He jumped. Jessica was pulled after him, like a kid’s balloon tied to a bike. But she didn’t feel as if she were being dragged. It hardly seemed as if they were moving at all. The world dropped softly away, the ground rolling beneath them. The road passed by below, frozen leaves brushing against them, the neighbor’s house sliding closer like some big, stately ship pulling into dock.

“You…fly,” Jessica managed.

They settled on the neighbor’s roof, still featherlight. She could see the whole motionless street now, two parallel rows of roofs stretching away in either direction. But strangely there was no sense of height, no fear of falling. It was as if her body didn’t believe in gravity anymore.

Jessica found a leaf clutched in her free hand. She must have grabbed it out of the air as they’d passed through the frozen swirl of leaves.

“It’s okay,” Jonathan said. “I’ve got you.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But…who’s got you?” The soles of Jonathan’s shoes barely brushed the slate roof, as if he were a hot-air balloon anxious to get off the ground.

In response he took the leaf from her hand. He held it with two fingers and released it. It didn’t fall, just stayed where Jonathan had placed it in the air.

Jessica reached out her hand. When her fingertips brushed the leaf, it fell softly to the roof, then skittered down the steep angle. Just as it had the raindrops, her touch released it. But Jonathan’s was different.

“Gravity stops when time does,” Jonathan said. “Time has to pass for something to fall.”

“I guess so.”

“Remember the intro chapter to our physics book? Gravity is just a warp in space-time.”

Jessica sighed. Another advanced class she was already behind in.

“So,” Jonathan continued, “I guess I’m a little bit more out of time than the rest of you. Midnight gravity doesn’t have a real hold on me. I weigh something but not much.”

Jessica tried to get her head around his words. She supposed that if raindrops could hover in the air, it made sense that a person could too. Why should any of the midnighters fall? she wondered.

“So you can fly.”

“Not Superman fly,” Jonathan said. “But I can jump a long way and fall any dista—hey!”

Without thinking, Jessica had let go of his hand. Normal weight hit her all at once, as if someone had suddenly dropped a necklace of bricks around her head. The house reared up under her, and she collapsed onto its instantly treacherous slope. She was no longer made of feathers but solid bone and flesh. A sudden terror of heights struck her like a punch in the stomach.

Her hands reached out instinctively as she slid downward, fingernails grasping at the slate roof tiles. She half rolled and half skidded toward the edge of the roof.

“Jonathan!”