Every day, Dess wonders if they're not going to keep following midnight right until the end of the world, if the rip wont swallow them all whole and never let go. She wonders if the nightmare of a growing midnight will ever truly end, if they'll be able to go back to their normal lives one day.
Most days, she wonders if her parents miss her, if they'll notice she's gone, if life and midnight would have been different if she'd never been called to Bixby, Oklahoma. She wonders what it would have been like to be wonderfully ignorant of the midnight world.
Jonathan invents a game with her the second time they accidentally drive into midnight, and Dess breaks out into a fit of laughter when midnight slams on her and Jonathan's weightlessness is on her body in an instant. Jonathan stares at her like she's gone mad and asks what she's laughing about and if she's hurt her head or something. "Flying out of cars is the only fun we have most days." Dess explains. Jonathan
The next night, Jonathan drives the car out with her right before they expect midnight to hit, holding her with one hand as they speed down the endless highway, not letting go when she tries to loosen his death grip on her arm. Jonathan knows that if, all the dark forces of midnight forbid, he were to allow himself to slip, Dess would likely die the moment midnight struck. "What are we doing, Jonathan?"
"Having fun." Jonathan replies, like its the most normal thing in the world to be driving into what you know will certainly be a slam – into – your - seatbelt accident. Dess' thoughts churn but she places her other hand on top of his. "Lead the way." Dess says, and he does, speeding into an ever growing darkness and their ever growing terror. They speed past the world they are constantly leaving behind, through the uncertainty. They speed right by every last waking breath of every human being in the entire world into absolute death, because they can, because they must. Because they are trying, without knowing how, to save the world. To save their world. Because they're exhausted and every night they sleep in the car or in a bad motel or on sleeping bags that're wearing through on one side already. Because they don't want to die.
Because they're dead either way, if the world dies around them or the monsters take them.
Because they need to save their species, not just midnighters, but humans, they hurl themselves into darkness with intent and understanding.
It doesn't make her problems go away, it doesn't change the fact that they're driving into a growing midnight, but those minutes of pain and joy and terror make reality so much more survivable. Jonathan and Dess put aside the world for just a few minutes every night from then on out, driving right into the end of the world as Dess grips his hands and prepares to fly.