Previously on Midnighters: The Secret Hour: Jessica Day moves to Bixby, Oklahoma, where she encounters a bunch of goths who stare at her constantly.
Jessica sees the blue world again, but this time there’s no frozen rain, just a whole lot of nothing. She wanders around her house, wondering what to do, and eventually decides that if she’s going to roll with this whole lucid dreaming idea, she should see what her sister is up to. When she goes to Beth’s room, though, Beth is frozen in a freaky state: Her sister’s face was chalk white, as motionless as a statue. The half-opened eyes glimmered like green glass marbles. One white and frozen hand clutched the tangled sheets like a pale claw.
Creepy! Jessica starts panicking that everyone in her house is frozen, and then she sees a cat at her window. She lets it in and tries to pet it, but it acts super weird and not entirely catlike. Still, it’s the only living thing she can see, so she follows it outside. There’s a huge moon in the sky that hurts Jessica’s eyes to look at; she notes that after staring at it, she can see normal colors for just a few seconds before everything turns blue again. File that away for later.
Jessica follows the cat through the streets, not really recognizing where they’re going. The cat starts writhing and making weird noises, and then it turns into a snake. Jessica’s like, “Aw hell no” and tries to book it back home, but a bunch of other snakes come out of nowhere, and then a giant-ass panther shows up and blocks her way.
Jessica heard the snakes behind her, a growing chorus of hisses. She turned to glance back at them. The wriggling black forms were fanning out, as if herding her toward the cat.
DESS AND REX, IF YOU GUYS HAD ANY INTERPERSONAL SKILLS, NONE OF THIS WOULD BE HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
Speaking of whom! The goth trio are out at the junkyard, collecting steel. Melissa ominouses that something bad is going down on Jessica’s end of town — Dess disagrees, thinking that there’s nothing scary about the date (September 5), and assuming her friends are just being paranoid. Sure, there was a new midnighter in town, but that had happened once before, and the consequences hadn’t exactly been earth-shattering. No prizes for guessing who that is.
Rex had sounded pretty scared on the phone, though. So Dess had worn her sensible shoes. Running shoes.
Let me guess, she’s wearing black Vans instead of Docs. I was a wannabe emo in 2006. I know what these kids look like.
They set off to go find Jessica, Melissa’s psychic senses leading the way, and Rex sticking close to her, “like always.” Dess starts counting — which she says she does to calm her nerves — going through numbers in several different languages. When she gets to Latin, she recalls that sept means seven, and that September used to be the seventh month. 7 + 5 = 12, which means that September 5th is full of bad juju after all. What, was she gonna let Jessica get eaten if it was just another day?
Back to Jessica, who’s running from the panther. She manages to get ahead of the panther by ducking behind a tree, with the panther not able to change direction in time, and clawing the tree instead of her. Then she climbs a fence — noted to be new steel, not rusty — and when she sees the panther on the other side, she says to herself, “Psychosomatic.”
The fence lights up, electrocuting the panther and making it back off, but Jessica notes that the fence isn’t electrified, and doesn’t have any effect on her. Again, all information to file away for later.
The panther comes back, though, and it’s smart enough to have figured out where Jessica lives and that she can’t outrun it. Snakes approach, bats descend; she’s gon’ die.
Then a hubcap comes out of nowhere and hits the panther, killing it. Jessica turns around and sees Dess, who’s like, “Sup, Jess! Nice night to almost die, amirite?” Then Rex and Melissa show up, and Jessica is deeply, deeply confused. She’s like, “The fuck are the random goth kids from school doing in my dream?” and Rex finally breaks it to her that she’s not dreaming. The blue time is midnight — time freezes for an hour at 12:00, and Jess, Dess, Rex, and Melissa are…midnighters. Just like the title of the book says!
The goth trio gives Jess a rundown: people born at the exact stroke of midnight are able to see the secret hour/the blue time/midnight, terminology varying on whichever phrase Scott Westerfeld’s feeling at the time. The secret hour is inhabited by “darklings” (big monsters, like the panther), and “slithers” (little monsters, like the snakes). Rex is like, “Cool, right?” and Jessica’s like, “I almost just died, so…not cool, really.” All the other midnighters are like, shocked and appalled that Jessica’s not jazzed on a whole hour where things try to kill her:
“Wow, you are so daylight,” Melissa said.
