Previously on Midnighters: The Secret Hour: Jessica Day finds out that she can see a secret hour of the day wherein monsters try to kill her. She’s now part of a reluctant superhero team made up out of the school goths, except she seems to be the only one without a superpower. OR IS SHE?
So we skip ahead to the night of the party. Constanza dresses Jessica up and puts lipstick on her, and Jessica marvels at her appearance because she’s not really a dress-and-makeup kind of girl. Because in the early 2000s, female YA protagonists always had to point out ~how very much~ they didn’t notice their appearance. Even Dess and Melissa are bizarrely condescending about Constanza’s interest in clothes, considering they’re both running around in floor-length dresses all the time. Anyway, Jess and Constanza leave, and as they drive out to Rustle’s Bottom, they pass Jessica’s mom’s work. Jessica notices the building that she and Jonathan hid out on that first night, and remarks that it has a ton of lights hanging on it. HMMM.
They pull up to Rustle’s Bottom, which is a big dried-out lake bed surrounded by flat Oklahoma desert. Okay, Scott Westerfeld has fully admitted that he’s never been to this part of Oklahoma, and he based all his descriptions of Bixby off of his memories of Texas. Rustle’s Bottom is supposedly located in Broken Arrow, which is the next town over from Bixby. Broken Arrow and Bixby are both real towns, and they’re in a part of Oklahoma called “Green Country”, which is known for being much less flat than the rest of the state, and for its abundance of actual, water-filled, non-dried-out lakes. The books also repeatedly reference badlands and salt flats, which are located on the other side of the state.
Admittedly, I have only ever met like two people from Oklahoma who have even heard of these books, much less read them. The only geography-related discussion about them I could find was a thread on Tulsa’s subreddit. Quoth /u/divisibleby5: yes the badlands of bixby is between the creek turnpike and bixby walmart on memorial. the traffic lights are straight savage.
So there’s a bonfire and a keg and it’s your average teenage party. Some guy starts hitting on Jessica, and offers to walk her to the snake pit. Jess takes him up on this, for some reason. Because…on top of everything else going down tonight, she also has to make sure she doesn’t disappear in front of a daylighter when the hour ends? Whatever. Some Guy turns out to be a creeper and tries to take Jessica back to his car instead: “The snake pit is a bunch of old rocks. I can show you something much more interesting.”
Luckily for Jessica, midnight hits before he can whip anything out. And by “luckily”, I mean “now Jessica gets to worry about being killed instead of date raped.” Man, she is having a rough night.
We roll back about forty-five minutes, to where Dess is waiting for Rex and Melissa to pick her up. She emos that they always leave her out, because Melissa found Rex first and they grew up together. Melissa didn’t find Dess until she was eleven and Melissa and Rex were twelve, and Dess thinks Melissa did it on purpose so that she could have Rex to herself. (Melissa’s POV, on the other hand, remarks that Dess had been hard to find because she lives close to the aforementioned-fictional-badlands, which is darkling country and messed up Melissa’s mindcasting reception. The narration never really leans one way or the other on which side is the truth.)
Dess starts musing over how fast midnight is approaching Bixby, and realizes she has to find out how far away from the equator Bixby is, blah blah math blah. She pulls out a map and realizes that Bixby is smack dab at the intersection of 36 degrees north and 96 degrees west. Dess realizes that these numbers are full of twelves, which might explain why the darklings have spawned in Bixby.
Yes, coordinates are completely man-made and there’s no reason why a bunch of ancient beings with no familiarity with Arabic numerals or our modern coordinate system would place any significance on this location and also the area that is now Oklahoma might not even have been inhabited during the time period that darklings roamed the earth. I’m not even going to get into it.
The goth carpool still hasn’t shown up, so Dess decides to go look at her dad’s oil drilling maps to find out more about Bixby’s location. Oddly, Dess mentions that she once looked up Bixby’s population, trying to find some significance in its number, but didn’t find anything relevant. Bixby’s population at the time these books were published was 13,000. I’m just saying. (In fairness, this information was probably much harder to Google in 2003-04, when this book was written. Wikipedia was only 2-3 years old at the time — although Bixby did indeed have a page, which was created in 2002.) Anyway, Dess finds a map of Bixby, and finds out that the exact intersection of the coordinates is at the snake pit, which happens to be major darkling territory. So…the snake pit = the Hellmouth, y/y?
