Blue Noon Read Free

punctured lung. The noise seemed to coil in the air for a moment, wrapping around Timmy’s shuddering frame, squeezing the breath from him.
    The hiss lingered in the empty hallway like the echoes of a shout, disappearing into the buzzing of the fluorescent lights.
    Timmy didn’t move. The twisted half smile stayed on his face, muscles frozen, as if some careless surgeon had snipped a nerve and he was stuck with the half-formed expression for the rest of his life.
    “Weakness,” Rex said softly, the hiss still ringing in his voice.
    His body softened then, whatever demon had slipped into him departing as swiftly as it had come. His jaw relaxed, and Rex’s muscles lost their inhuman rigidity—but Timmy still didn’t move. He looked thoroughly frozen, like a rat that had just lost a staring contest with a python.
    He didn’t make another sound as Rex walked away.
    Halfway to the gym, Rex’s heart was still pounding with the weirdness of what had just happened. He felt elated, confident, and powerful, finally cleansed of the fear that had stalked him through the halls of Bixby High School every day for the last two years.
    But he was also afraid. He’d tried to fend off the darkling part of him, but it had taken control nonetheless.
    Still, the experience had left him feeling so good —purposeful and somehow more complete. And he hadn’t really lost it, had he? The predator had drawn its claws, but it hadn’t used them. He hadn’t struck for the pulse in Timmy’s throat, the easy kill of the straggler.
    Maybe the darkling side of him maintained a balance with his human half. Perhaps Rex Greene was still sane.
    For now.

8:31 A.M.
PEP RALLY
 
    She watched the pep rally with awestruck fascination.
    Melissa had been forced to attend dozens of these things before, of course, but she’d never really seen one. Battered by the mind noise, huddled in the back with eyes closed and fists clenched, the old Melissa had understood pep rallies about as well as a bird sucked through a jet engine comprehended aircraft design.
    But the crowd no longer terrorized her, the horde of other minds no longer threatened to erase her own. Using the memories Madeleine had given her, the generations of technique passed on among mindcasters, she could rise above the tempest, ride its swells like a buoy in a storm.
    Finally she could taste it all….
    The football team strutting in Lycra before the crowd, their testosterone and bluster mixed with a bitter backwash flavor—the growing realization that once again, they were going to lose every game this year. The clique of pretty girls clustered together a few rows down, surrounded by a force field of disdain for all the nobodies around them—unaware of how much the nobodies hated them right back. The bored minds of teachers stationed around the edges of the gym, jonesing for cigarettes and more coffee, quietly relieved that first period had been superseded. The group of freshman boys camped on the first row of bleachers, watching the cheerleaders’ skirts fly up, their horny thoughts as sharp as sweat licked off an upper lip.
    Melissa found it all hysterically funny. Why hadn’t she ever understood this simple fact before? Why hadn’t anyone told her? High school wasn’t a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived.
    It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track.
    Through the crowd noise the minds of the other midnighters reached her, their various flavors coming through loud and clear. The three of them sat together—about as far away from Melissa as they could. In particular, she tasted every cold glance from Dess, who was glowering behind dark glasses, her mind still full of acid hatred for what had happened ten days ago.
    Melissa did feel bad about that—no one knew better than she how vile it was having your mind wrenched open against your will. But there hadn’t been any choice. If she hadn’t gone in and dredged up Dess’s secrets, Rex would be a