I use contractions in my dialogue because people use them as they speak, but I'm not sure whether or not I should use them in my narration and description. What do you guys think? Also, I did a re-read of Midnighters recently, so it's much fresher in my mind. How could I have forgotten Geostationary?

Sunday

Dess rolled out of bed shortly before noon. She was sitting at the table and pouring a bowl full of Cheerios when Bella walked in.

"Jake said he was fine with one," she announced as she heated leftovers in the microwave. Dess nodded and continued crunching on her cereal.

"I think your clock is fast, too. It said 10:00 PM a few minutes before I left last night, but when I got back to my room mine said 9:40."

"Mine's on Dess time." When she finished she placed her bowl in the sink and went upstairs to grab her keys. Bella had finished by the time she came back, and they headed for the door.

The cab was quiet as they drove down the highway. The hum of the tires against the blacktop was soothing, and the greenery blurred as it slipped by on each side. The sun found a hole in the clouds and warmed the interior. Dess rolled down her window to let the sun and smell of the forest invade.

When the first houses came into sight, Bella began to murmur the directions Jacob had given her over the phone. After a few turns they found the house bearing Jacob's address, and Dess parked by the curb. She looked up after walking around the front of the truck and saw Jacob Black standing on the porch.

"Bella! Dess!" he called.

"Hey, Jake," Bella answered. Dess nodded.

"Do you guys want to come in for a minute? I'll grab sodas." Jacob strode back through the door, and the girls followed.

"Have a seat," he gestured towards the chairs around the kitchen table. They did, and he came back a minute later with three cans of Coke. Bella and Jacob started an awkward conversation, but it smoothed out when Bella asked after his twin sisters. The sodas were finished by the time that topic petered out, and Jacob offered to give them the tour of the reservation. They headed out to Dess's truck, where Bella slid to the middle and Jacob took the passenger seat.

He pointed out the major features like the schools, stores, and the post office. Then they crept down the residential roads as Jacob pointed out the houses of people he thought Bella might remember. The reservation was not large, and eventually they ended up at one of the beaches.

"I'm going to sit here and take a break. Don't wait for me," Dess announced. She needed a break from the others' company. Jacob and Bella nodded and wandered farther along the beach as they continued their conversation.

Dess settled on a rock and stared at the ocean. She'd never seen it before. Did darkling or slithers have aquatic forms? Where there any Midnighter talents that had never been used because they were only useful with large bodies of water? Rex had admitted that there were stories in the lore of talents that remained mysteries. Midnighters could go to the rock in the Snake Pit and discover the names of their talents, but a small number of midnighters never figured out the full extent of what their talents allowed them to do.

The wind picked up in late afternoon, and Jacob and Bella returned to escape the cold beach. They piled in the truck and headed back towards Jacob's house. When they piled out, Jacob gestured to the hood of the vehicle.

"Cars are my hobby. Mind if I take a look?" he asked.

"F-150's aren't exactly rare, but go ahead."

He grinned and asked her a few questions about the truck's history, which eventually segued into questions about Bixby.

"I can't imagine a place without trees," he admitted as he examined the truck's machinery. "It seems like it would be empty."

"Yeah, but you can see for miles in any direction. It feels so closed in, here. I'm happy to see places outside of Bixby, but it's weird once the newness wears off."

"It's easy to get bored here, that's for sure," Jacob commented. "I'm hoping to go to college. After that, we'll see whether or not I come back. Well, everything seems to be in good shape. You're low on windshield wiper fluid, though." He closed the hood and patted it. "It was nice to meet you. Thanks for driving."

"No problem. Not having a license sucks, doesn't it. That was me not too long ago."

Jacob and Bella said their goodbyes, and Jacob invited the girls to come back.

They got back to the house as the sun was setting. Bella put dinner, which thankfully was not fish, in the oven. While she set the table, she noticed Dess carrying her backpack out to her truck for school tomorrow. Charlie pulled in the drive with five minutes remaining on the oven timer.

"Nice timing, Chief," Dess greeted.

"Hey, Dad. How was fishing?"

"Not bad. I've put most of what I got in the freezer."

"Fish for breakfast?" Bella asked with a shy smile.

"Of course. Best when fresh!" He grinned as he put the remaining package of fish in the fridge.

Everyone sat down and ate, and then went their separate ways for the evening. Just as Charlie finished his beer and headed for the stairs, Dess rushed down.

"Have you seen my thumb drive?" she asked.

"No, I haven't seen any thumb drives recently. What does it look like?"

"It's black." Dess scanned the living room. She eyed the end tables and checked under the couch cushions. Then she examined the kitchen table, countertops, and floors, and finally raced upstairs to check the hallway and bathroom.

"Have you seen my thumb drive?" she asked Bella when her sister opened her door curiously.

"Nope."

Dess went back to her room and stared for a moment, and then jogged back downstairs. She brushed her hair out of her face as she considered where to look next.

Bella must have followed her, because she asked, "Where do you last remember having it?"

Dess stood for a moment with a look of concentration on her face. Then she frowned.

"I thought I left it at home, but when I sat on that rock at the beach I realized it was still in my back pocket. I took it out to avoid breaking it. I must have left it there."