(The exact intersection of 36 N/96 W is actually in Jenks, a different suburb of Tulsa. Again: shhh.) (Although Jenks also has five letters, just like Bixby, so Jenks, Oklahoma is also 13 letters and would’ve been an equally plausible setting.)
There’s some oblique references to Dess’s dad having a temper — she’s slightly panicky that he’ll catch her nosing around his stuff and blow up — and she also refers to Rex’s dad as a “psycho.” So none of these kids have great home situations, although it’s implied that Melissa’s mindcasted her parents into submission like the budding serial killer that she is.
Rex and Melissa finally show up, and Dess notes that they’re going to be late to the snake pit. Which sucks for Jessica, because she’s currently facing off a pretty intense horde of darklings. Dess has built a ring of defenses around the snake pit, but as everyone is tardy to the party, none of the midnighters are inside. Jessica manages to take out a couple of darklings, and then Jonathan airlifts her the rest of the way.
Then, weirdly, the first thing that Jonathan notices about Jessica is…that she’s wearing makeup. Teenage girls wearing makeup! What a concept! You guys almost just died, Jonathan. Please have some perspective.
Meanwhile, the goths have finally shown up. Melissa notes that the darklings are leaving them alone for now, but they won’t be happy if they get too close to Jessica. Then she’s like, “But you know, clearly something about Jessica is important to midnight, and also, we can’t let them kill one of our classmates.” NO, JUST KIDDING. Melissa ACTUALLY suggests leaving Jessica (and Jonathan) to die because she’s mad that Jessica’s stealing all her friends from her lunch table. What the fuck! Rex, at least, is also like, “What the fuck!” Melissa says that if they let the darklings kill Jessica, everything will go back to normal, by which I guess she means that she can go back to having all of Rex’s attention and leaving Dess out of everything.
Dess hilariously picks up on this subtext, and snarks, “I’m not going to get stuck with just you two again. Let’s go.” Hee. She whips out a spear that she’s made and marches off to go fight darklings, and eventually Rex and Melissa follow her. A bunch of darklings show up, and Dess fights them off with her spear. She manages to make it past them and into the defenses, but Rex and Melissa don’t. The wounded darkling transforms into a mass of spiders, which Rex mentions are his own personal fear, for reasons that are being saved for the next book.
More darklings show up, and Rex finally names the “steel skull rings” on his fingers. Please, book, never stop giving me details about these kids’ outfits. Every single thing I learn is fantastic. Then he very dramatically thinks that this is all his fault, somehow. I don’t know, I feel like Melissa was the one tempting fate by being all, “LOL let’s just let Jessica get eaten.”
Before they can die, Jonathan flies out to save them. Melissa balks at taking his hand — you’ll recall Jonathan needs skin-to-skin contact to pass on his flying power, but touch sends Melissa into a mindcasting meltdown — but Rex is all, “Bro, do you want to live or not?” and shoves her into Jonathan. We find out what actually happens when Melissa touches another midnighter: a two-way connection opens up between her and Jonathan, and they basically experience all of each other’s thoughts and emotions at once. It’s described as being overwhelming and really intimate, and Jonathan and Melissa are both equally grossed out by the experience.
But they make it inside Dess’s defenses. Melissa’s like, “Thanks for not letting us die. I guess. Whatever.” She’s so edgy, guys.
Rex tells Jonathan and Dess to work on bolstering the defenses, since they were weakened when Jessica fought a few of the darklings. Dess realizes that they left all of their steel out in the desert, and Jonathan’s like, “Aw, hell no, I am not flying back out there again.” They decide to improvise, while Rex and Melissa take Jessica down to the center of the snake pit to figure out what her power is.
But first, let’s have another boy get distracted by the fact that Jessica is wearing makeup! Isn’t she only supposed to be like, wearing lipstick? As if Dess and Melissa aren’t wearing copious amounts of eyeliner, like any mid-2000s emo girls worth their salt. Rex is all shocked that Jessica is wearing makeup and Jessica’s like, “Dude, focus.” Rex adds, “No, you look great. Really.”
He liiiikes her. She gave his glasses back to him! That’s probably the nicest a girl’s been to him in years.
