The Secret Hour Read Free Page B

what the diamond had been. A raindrop! The floating diamonds were
the rain,
somehow hanging motionless in the air. Nothing moved on the street or in the sky. Time was frozen around her.
    In a daze, she stepped out into the suspended rain. The drops kissed her face coolly, turning into water as she collided with them. They melted instantly, dotting her sweatshirt as she walked, wetting her hands with water no colder than September rain. She could smell the fresh scent of rain, feel the electricity of recent lightning, the trapped vitality of the storm all around her. Her hairs tingled, laughter bubbling up inside her.
    But her feet were cold, she realized, her shoes soaking. Jessica knelt down to look at the walk. Motionless splashes of water dotted the concrete, where raindrops had been frozen just as they’d hit the ground. The whole street shimmered with the shapes of splashes, like a garden of ice flowers.
    A raindrop hovered right in front of her nose. Jessica leaned nearer, closing one eye and peering into the little sphere of motionless water. The houses on the street, the arrested sky, the whole world was there inside, upside down and warped into a circle, like looking through a crystal ball. Then she must have gotten too close—the raindrop shivered and jumped into motion, falling onto her cheek and running down it like a cold tear.
    “Oh,” she murmured. Everything was frozen until she touched it, like breaking a spell.
    Jessica smiled as she stood, looking around for more wonders.
    All the houses on the street seemed to be glowing, their windows filled with blue light. She looked back at her own house. The roof was aglitter with splashes, and a motionless spout of water gushed from the meeting of two gutters at one corner. The windows glowed dully, but there hadn’t been any lights on inside. Maybe it wasn’t just the raindrops. The houses, the still clouds above, everything seemed to be incandescent with blue light.
    Where did that cold light come from?
she wondered. There was more to this dream than frozen time.
    Then Jessica saw that she had left a trail, a tunnel through the rain where she had released the hovering rain. It was Jessica shaped, like a hole left by a cartoon character rocketing through a wall.
    She laughed and broke into a run, reaching out to grab handfuls of raindrops from the air, all alone in a world of diamonds.

    The next morning Jessica Day woke up smiling.
    The dream had been so beautiful, as perfect as the raindrops hovering in the air. Maybe it meant that Bixby wasn’t such a creepy place after all.
    The sun shone brightly into her room, accompanied by the sound of water dripping from the trees onto the roof. Even piled with boxes, it felt like
her
room, finally. Jessica lay in bed, luxuriating in a feeling of relief. After months of getting used to the idea of moving, the weeks of saying good-bye, the days of packing and unpacking, she finally felt as if the whirlwind were winding down.
    Jessica’s dreams weren’t usually very profound. When she was nervous about a test, she had test-hell nightmares. When her little sister was driving Jessica crazy, the Beth of her dreams was a twenty-story monster who chased her. But Jessica knew that this dream had a deeper meaning. Time had stopped back in Chicago, her life frozen while she waited to leave all her friends and everything she knew, but now that was over. The world could start again, once she let it.
    Maybe she and her family would be happy here after all.
    And
it was Friday.
    The alarm rang. She pulled herself from under the covers and swung herself out of bed.
    The moment her feet touched the floor, a chill ran up her spine. She was standing on her sweatshirt, which lay next to her bed in a crumpled pile.
    It was soaking wet.

4
8:02 A.M.
MELISSA
    As Melissa got closer, the taste of school began to foul her mouth.
    This far away it was acidic and cold, like coffee held under the tongue for a solid minute. She could taste