I like all the midnighters, but you gotta admit this is basically them:
They walk Jessica home and Rex tells her to meet them tomorrow for Midnighter 101. Jessica notes that the three of them are much less emo in the blue time, and is like, “Makes sense, everyone who usually beats them up for their lunch money is frozen.”
Jessica goes into her sister’s room to see if Beth will wake up when the blue time ends. Beth does, but then she’s like, “Dude, why are you in my room in the middle of the night?” Jessica BSes that she knows moving was hard on Beth, and she just wanted to check on her. Beth, like all angsty preteens everywhere, tells Jessica to stop being so fucking corny.
The next day, Jessica leaves for the museum. She tries to retrace her steps from the night before, and finds the house where the panther attacked her. There’s a big gouge on the tree outside:
She teased the trace of sap between her fingers, realizing that the tree had bled instead of her.
“Sorry about that,” she said softly to the willow.
SHE APOLOGIZES TO A TREE. Jessica Day is adorable and I love her, I won’t hear a word against her.
As Jessica is looking at the tree, an old woman comes out of the house and yells at her to go away. Jessica’s like, “Oookay,” but doesn’t think anything more of it, because then we wouldn’t have a second book. Spoilers!
The goth trio goes downtown to meet Jessica. Dess and Melissa wonder what Jessica’s “talent” could be, and they rib Rex about adding a replacement acrobat to their squad. Rex gets all salty at the mention of an acrobat, to which Melissa remarks, “Gotta catch ’em all.” We get names for their powers: Dess is a polymath (mad math skillz), Melissa is a mindcaster (reads minds; often remarks that emotions have flavors to them that she can “taste”), and Rex is a seer (can see hidden signs of midnight, read the secret midnighter code, and is…good at looking stuff up). And then there’s the aforementioned acrobat (WHO COULD THAT BE).
Melissa is also the designated driver of their group, which seems a little weird for someone who’s permanently on the verge of a mental breakdown, but whatever.
They show up at the museum, and the ticket lady is all suspicious of them because GOTHS don’t go to MUSEUMS. She’s all, “Shouldn’t you be at Hot Topic?” Serious discussion about the evolution of alternative teen culture aside: Is it possible that the decision to make the midnighters a bunch of mid-2000s emo kids is my favorite part of the series? It gives me such excellent flashbacks to being thirteen and hanging around message boards where people talked about how much they loved Linkin Park and how their schools were full of preps. Anyway, they meet up with Jessica, and she finally gets to ask them what the fuck is up with the whole freezing time thing. Also, A HUBCAP?
The rules of midnight have already pretty much been sprinkled through the exposition and foreshadowing of the past few chapters, but the midnighters spell them out for Jess now. Apparently, the darklings once lived in the world with humans and ate them for breakfast, but eventually technological advances made humans able to hunt the darklings. The darklings “took” an hour from the day and turned it into an alternate dimension, where all the stuff that scares them — electronics and particularly fire — doesn’t work. Darklings also don’t like stainless steel or the number thirteen — though they have an affinity for twelve — and those things do still work in the blue time, so they’re the only way to fight darklings. As Dess explains, she gave that steel hubcap a thirteen letter name, and it destroyed the panther.
That rings a bell for Jessica, who remembers how she said the word “psychosomatic” while holding on to a steel fence. Dess is like, “Yeah, that’s a good tridecalogism,” and then she shows off a bit about how “tridecalogism” is a thirteen letter word that means “thirteen letter word”, although it won’t work as defense against the darklings, as Dess made it up by smashing together a bunch of root words.
HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, SCOTT WESTERFELD.
First of all: there’s no real consensus on what makes a word “real” or not. Here’s a list of words and terms that were just added to the dictionary in 2020 — some of them are technical or slangy, but “contactless” has been part of our lexicon for years now, and yet was never in the dictionary until now. English borrows from other languages constantly, bastardizing spelling and pronunciation — are those words “real” if they’re technically being spelled or said wrong? Going by Dess’s logic, “burger” isn’t a real word — because it comes from “hamburger”, which comes from the compound of “Hamburg” (the city) and the suffix “er”; “ham” is not a prefix describing the type of “burger.”