"Well, I suppose you can go look for it after school tomorrow," Charlie suggested.

Dess grumbled, "I have a school project on it. It was almost finished. The longer I wait, the more likely it'll disappear. I need to get it now, Charlie." Charlie hesitated, but the importance of a school project swayed him.

"Alright. But come straight back. Do you remember how to get there?"

"Yes," Dess said impatiently as she grabbed her keys.

"Call me if you get lost. And come straight home. Would you like me to come with you?"

"No, you have work tomorrow. Besides, you just had a beer."

"I had one beer."

"Still."

"Okay. Drive safe."

Dess jogged out to the truck and pulled out of the driveway. When she made it to the highway, she sighed in relief.

Freedom.

Her thumb drive was safely tucked away in her binder in her room. She had packed her backpack with her metal toys earlier and placed it in the truck, along with her bike. Her family thought she was going to search for her thumb drive, but she was actually going to search for midnighters during the hour. It was 11:00 PM now, and she could get to the reservation well before the blue time.

Dess eventually parked her truck in an empty lot. As she waited, she pulled out her GPS and took note of her location.

She smiled when the blue light enveloped the world. The dome light did not come on when she opened the door and slid out of the truck, and the sound of the door being closed was muffled. Within a couple minutes she was peddling down the streets of La Push, calling for anyone who might be awake.

The moon was at its zenith when Dess heard what she had been listening for.

"Hey! Wait!" Dess stopped her bike and looked back. A boy was sprinting after her. When he was close enough to see her face, he stopped.

"Are you a spirit?" he asked uncertainly.

"A what?"

"A spirit. My tribe has stories of spirit warriors, and this blueness isn't normal. Am I spirit walking?"

Dess stared at him a moment. Then she grinned.

"No, you're not spirit walking. Do you live nearby?"

"Yeah, a few houses back that way. Why?"

"You want to know what this is, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Then let's go."

The boy led her back to his house. He seemed to be several years younger than her.

"I'm Dess," she introduced herself.

"Seth. Seth Clearwater."

"Well, Seth. How long have you been having this dream?"

"About a year and a half, now. It that what this is? A dream?"

"Not exactly, though it is very dream-like. This story begins thousands of years ago, when humanity still had to fear other apex predators."

Seth sat in the chair opposite to her at the table. Suddenly, he spoke.

"Dess….. isn't that the name of one of Chief Swan's daughters? He hangs out with my dad, and I think he's mentioned his daughters a few times."

"Yep," Dess agreed. "See, not a spirit. Before we go any farther, have you met anyone else in the blue time?"

"No, I haven't. When I felt safe enough to leave the house, I went searching to see if I could find anyone else." He seemed embarrassed to reveal that he had felt unsafe. "All the other people. They're stiff and unmoving during this time."

"That's normal," Dess reassured him. "We'll get to that."

"Okay. So if this isn't a dream, what is it?"

"Up until 10,000 years ago, there were actually 25 hours in a day. Humans shared the planet with another race of intelligent predators. We call them darklings, and they have less intelligent cousins, slithers. When humanity started driving them to extinction like we did to the other megafauna, the darklings collapsed one hour so that it seems to go by in an instant for normal people and things. Only darklings and slithers can experience that hour. Everyone else is frozen. But anyone born within one second of either side of midnight, which is one in every 43,200 people by the way, have access to all 25 hours."

Seth looked confused. "How come no one has seen these darklings?"

"They're frozen during normal time, like the way normal people are frozen during the hour. If sunlight hits the darklings while they're frozen they burn, so they hide underground or in caves at the end of the hour. Speaking of which…" Dess glanced at her wind-up watch. "We've got about ten minutes. Here."

She grabbed her bag and rummaged through it. She grabbed a small, palm-sized box and stood up.

"Which room's yours?"

"The one at the end of the hall. Why?"

"Darklings and slithers still think, wrongly of course, that they're above us in the food chain. Now that I'm here to train you, you've become a threat to them. There are ways to protect yourself, but we'll get to that some other time. Are you free tomorrow after school?"

As Dess spoke, she walked through the open doorway and over to the room's lone window. She opened her box of sewing pins and stuck them one at a time into the wood of the window frame, whispering a tridecalogism for each pin.

"No, I have soccer practice every day after school. When I get back my mom makes me do my homework right away."

Dess sighed. Parents. "Well, we'll just have to continue this conversation tomorrow night. Oh, and if anyone asks, I was in La Push tonight because I lost my thumb drive at the beach. And you met me on the beach today."

Seth nodded. "Can I get your phone number?" he blushed and added, "You know, just in case we need to contact each other."

"Alright, give me yours, too," Dess said as she ignored his behavior. "See you later."

"Bye."

The world jumped into motion when Dess was halfway down the street. A few raindrops fell from the sky as she peddled back towards her truck. Thankfully it wasn't raining hard enough to get soaked, so Dess didn't have to endure a wet drive home.

Charlie was waiting for her when she pulled in the driveway.

"You were gone for almost two hours. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it was just hard to find the right rock in the dark, since I've only been there once."

"Well, I home you get a good grade on that project, since it caused you so much trouble. 'