title is from "boulevard of broken dreams" by green day because i am 100% committed to this theme naming.

three: what's fucked up and everything's alright

The Bixby High cafeteria serves turkey in November, trying to be festive. Like turkey is any less disgusting than the usual slop. Rex shuffles his tray along the line in the cafeteria, moving quickly. He learned back in middle school that pausing too long gives other people a reason to notice you, and being noticed is never a good thing. Besides, the choice today is between slimy corn and slimy green beans for the sides — it's not like he has to deliberate over it.

It's kind of a relief to be at school, even though Bixby High is just as crappy as ever, as crappy a place as any other high school in the world. Without Melissa, Rex feels like he's been cut adrift, without anything to anchor him. Math class makes him jumpy. English and science and French bore him — he probably should've taken Spanish, which is more useful here in Oklahoma, but he'd been going through a French Revolution phase when they were signing up for classes.

But it gives him something to do. Routine, the doctor had told Mom, right after Dad's accident, right before she left. Routine is good for him. And he doesn't want to leave Dess alone.

He pays for his lunch with a crumpled five-dollar bill, and turns to head back to their table.

He walks right into a wall of a human instead. Timmy Hudson hasn't done more than glare at him in the halls in weeks, but some of his friends apparently didn't get the memo.

Mike Simmons is taller than Timmy; eye level with Rex. They stare at each other, and Rex envisions them as one of those Discovery Channel shows Dess likes so much: the apex predator of the high school cafeteria, facing a young challenger. If the challenger wins, he gets the respect of the herd. Or whatever.

"Hey, Spex," Mike says, shoving him hard in the shoulder. "Where's your girlfriend?"

It's something like irony, Rex thinks, that for all they act like he's beneath their notice, they pay more attention to his life than his own mother does. He focuses over Mike's shoulder. He can see Dess across the cafeteria, waiting for the soda machine. Getting anything out of that machine is an exercise in patience, and he knows she'll be occupied for a while. He's on his own.

"Didn't you hear me?" Mike says, shoving him again. "Where're all your friends?"

Rex just looks away. That's none of Mike's business, for one. And he's still working on a truth that doesn't sound completely insane.

Mike grins, the cruel grin of someone who has a new insult and can't wait to use it. Rex has seen it often enough to tell.

"What happened to that redheaded chick? Did you freaks, like, sacrifice her?"

That is a blow that lands, and Rex can't help but flinch. Weakness, the darkling part of him whispers, he ignores it. That's what they did, wasn't it? Sacrificed Jessica?

No, they can't think that. Jessica had told them so, and Melissa had tasted that she was telling the truth. She had made her choice on that roof, that night. And if it had been between getting stuck in the blue time and letting darklings loose in Bixby once a year, Jessica would make the same choice again.

It doesn't make things easier.

"I don't know what happened to her," Rex says coldly. "I wish I did."

He ducks past Mike before he can say anything else, speed-walking to the table. When he sits down, he inhales a deep breath. You're okay, he thinks. He didn't lose control.

Dess comes back to the table, dumping her bag on the empty seat next to her and cracking her soda open. "Why so sad, Rexy?"

Rex squints at her. Some days he thinks Dess is quieter than normal. Other days, she acts like what happened on Samhain doesn't bother her at all.

Some strange, nagging part of Rex feels like he should ask, but it feels precarious somehow. He and Dess don't really talk about feelings.

"Nothing," he says, hesitating. "Mike Simmons is being an asshole. He thinks we have something to do with Jessica disappearing."

An expression that Rex can't place crosses Dess's face. "Don't we?" she asks.

Rex has been through this with St. Claire already, the same as Dess has. He's denied his own involvement a hundred times — denied that he and Jessica were anything more than friends, that he was with her or Jonathan or Melissa on Halloween night (technically not a lie; he was only with them between 11:59 and 12:01), that he had anything to do with the three disappearances after Samhain.

What else could they have done? He's wondered it a thousand times, alone in his quiet house. If Jessica hadn't put her hand in the lightning, the rip would've only grown. They never would've been able to stop it.

Jonathan blames him, he knows. Dess might, even though she won't say it out loud. They still don't get it, what it means to be the seer. What it's like to be the one to make these decisions. Rex hadn't known that releasing the lightning would've trapped Jessica in midnight. All he had known was that they had to stop the rip from growing.

He is the one that has to live with the knowledge that if it weren't for him, Jessica would still be with them. Isn't that how it always goes? It's him, always. He can almost hear his mother's voice, If you weren't always reading those damn books, your father wouldn't get so upset.

"I mean, I don't think he was referring to us stopping a rip in a secret hour that he can't see," Rex says dryly.

Dess just shakes her head. There it is, that un-Desslike silence, the bitterness that's something different from her usual sarcasm.

Are you okay? Rex thinks he should ask, but the words don't come out, and they eat lunch in silence.

The little red flag on the rusty mailbox is up when he gets home. The hinges squeal when he opens the box to grab the mail, and Rex idly wonders if he should do something about that. Do people oil their mailboxes? Is that a thing? Rex cleans the house sometimes — throws away food when it grows mold and wipes gunk off the sinks — but he knows the lawn's dying and there's a leak in the porch roof. He doesn't know what to do about that.

Dad used to do that kind of thing, before his accident — the only thing the old bastard was good for. He used to make Rex stand next to him and pass him power tools, and then yell at him when Rex was afraid to crawl under the sink or couldn't lift himself onto the roof.

Junk, bills, Dad's disability check, bills, junk. Angie hasn't written back yet, if she's found any connection to the blue time in her research on the Solutrean link.

Dad is parked in front of the TV, where he always is. His second round of pills has to be taken soon. Rex sets the egg timer in the kitchen to ring when it's ready, then goes to his room to work on his homework.

He feels a little twinge when he sees the formulas decorating the cover of his math textbook, but the numbers don't feel as though they're stabbing into his head anymore. He might be able to start doing his homework on his own again. Not now, but soon.

He has a paper to write on Bleeding Kansas for AP history. That, at least, he can handle. Rex hums to himself as he pulls out the books he's borrowed from the school library to start his research.

He's been lost in happy, research-related thoughts for a while when the phone rings. Rex looks up from his homework, then scrapes his chair back to go answer.

It's probably a telemarketer — or worse, his mom calling to make stilted small talk before letting him know that she's coming up for the weekend. He shouldn't even bother picking it up.

But then he thinks, Maybe it's Melissa, and hope blooms in his chest before he has the chance to stop it.

She's called once, and he knows that they've only been gone a few weeks, so it's not as though that's a particularly low number, percentage-wise. (See? He can think about percentages now. Dess would be so proud.) But he used to see her every day, talk to her all the time. His world feels wrong without her in it.

He picks up the phone. "Hello?"

"Hi," comes a voice on the other end. It's not Melissa's, and Rex hates that this still disappoints him.

The voice is high-pitched and girlish — not Angie's pack-a-day rasp, or his mom's harried tone. It sounds like a kid, actually. "Is Rex there?"

"Speaking," Rex says. "Who's this?" He knows the Grayfoots have his phone tapped now — but with half of them cleared out of town, would they even bother listening?

"Beth," the voice says. "I'm Jessica's sister?"

"Oh. Uh, hi. What's up?"

"Well..." Beth sighs. "Okay, there's no non-weird way to put this. You're looking for a way to help Jess, right?"

Guilt curls up in Rex's stomach. Yes, he's been looking — but there's nothing to find. Every piece of lore is another dead end, and he doesn't even know if he can trust the lore anymore, not after what Angie told him. Maybe there's nothing. Maybe Jessica is really stuck forever, and they can't do a damn thing about it.

"Yeah, of course we are," he says.

"Okay, 'cause I was thinking...well, Cassie and I were thinking —"

Great. That's just what they need, two eighth-graders poking around the blue time.

"— that we could help. We went on a field trip to the library in Tulsa today — the main one — and we found these books that seemed kind of interesting. We didn't have time to look through all of them, but we're gonna go back to see if there's anything useful in there. Can we meet at the library? And talk?"

Rex remembers, suddenly, that Angie had found evidence of the old midnighters' wrongdoing in the Tulsa archives, not here in Bixby. It's worth a shot, and he can't bring himself to say no to Jessica's little sister. Not when she's lost so much.

"Yeah, I guess," he says. "When?"

"Friday?" she asks. "I have band practice the rest of the week."

Well, it's not like he has anything better to do on a Friday night. "Sure."

"Okay. I'll see you then, I guess."

"Wait," Rex says. Objections are rolling through his head, the gravity of the situation reminding him that letting two thirteen-year-olds get involved is a very bad idea. But when he opens his mouth, only one question comes out: "How did you even get my number, anyway?"

"It was in my sister's planner." Beth's voice has a significant undertone of duh. "I went into her room and looked through her stuff."

Rex is beginning to see why Jess calls her sister a sneak.