Second of all: how exactly are we counting thirteen letters? Could a midnighter who speaks Russian use words that have thirteen letters in Cyrillic? Or do the words have to have thirteen letters when they’re transliterated into English? Do Chinese midnighters have to like, fight darklings with whole sentences?
Third of all: see above, when Dess realized that September was full of bad vibes because “sept” means “seven.” September might have once been the seventh month, but now it’s the ninth — the “sept” in the name has nothing to do with its actual position in the calendar anymore. It’s kind of implied that darklings stick with the old systems because they’re also old, but like…there are plenty of languages where the name for “September” has nothing to do with the number seven at all.
I mean, I know this is fiction, and I’m going to suspend my disbelief here, but these books make me do MATH, so I’m willing to throw down on this hill. MEET ME OUTSIDE, DESS.
Anyway, Rex adds that the steel weaponry has to be untouched by the midnight creatures, which is where he comes in. That’s why he has to wear those nerd glasses (which will be cool in 5 or so years, so hang in there, Rex!) — the entire world is blurry to him except for midnight things, which always appear in perfect focus. That’s how he knew Jessica was a midnighter.
Rex wants to check if Jessica is a seer, too, so he takes her over to some artifacts and asks if she can pick out one that’s been touched by midnight. She can’t, and Rex is all bummed that the cute new girl doesn’t have the same power as him. He emos to himself that he wanted to have another seer around, so they could geek out over midnighter lore together, and so they could share responsibility when things went wrong.
Melissa, meanwhile, is happy that Jessica isn’t a seer, because she doesn’t want Jessica stealing any more attention than she already is. Now, the series actually spends a lot of time trying to make it seem like Melissa never gets jealous: she calls it a petty emotion, complains about feeling it from other people, and claims that she never experiences it herself. This is weird, because Melissa is clearly insanely jealous of Jessica. Most of her internal monologue is spent bittering that Jessica is ruining their group dynamic, and how dare everyone (especially Rex) be interested in her because Jessica’s not even that special anyway, and what does Jessica have that Melissa everyone else doesn’t. I would think that Melissa’s total lack of self-awareness was intentional if the narration ever acknowledged it in any way, but it doesn’t.
One thing about Scott Westerfeld, I’ve found, is that he has really interesting core ideas that he doesn’t always develop well. The midnighters are fascinating character pitches, but they don’t really grow or change at all through the series.
Anyway, the midnighters quiz Jessica, trying to figure out if she has any particular skills that might correlate towards a midnight talent, but they come up blank. Melissa snarks that Jessica tastes like vanilla. I mean, Melissa thinks that hating everyone who isn’t a goth is a personality trait, so let’s not get too judgmental here.
The next chapter opens with Jessica getting ready for midnight in her room. The other midnighters spent all day teaching her about the blue time and all the various ways she can die, which has sufficiently freaked her out. Jessica refuses to leave her room tonight, although Dess has given her some weaponry, which [she] had been saving[…]for something special.
The blue time comes. Jessica hears a noise outside and panics, but it just turns out to be another human being. It’s Jonathan! Yes, he is the mysterious fifth midnighter. I’m sure you didn’t see that coming. Jessica’s weirded out that the goth trio spent six hours telling her wrong information about linguistics, but didn’t bother to mention that there was a whole other midnighter hanging around town. Jonathan tells Jessica that he doesn’t really hang with them, as he doesn’t vibe with Rex or Melissa. Jessica’s like, “Understandable.” Jonathan thinks the goths take midnight too seriously; he’s happy just to have a whole hour to do whatever he wants. Jessica’s like, “Okay, except there’s no internet and also things try to kill you.” She wants to know how Jonathan knew about her, and Jonathan tells her that Dess told him about Jessica as soon as Rex spotted her.
Ah, remember how Jonathan was the one to talk to Jess in the cafeteria, and he was the one who first mentioned the word “psychosomatic”? Nicely done bit of foreshadowing.
