Jessica glanced at her watch; Jonathan still had plenty of time to make it back to the store before midnight ended. “Thanks for the lift.”

“Listen, I know you needed to see Constanza tonight.” He stood. “Seeing as how she’s your only normal friend and everything.”

Jessica looked up at him, wondering if he was being sarcastic.

“I mean it, Jess. It’s okay to need somebody who’s not a midnighter.” He swallowed, looking uncomfortable. “And I’m sorry I never made friends with her.”

“Thanks.” Jessica sighed. “After what’s coming, she won’t be back, will she?”

“Yeah, I guess. But at least she’ll be safe in Los Angeles.”

“Sure.” She sighed again. “I just hate goodbyes.” Before she’d moved to Bixby, the last three months in Chicago had been nothing but farewells. And now she seemed to be losing everything again.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere,” Jonathan said. “You can count on that.”

Inside, Jessica changed back into her pajamas, waiting for midnight to end. When the blue light faded, the house shuddering to life around her, she flushed the toilet and stepped out into the upstairs hallway.

“So, as I was saying,” Constanza began as Jessica opened her door. “This shirt can be retired, right?”

Jessica looked at the black pullover with red shoulder pads. “Yeah. Way too eighties.”

“Eww.” Constanza threw the shirt into the discard pile, then turned to the three giant suitcases that lay open on the floor. They were packed crushingly full of dresses, shirts, skirts, and what seemed like dozens of shoes.

“Won’t your parents be suspicious? I mean, you’re supposedly only going for a week.”

Constanza snorted. “I always pack this much for a week. You wouldn’t believe all the great stuff I’m leaving behind. But I think that’s it.”

“So… we’re done?” Jessica said hopefully. They’d been packing pretty much all day.

“Done for tonight.” Constanza stood up, surveying the wreckage of her room. “Thanks so much for helping me, Jess. I hate packing.” She looked longingly into her huge closets. “All these clothes crying out to me. So many left behind.”

Jessica felt herself smiling. The whole last week had been spent preparing for a battle that seemed unwinnable. It felt good to have accomplished something concrete, even as minor as packing Constanza’s bags. And it was a relief to make a few choices that nobody’s life depended on.

“Glad I could help you. It was fun, if exhausting.”

“Ernesto said he was going to help, but he’s long gone.”

Jessica frowned. “None of your cousins are still around, are they?”

“No. And even if they were, Grandpa’s being extra insane about anybody setting foot in Bixby before the move.”

Jessica nodded. This close to Samhain, only Constanza’s unlucky parents would still be here. Their house was on the opposite side of Bixby from Jenks but still in the path of the rip. If the darklings broke through, her folks would be in serious danger.

“Isn’t it going to be weird?” she said. “Not seeing your parents… as much?”

Constanza shrugged. “I’m almost seventeen. I figure I’d be out of their house soon anyway. At least this way they’ll be able to see me on TV.”

Jessica had to smile.

“But you know, leaving them behind doesn’t really make me sad,” Constanza continued. “They’ll always be around, one way or another. It’s more my friends I’m going to miss. You especially.”

“Me? Especially?”

“Of course, silly. I mean, sometimes I feel like I’ve hardly gotten a chance to know you. It’s only been what? Two months since school started?”

“I suppose so,” Jessica said quietly. It felt like years sometimes, but she’d only arrived in Bixby in late August. She sat next to one of the suitcases, staring at the profusion of clothes and shoes inside. “Two months can seem like a long time, I guess.”

“That’s so true.” Constanza leaned closer. “In fact, my theory is that two months in friendship time is actually longer than a year, you know?”

“Um… not exactly.”

Constanza bent and picked up a stack of shirts that hadn’t made the cut. She took them to one of the room’s huge, now half-empty closets. “Listen, Jess, I know you’re all sad about me leaving. You’ve been moping around ever since I told you about LA. But sometimes these short friendships are totally the best.”

Jessica raised an eyebrow. “They are?”

Constanza slid the shirts back onto hangers thoughtfully, one by one. “Sure! Didn’t you ever have a best friend at summer camp or something? You make friends quick, and you know you’re only together until the end of summer, so it’s super intense?”

Jessica nodded. “Yeah, I guess I know what you mean.”

Constanza reached over to brush a lock of Jessica’s hair out of her face. “But those are always the people you remember for the rest of your life. At least I do. Even though I usually forget to write to them or whatever.”

Jessica swallowed, a lump rising in her throat. She couldn’t believe that tears had sneaked up on her and knew she’d feel like a total dork if she cried. She tried to focus her mind on Jonathan’s words: Constanza was one of the lucky ones. She wouldn’t be here for Bixby’s big Halloween surprise.

Constanza sighed. “Maybe it’s because when friendships end like this, instead of growing apart, you get ripped apart. So you never get to the phase where you don’t like each other anymore.”

Jessica blinked, and one tear traveled down her cheek.

Constanza reached out with an elegant finger and softly brushed it away.

“Come on, Jess. That’s enough of being sad.” She laughed. “I’ll be back in Bixby whenever my shooting schedule allows. Still have to see the parentals, you know.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Constanza turned her smile up to its full wattage. “But now that we’re all packed, we’ve got to have some fun so I can remember you happy.”

Jessica nodded, letting Constanza’s mood lift her out of the sadness that had haunted her all week. Dess kept saying that her plan should work, that maybe they could save everyone in Bixby, or almost everyone. And after twenty-five hours of midnight, the blue time would retreat again.

Maybe once the darklings realized they had a fight on their hands, they wouldn’t keep coming back every Halloween.

Jessica decided that tonight, at least, she would have a good time.

“Okay, this is me being happy.” She forced a smile.

“That’s the spirit,” Constanza said. “We can still talk on the telephone, after all. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

24

5:33 P.M.

TRICK OR TREAT

“Looks like Halloween might be canceled,” Don Day said from the other end of the couch.

Jessica looked up from the book she’d been trying, and failing, to read. As usual the Weather Channel was on. A man in a bow tie was coaxing a swirling mass of white out of the Gulf of Mexico and onto the Texas plains.

It was headed straight for Oklahoma.

“Is that rain?” she said. “For tonight?”

“It was a hurricane, but by now it’s just a tropical depression,” her father said in his Weather-Channel-lecture voice. He leaned forward to peer out the back window. “By the time it gets here, it’ll only be a thunderstorm.”

“Only a thunderstorm…” Jessica watched in horror as the satellite image repeated its course across the TV again and again, stopping at the border of Oklahoma every time. “Um, when’s it supposed to get here?”

“Sometime tonight. It might rain out all the fun.” He gave her a puzzled look. “You’re not going trick-or-treating, are you?”

“Duh. Of course not.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “I’m probably doing trig homework all night. But thunderstorms are kind of scary, you know, especially on Halloween.”