Jessica felt weird dressing up like this. She never particularly thought about what she wore to school or even to go flying with Jonathan. She knew she didn’t have to worry about that with him.

“So, do these guys have names?” Jessica asked. She was still a bit nervous about the regular-time dangers of a late night party full of strangers.

“I guess so.”

“I mean, how well do you know them?” Jessica pushed.

“Rick, who invited me, is a friend of Liz, who’ll be there.”

Jessica sighed, reminding herself that the main point was getting out to Rustle’s Bottom. Surviving the snake pit and finding out why the darklings were after her was the only thing that counted.

“Okay, I guess I’m ready. You look great too, by the way.”

Constanza was wearing a houndstooth jacket and skirt with high-heeled boots. She clearly wasn’t planning to run away from any darklings tonight.

“Yeah, not bad, if I do say so myself.” Constanza swept her car keys from off the makeup table and headed out, calling good-bye to her mother.

Jessica dug into the pockets of the jacket she’d brought with her, fishing out a small flashlight, a compass, and a carefully folded piece of paper. Dess had given her the compass and drawn her a map of the Bottom to help her find the snake pit. After a second warning about stepping on snakes in the dark, the flashlight had been Jessica’s idea. Around her neck she was wearing Obstructively, Jonathan’s thirty-nine-link chain.

“Come on, Jess!”

She took a deep breath. Jessica hadn’t mentioned the party to her parents and wasn’t sure what would happen if Mom called after she and Constanza had left. Well, the worst they could do was reground her. Forever.

She looked at herself one last time in the mirror and practiced her tridecalogism of the night.

“Serendipitous.”

On the way out to Rustle’s Bottom, Jessica looked out of the car window to see a roll of razor wire passing by. She realized that they were driving along the fence around Aerospace Oklahoma.

“Hey, my mom works here,” she said.

“You said she designs planes, right?”

“Just wings.”

“That’s so funny that your mom works and your dad doesn’t.”

Jessica shrugged. “Dad gave up his job in Chicago to come down here. He’s always switching jobs anyway.”

“That was pretty cool of him, though.”

“Yeah, I guess. I think he’s wishing he hadn’t.”