“Oh, Jessica,” Beth said, twisting away and winding herself further into the tangle of sheets. Then she turned her head to stare accusingly. “Did Mom tell you to do this? That is so lame.”

“No. Of course not. I just wanted—”

“To be Miss Mature. To show how you’ve got time for me even though you’re Miss Popular here. Whatever. Thanks for the pep talk, Jess. Maybe some sleep now?”

Jessica started to reply but stopped herself and then had to stifle a smile instead. Beth was back to normal. She had defrosted from the blue time without any visible damage.

“Sleep tight,” Jessica said, crossing to the door.

“Yeah, no bedbugs and all that.” Beth rolled over grumpily, pulling the sheet over her head.

Jessica closed the door. As she stood all alone in the hall, her sister’s last words rattled around in her head. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she whispered.

She went to her own room and closed the door tightly, suddenly feeling as if the blue time hadn’t really ended. The light was back to normal, and the sound of the constant Oklahoma wind had returned, but everything looked different to her now. The world Jessica had known—the world of night and day, of certainty and reason—had been completely erased.

In another twenty-four hours the blue time would come again. If Rex had been telling the truth, it would come every night.

Jessica Day lay down in her bed and pulled the covers up all the way to her nose. She tried to go to sleep, but with her eyes shut, Jess felt as if something else were in the room. She sat up and peered into every corner, making sure again and again that no unfamiliar shapes lurked there.

It was like being little again, when night was a time of peril, when things lived under the bed, things that wanted to eat her.

There were worse things than bedbugs, and they did bite.

11

9:28 A.M.

MARKS OF MIDNIGHT

Beth was in fine form the next morning at breakfast.

“Mom, Jessica was sleepstalking last night.”

“Sleepwalking?” Mom asked.

“No. Sleep stalking. She was creeping around my bedroom, stalking me while I was asleep.”

Jessica’s parents looked at her, raising their eyebrows.

“I was not stalking you,” Jessica said. She dug her fork into the huevos rancheros—cheese and eggs—that Dad had made, wishing this topic of conversation would just go away. She should have known that Beth wouldn’t keep quiet about her visit last night.

When Jessica looked up, everyone was still staring at her. She shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went in to see if Beth was awake.”

“And to give a little speech,” Beth said.

Jessica felt her face flush. Her little sister always instinctively found the route to maximum embarrassment. She wanted every uncomfortable fact out in the open. Every awkward moment desperately needed her commentary.