Cover

The Secret Hour

Midnighters

Scott Westerfeld

Dedication

To my mother

Contents

1

Rex

2

Dess

3

The Silent Storm

4

Melissa

5

Rural Legends

6

Jonathan

7

Dark Moon

8

Search Party

9

Rumble

10

Midnighters

11

Marks of Midnight

12

Arrowheads

13

Acrobat

14

Beasts of Prey

15

Curfew

16

Grounded

17

Revelations

18

Notorious

19

Mindcaster

20

A Change of Mind

21

Pegasus

22

Dressed to Kill

23

Coordinates

24

Rustle’s Bottom

25

The Snake Pit

26

Gauntlet

27

Purposelessly HyperInflated Individuality

28

Ceremony

29

Flame-Bringer

30

Talent

31

Night Watch

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

8:11 A.M.

REX

The halls of Bixby High School were always hideously bright on the first day of school. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, their white honeycombed plastic shields newly cleaned of dead insect shapes. The freshly shined floors dazzled, glinting in the hard September sunlight that streamed in through the school’s open front doors.

Rex Greene walked slowly, wondering how the students jostling past him could run into this place. His every step was a struggle, a fight against the grating radiance of Bixby High, against being trapped here for another year. For Rex summer vacation was a place to hide, and every year this day gave him the sinking feeling of having just been discovered, caught, pinned like an escaping prisoner in a searchlight.

Rex squinted in the brightness and pushed up his glasses with one finger, wishing he could wear dark shades over their thick frames. One more layer between him and Bixby High School.

The same faces were all here. Timmy Hudson, who had beaten him up just about every day in fifth grade, passed by, not giving Rex a second glance. The surging crowd was full of old tormentors and classmates and childhood friends, but no one seemed to recognize him anymore. Rex pulled his long black coat around himself and clung to the row of lockers along the wall, waiting for the crowd to clear, wondering exactly when he had become invisible. And why. Maybe it was because the daylight world meant so little to him now.

He put his head down and edged toward class.

Then he saw the new girl.

She was his age, maybe a year younger. Her hair was deep red, and she was carrying a green book bag over one shoulder. Rex had never seen her before, and in a school as small as Bixby High, that was unusual enough. But novelty wasn’t the strangest thing about her.

She was out of focus.

A faint blur clung to her face and hands, as if she were standing behind thick glass. The other faces in the crowded hall were clear in the bright sunlight, but hers wouldn’t resolve no matter how hard he stared. She seemed to exist just out of the reach of focus, like music played from a copy of a copy of an old cassette tape.