes were on her again. "It's like this whole moving-to-LA thing just appeared out of nowhere. Grandpa hasn't even talked to my parents about it yet. But in the meantime he says that there's this agent who needs somebody like me right away, for some new TV show or something. So first I'm going to go 'visit' Grandpa out there, supposedly just for a week or so. I can audition then, and if I get the part, I'm not coming back!"

Everyone was quiet for a moment as Constanza's words gradually sank in. Jessica felt her own pulse pounding in her fingertips and saw Dess lower her book slowly so that she could see the other girls. Even Ms. Thomas shot them a glance, intrigued by their sudden silence.

Liz spoke first. "Right away?"

"Like... when?" Maria asked.

Constanza shook her head, her mouth slightly open, as if she still couldn't believe it herself. "Well, they're holding auditions in a couple of weeks, right about when Grandpa and my cousins are all moving out there. So he said I have to be there before the end of this month or the whole thing's off. So in a couple of weeks or so, it's goodbye, Bixby!"

"You're kidding!" said Jen.

"You are so psychotically lucky!" said Maria.

"I repeat: I hate you!" said Liz. "And you've got to have a going-away party!"

Jessica didn't say anything. Suddenly the library's fluorescent lights were buzzing too loud for her to think clearly. The old man and his family moving, this agent for Constanza - all of it was happening way too fast for any innocent explanation to be believed.

Constanza's last words rang in her ears: Goodbye, Bixby...

Jessica glanced over at Dess and saw the polymath drop her trig book onto her lap and pull out a few pieces of paper. She hunched over them, scribbling furiously, filling page after page with grids drawn in blue ink. One of the pages fell to the floor....

Jessica squinted and saw that it was divided into seven squares across and five down, like a wall calendar. Each of the squares was filled with cryptic formulas in tiny, manic handwriting.

She closed her eyes and did a few simple calculations herself.

It was the eighth of October today and she knew from her father's annoying little rhyme that October had thirty-one days.

The end of the month was just over three weeks away.