She felt him relax, his fear of the crowd—and of the beast inside him—slipping away.

“Whoa,” he said softly. “Thanks, Cowgirl.”

“Any time, Loverboy.”

“Okay. How about tonight?”

She opened her eyes. “Hmm?”

“Maybe later we can—” Rex’s voice choked off, his grip suddenly tightening. “Something’s coming.”

“What do you—?” she started, but then she felt it too and slammed her eyes shut again.

A taste was thundering toward them across the desert, vast and ancient and bitter, tumbling over itself in a rushing wave. It grew stronger as it advanced, like an avalanche pulling down more snow from the mountainside, burying everything in its wake.

Then it struck, washing through the gymnasium, sweeping away the puny energies of the pep rally, obliterating the surrounding mind noise of Bixby leaking in through the walls. It consumed everything. Only Melissa’s connection with Rex remained, his shock and alarm reverberating through her like the echoes of a gunshot.

She opened her eyes and saw what had happened. The blue light, the frozen bodies, a leaping cheerleader hovering suspended in the air. The whole world struck by…

Silence.

Melissa looked at her watch in amazement. It was just after 9 A.M.

But the blue time was here.

3

9:03 A.M.

BLUE MONDAY

Midnight gravity flowed into Jessica.

She clenched Jonathan’s hand harder. “What the…?” Her voice trailed off into the sudden and overwhelming silence, her heart pounding as her eyes scanned the frozen pep rally.

Everything was blue.

The shiny Lycra uniforms of the football team, the Bixby town seal in the center of the basketball court, the motionless tendrils of a pom-pom thrust into the air—it had all turned the color of midnight. And everything was perfectly still.

“Jonathan?” Jessica looked into his face, hoping to catch some glimmer of comprehension. Maybe this had happened before here in Bixby, a weird hiccup of the blue time, and Rex had simply forgotten to tell her about it.

Jonathan didn’t answer. His eyes were wide with shock.

“This is messed up,” Dess confirmed in a quiet voice.

Jessica gripped the edge of the bleacher she sat on, felt the grainy reality of the wood. This was not a dream—this was the blue time.

Her eye caught movement across the gym. Rex and Melissa were slowly rising, looking strangely isolated among the frozen human forms.

His paralysis suddenly broken, Jonathan let out a cry and sprang out of his seat. Jessica instinctively clung to his hand, and as he left his feet, he pulled her softly into the air after him—they were both light as feathers.

“Jonathan!”

“What the hell?” His voice faded as midnight gravity carried them helplessly up and over the crowd, spinning around each other like two balls on a string. “Is this really…?”

“Yeah, really happening,” Jessica managed, gripping his hand still harder. The floor looked miles below, and she flashed back to Climbing Day in gym class—peering down from the top of the thick, knotted rope, terrified of falling.