They were ridden by Dess’s friends from the cafeteria. The boy with the thick glasses pulled up first, only he wasn’t wearing glasses now. His long coat billowed around him as he halted, and he was breathing hard. Then the other girl who’d been at Dess’s table, whom Jessica had never met, pulled up.

Jessica looked at the three of them blankly. This dream was getting weirder and weirder.

“You’re welcome,” said Dess.

“Be quiet,” the boy said breathlessly. “Are you okay?”

It took a moment for Jessica to realize that the question was directed at her. She blinked again and nodded dumbly. Her feet hurt and she was out of breath, but she was okay. Physically, anyway.

“Sure, I’m fine. I guess.”

“Don’t worry about psychokitty; it’s gone for the night,” Dess said, looking after the departed panther. She turned to the boy. “What was it, Rex?”

“Some kind of darkling,” he said.

“Well, duh,” Dess said.

Both of them looked at the other girl. She shook her head, rubbing her eyes with one hand. “It tasted very old, maybe even from before the Split.”

Rex whistled. “That’s old, all right. It must be insane by now.”

The girl nodded. “A few fries short of a Happy Meal. But still crafty.”

Dess dropped her bike to the ground and walked over to where the cat had stood. “Whatever it was, it turned out to be no match for the mighty power of Hypochondriac.”

She knelt and plucked a dark disk of metal from the ground.

“Ouch!” Dess passed it from hand to hand, grinning. “Still sparky.”

It looked like an old hubcap, blackened by fire. Was that the dazzling flying saucer of a minute ago?

Jessica shook her head, dazed but slowly calming down. She was breathing evenly now. Everything was moving into more familiar dream territory: total craziness.

Rex rested his bike on the street and walked to the side of the car. Jessica shrank from him a little, and he put up both palms.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, “but you should probably get off the car. It looks like it’s going pretty fast.”

“Come on,” Dess said, looking up at the sky. “It’s like a quarter till.”

“It’s still not a good habit, Dess,” he said. “Especially when you’re new.”

He offered his hand. Jessica looked down suspiciously at the ground, but there were no snakes apparent. She saw the same shiny ankle bracelets that Dess wore looped around Rex’s boots. The other girl had them too, rings of metal piled up around her black sneakers.

She looked at her own bare feet.

“Don’t worry, the slithers are gone.”

“They departed somewhat overzealously,” Dess said, giggling. Her eyes were wide, as if the encounter with the panther had been some exciting fairground ride.