Jonathan pulled out onto the street, swinging the car into a wide one-eighty that kicked up dust on Dess’s dying lawn. Then he shot down the unpaved road, tires spitting gravel and sand. As usual these days, he wasn’t in the mood to talk or watch out for cops.

Melissa settled into the front passenger seat, casting her mind across the empty spaces on the edge of town, staying alert. Since the Hysteria, curfew had a whole new meaning here in Bixby.

The official story was, of course, a big joke. A freak collision of air masses over eastern Oklahoma had caused a record number of lightning strikes and brain-rattling waves of thunder. Power had been knocked out across the county, and random electrical fields had disrupted even battery-operated devices and cars. These natural phenomena—along with statistical spikes of heart attacks, fireworks thefts, and costumed Halloween pranks—were the official reasons for the panic.

None of which explained the mutilated body of the camper found in outer Jenks or the seventeen people still missing. But it was a good enough rationalization for anyone who hadn’t been awake and inside the rip that night.

Of course, a few conspiracy types had much better theories. Melissa’s favorites were an electromagnetic pulse from an experimental plane using the new Bixby runway (which wasn’t even built yet) and psychedelic mushrooms growing in the town water supply.

It was all part of a need to understand or, more accurately, to explain away what had happened. Anything not to have to face the truth—that the unknown had come visiting.

One certainty remained, though: Halloween would never be the same in Bixby again.

They reached Jessica’s house just before eleven.

All the inside lights were off, both cars sitting in the driveway. There was no For Sale sign on the lawn yet or any other way to distinguish the Day house from the others on the street. But it looked different somehow, even before she cast her mind inside. Sadder.

“Are they really moving?” Dess asked.

“That’s just a rumor at school,” Flyboy said. He looked to Melissa for confirmation.

She nodded, her mouth filling with the burnt-coffee taste of anguish that still clung to hope. “They don’t really know. Still waiting for some kind of hard evidence, I suppose.”

“Waiting sucks,” Dess said, and Jonathan nodded.

And then they waited.

She made her way out the window about fifteen minutes later, dropping ungracefully into the bushes. Her jacket looked too big on her, and she walked hunched, her hands jammed all the way down into the pockets.

When she was halfway to the street, Jonathan flashed his headlights once. She spun toward the car, and a sudden jolt of fear shot through the air. For a second Melissa thought that she was about to chicken out and crawl right back into her bedroom.

But a moment later she was at the car window. Her anxiety pulsed in Melissa’s mind, her suspicion almost hiding the tight ball of grief in her stomach. Suddenly Melissa realized how brave Beth was to have agreed to this at all.