Jonathan talks Jessica into leaving her room. Dammit, Jessica! This is called peer pressure! She agrees, and he takes her hand. Jessica starts floating, and she’s like, “What the fuck?” (Again, some more). Jonathan explains that his power is kind of like being a paper airplane — he has low gravity, so he can jump really high and descend slowly without getting hurt, or he can jump really low and move faster than anything else in the hour. (Everyone in the books refers to this power as “flying.”) If he touches another midnighter, they share his gravity and can go flying together. Jonathan takes Jessica bouncing all over town, and Jessica is all twitterpated to be HOLDING HANDS with a CUTE BOY. She figures she’s safe with him, as he can move faster and farther than the darklings can. Aaaand then like ten darklings show up. Jonathan and Jessica make a break for it, but the darklings catch up as they run into a bunch of obstacles, and Jonathan drops Jessica.
Don’t give in to peer pressure, guys.
Eventually Jonathan and Jess make it to a construction site near Jessica’s mom’s work. Jessica names the scaffolding, and the entire building lights up — Jessica notes she can see real colors again for a moment — killing most of the darklings. Jonathan and Jessica manage to wait out the rest of the hour without dying, and then bail out of there, but THEN the cops bust them for breaking curfew.
The police drive Jessica home, and we switch into Jonathan’s POV. He’s equally twitterpated, gushing that he’s never had a ~connection~ flying with anyone like with Jessica. He can’t wait to get home and write all this down in his diary and ask Jessica out on another date, but the sheriff tells him that Jonathan’s dad isn’t in town tonight, so they won’t be able to notify him about Jonathan getting in trouble. Ergo, Jonathan gets to stay in jail all weekend.
By the way, we get Jonathan’s last name — Martinez — here. His mom isn’t in the picture, and it’s also mentioned that his dad had some kind of wild, law-breaking youth, which is why he doesn’t mind Jonathan getting in trouble so often. And that’s pretty much all the information we get about Jonathan over the course of three books.
Jessica, meanwhile, is getting reamed out by her parents for breaking curfew. Her mom is actually pretty chill, but her dad is losing his shit. They ground Jessica for a month, and Jessica’s like, “Well, this does not vibe with my new secret life at all.”
The next night, Dess is working on some weaponry. We get a description of her room, which is painted dark purple, and she has a ballerina music box, which…well.
The ballerina’s pink tutu had long been replaced by dark purple gauze, her blond hair inked black, and tiny metal jewelry added to complete the outfit, which Dess had made out of soldered paper clips.
She thinks that they might need some stronger weaponry this time around, and wonders if giving a metal object a 39-letter name would work. She muses that it should probably be a phrase made of 3 tridecalogisms, as 39-letter words are thin on the ground, and [n]ot even slithers were afraid of names like benzohydroxypentalaminatriconihexadrene. Okay, but WHY NOT? It’s a word! Whatever.
Rex and Dess go to visit Jessica. On their way there, Dess tells Rex that she was doing some math, like a nerd, and it occurred to her that darklings are like big cats, in that they sleep 20-something hours of the day. Since they technically only live an hour a day anyway, that means most of them are asleep during the secret hour and the midnighters never see them. Yet, for some MYSTERIOUS REASON, the darklings are all waking up.
They gather in Jessica’s room, and Dess notes that the Days are rich: Jessica had a real CD player and a ton of CDs. Ha! Reading these books with 15+ years of distance is such an experience. Bets on what CDs Jessica has? She totally owns Breakaway and Dangerously in Love. I bet she also owns Hotel Paper because she thought “Breathe” was super deep. Dess notes that the room hardly looks lived in. Well…yeah, Dess. Jessica moved here like two weeks ago. Rex tells Jessica that the infamous snake pit is actually a midnighter lore site, and they have to go there to find out her talent. It’s all the way out in “the badlands”, so she’ll probably have to sneak out. Jess refuses, as she’s grounded and she doesn’t want to upset her parents further. She suggests that they fly out there, and Rex gets all salty that Jessica knows about Jonathan. Dess owns up to telling Jonathan, and snarks that occasionally, Rex had to be reminded that nobody elected him seer. Ooh, drama.
The next day, the whole school is gossiping that Jessica and Jonathan were sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g, when they got busted by the police. Constanza Grayfoot tells Jessica that Jonathan got held in jail overnight because apparently he’s a danger magnet — although, in another interesting note, the series never really leans too hard on Jonathan or Rex being ~bad boys~ in any sense, which is nice. Jessica admits that they were holding hands when they got busted, and Constanza assumes that it’s because Jessica and Jonathan liiiike each other. Given that Jessica can’t exactly tell the truth — and also, she and Jonathan do kind of like each other — she goes ahead and lets Constanza believe that.