There’s a lore rock in the pit. Rex and Melissa give Jessica a knife (because of course these edgelords are carrying knives around) and tell her to cut herself and spill some blood on the rock, which will tell her what her power is. Jessica and Rex banter a bit about whether the knife is clean (Rex: “Absolutely. Nothing inhuman has ever—” Jessica: “Not that kind of clean. Disinfected clean.” Hee.) before Jessica agrees to cut herself. Once she does, the ground starts dramatically shaking, the rock splits in half and a lore symbol appears. Rex says that it means “flame-bringer.” It’s the most literal power name ever, but everyone stands around derping that they have no idea what it could mean. Eventually Dess points out that they have no clean metal and the defenses are sputtering out, so they’re probably going to die down here unless one of them just so happens to have a deus ex machina power. Everyone looks at Jessica, and Jessica’s like, “What?”
Rex admits that he thinks Jessica might be able to use fire in the blue time. Jessica derps that he said that was impossible. Jessica, you’re a YA protagonist. Nothing is impossible for you. She tries to start a fire, and manages to make a few sparks fly. Everyone is blown away that she’s brought fire into the secret hour, but they’re less blown away when the defenses start weakening and the darklings get closer to the pit.
Jessica keeps trying and failing to start a fire, then Jonathan points out that Jessica’s digital watch is working. (Digital watches! Is Jessica wearing a G-Shock?) Jessica remembers that she lit up that building at her mom’s work, which was covered with electric lights. She pulls out a flashlight, gives it a thirteen letter name, and turns it on. It works in the secret hour, and she burns up all the darklings with it.
All the midnighters are thankful that Jessica saved them from getting eaten, except Melissa, of course. They get all hype that Jessica might be able to use a bunch of different kinds of technology in the secret hour — someone brings up cameras, and Rex says, “[F]ilm is a chemical process, kind of like fire, I guess.” Ha! These kids don’t have digital cameras. Or cell phones, for that matter. The 2000s, everybody.
Finally, everyone decides that they should go home. Jonathan and Jessica kiss in front of God and everybody (sorry, Rex), and he flies off back home. Rex, Melissa, and Dess stay behind to clean up; Jessica says she should get back to the party. Melissa quietly asks Jessica if she knows how to get back. Wasn’t Melissa down to let Jessica get eaten like half an hour ago? And now she’s worried Jessica might get lost between here and a party five feet away? The series never really makes up its mind on whether or not Melissa is legitimately antisocial and hates all the midnighters except Rex, or if she actually secretly cares about them deep down.
Before she leaves, Jessica thanks Rex for helping her find her power: “Whatever it turns out to mean in the long run, at least I’m not a totally useless midnighter, you know?” To which Rex says, “I never thought you were.” Aw. I…I lowkey sort of like Rex and Jessica together. I’m not proud of myself. (Actually, I sort of like Jess with all of the midnighters. I especially enjoy how she wins Rex and Dess over just by not being a huge jerk to them because they’re used to being brutally bullied for their goffik-ness.)
Jess goes back to the party, which comes back to life as the hour ends. Constanza sees her looking all beat up, and assumes that Some Guy assaulted her. They head out, and when they run into Some Guy by the cars, Constanza punches him in the face. I love her. She’s a better friend to Jess than any of the midnighters are, honestly.
We skip ahead to a few nights later. Rex, Melissa, and Dess are out at the snake pit again, doing lore shit. Well, Rex and Melissa are doing lore shit, Dess is doing math shit. Melissa’s mindcasting and can tell that Jessica and Jonathan are bouncing around town being all lovey-dovey, and Jessica isn’t afraid of midnight anymore now that she has the best power. Rex is all smug that they have someone on their team now who has a game-breaking power, but Melissa tells him that the darklings have feared fire invading the blue time for thousands of years, and they’re going to try to kill Jessica again. Rex is like, “Stop saying words.”
When the hour ends, Melissa drives Rex and Dess back home. On the way, she overhears someone thinking, “We must have Jessica Day.” She realizes that they’re in real time, and there’s a human out there who’s after Jessica. Rex notices that Melissa’s freaked out about something, but she’s like, “It’s nothing! I’m definitely not about to let Jessica die again so I can regain my rightful place at our lunch table.” Melissa, I swear to God.
THE END.
Leave a Reply