Constanza invites Jessica to a party out at a part of the desert called Rustle’s Bottom, but Jessica turns her down, as she’s grounded. Jessica meets up with Dess in study hall, and Dess asks if Jessica went flying. “Isn’t it excellent?” she asks. Jessica gets momentarily jealous that Jonathan’s gone flying with other girls, but she gets over it and thanks Dess for telling Jonathan about her, since Rex’s control freak ass wasn’t going to do it.
Dess gives Jess some backstory on the midnighters’ various personality conflicts: Melissa is pretty obviously in Rex’s corner, but Dess tries not to take sides — although she generally hangs out with Rex and Melissa, as Jonathan lacks commitment to Goth Motion. Dess tells Jessica that they all tried to hang together when Jonathan first showed up, but Rex started making Jonathan take everyone (read: Rex and Dess, presumably) out to lore sites all night every night, and Jonathan got tired of being a “personal flying chauffeur.” To be fair: maybe Jonathan should’ve tried having a more useful power. As far as I can tell, acrobatting is good for nothing except carrying around other midnighters, and I guess giving him jump powers when he fights. Anyway, then Melissa was all salty because she can’t touch Jonathan to go flying, so everyone was hanging out without her all the time. I don’t know why Melissa would even CARE about that, because she hates them all anyway, but whatever.
In conclusion: the midnighters are some real messed-up kids and they can’t sit at the same lunch table.
Jessica’s like, “Okay, but you could’ve called to tell me that Jonathan existed. Like on the phone.” She couldn’t have texted, though, because this is the early 2000s. Dess shrugs and says she wanted it to be a surprise. Jessica notes that, despite her weird cryptic ways, Dess has never lied to her. Aw. Their love is real, guys.
After school, all the kids stare at Jessica, because she’s the school bad girl now. What? Not with Melissa, Rex, and Dess walking around wearing black leather and combat boots all day. Jessica whines that it’s super unfair that being a midnighter is getting her in trouble. Welcome to Buffy’s world, Jessica. Then Jonathan shows up, and Jessica is all twitterpated that he came to school just to see her. They make plans to go flying together again that night.
Somehow, Rex and Melissa find out about these plans, because they pick that same night to go to Jessica’s house and mess with her parents’ minds. YIKES. For no reason I can tell, it’s mentioned that Melissa has a hardship license, which means her license is only valid for driving to and from school. This literally never is a problem for them ever again. Why was Melissa driving to the museum all willy-nilly on Saturday, then? Whatever. Melissa also oddly brings up that she couldn’t sense Jonathan being locked up in jail all weekend, because the steel cell blocked her powers. This also never gets brought up again.
Also, Rex is navigating the way to Jessica’s house using a literal paper road map. GOD BLESS.
Melissa ominouses that she and Rex are making this trip alone because they’ve never told anyone all the facts about mindcasting, not even Dess. She notes that she and Rex had to learn “the hard way.” SPOOKY.
Midnight comes, and Jonathan comes by to pick Jessica up. They hold hands and Melissa snarks that their relationship tastes soOoOoO cliche and daylight. Preps don’t deserve love. Jonathan and Jessica fly off, and Melissa and Rex sneak into Jessica’s room. Melissa immediately snipes that Jessica’s room is also soOoOoO cliche and daylight, presumably because her walls aren’t black or whatever. Rex tepidly defends Jessica (“She’s not that bad”), and Melissa says that she doesn’t hate Jessica, she just thinks she’s too much of a normie to be a real midnighter.
So they go in and mindcast Jessica’s parents. Melissa is pretty thrilled about the whole thing in a way that’s quite creepy, and Rex is a little more reserved but not by much. These two are probably going to end up burying a body together at some point.
The next day, Jessica’s all happy over her and Jonathan’s second not-date. Beth remarks that Jonathan and Jessica supposedly first hung out the night that they got caught by the police, but she remembers Jessica being dressed the night before (when Jessica met Rex, Dess, and Melissa). Jessica’s like, “Yikes.” Before Beth can start bugging her any further, though, Jessica’s mom comes in and tells Jessica that her parents have reconsidered her grounding, and they’ve decided to let her have one night a week off so that she can make friends. Jessica notes that this is really out-of-character for her mom. Almost like someone changed her mind! Casted her mind, even. Jessica, however, doesn’t make this connection, and merely is like, “Dang, Bixby’s making us all crazy.”
Jessica goes to school and tells Dess that she can go to the snake pit now. She notes that it’s weird that her parents backtracked on her punishment. Dess tells Jess that her parents also flipped out the first time Dess was brought home by the police, but they also changed their minds about punishing her. What a coincidence! Dess mentions that her dad works on an oil rig, because Oklahoma, and he was going to send Dess to some My First Oil Rig summer camp as punishment. I feel like that would be rough for Dess. She’d probably have to wear pants.
Anyway, Dess tells Jessica that the snake pit is actually right in the middle of Rustle’s Bottom, so Jessica gets herself re-invited to Constanza’s party. Constanza is not at all weirded out that Jessica has suddenly thrown her lot in with the school goths, and cheerfully invites her to sleep over.
Jonathan takes Jessica flying again. They go to a roof downtown that has a giant light-up Pegasus on it, which Jonathan assumes is safe because the darklings won’t want to come so close to a giant electrical horse. He notices that Jessica is anxious, and she brings up that he never touches in her the daytime — at midnight they’re basically boyfriend and girlfriend, but he refuses to hold her hand at school or anything. Jonathan kind of blows off her concern, which I guess makes sense. A bunch of otherworldly creatures want her dead, so now is not really the time to be worried that your crush won’t hold your hand, Jessica.
They have a really bizarre fight where neither of them are actually saying what they’re upset about, and Jessica sort of mentions that it’s dangerous everywhere for her, and somehow Jonathan figures out that that means she wants him to be at the snake pit with her. How he got to that conclusion, I don’t know. He reassures Jessica that he wouldn’t let Rex take her into a death trap alone. He’s salty about Rex’s plan in general, and Jessica points out that this is the only way to find out what she is — according to Rex, anyway. Jonathan is snippy that Jessica still kind of leans towards Rex as the leader.
You know, I didn’t pick up on this at all as a kid, but it’s really obvious to me in retrospect that there’s a very slight Rex/Jessica/Jonathan triangle in this book. Literally the first scene is Rex bumping into Jessica and being blown away by the “flecks of gold in her green eyes.” If that’s not some YA romance bullshit, I don’t know what is.
Jessica cottons on that Jonathan doesn’t like Rex because Rex’s seer power makes him the leader by default, and Jonathan hates authority. Jonathan adds that Jessica doesn’t know the other midnighters that well yet, and he thinks that Rex hides information from them to keep control of the group. Creepy. Jonathan bitters that everyone has their own separate powers that make them all dependent on each other. It’s like they’re a superhero team or something! Jessica shrugs that needing other people’s help is part of life. Jonathan emos that he and Jessica are so connected while they fly, it makes him sad to be fighting with her now. He emos even more that midnight should’ve been fun for Jessica, but now she’s all stressed out because of Rex and his stupid dire lore warnings. What? The darklings wanted to kill Jessica way before Rex even came into the picture, Jonathan.
I like Jonathan, but he’s kind of annoying, because his take on life literally has nothing to back it up. The big personality conflict between him and Rex is supposed to stem from the fact that Rex is a control freak who thinks midnight is Serious Business and that Jessica needs to go do lore things or she’ll DIE, while Jonathan wants to appreciate the beauty and wonder of midnight without thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Except midnight IS serious, and Jessica ISN’T safe until she figures out her power, so Jonathan just looks kind of dumb. You guys nearly died two nights ago! You could be a little less relaxed about this!
Anyway, Jonathan tells Jessica that of course he’ll be at the snake pit, and Jessica kisses him. I totally forgot that Jessica makes the first move on Jonathan. #equality
Jessica asks if Jonathan’s ever kissed anyone before, to which he says, “DUH. I mean, yeah.” Heh. Didn’t Jonathan move here when he was like twelve, though? If he hates everyone as much as the other midnighters do, who the hell was he going out with? Well, whatever. Jessica asks if Jonathan’s ever kissed anyone in the secret hour, and he says no, so she jumps them both into the air so they can make out in zero gravity. That’s hot.
Up next: Jessica finally figures out what her power is. This book adds geography to the list of social sciences that it’s butchering.
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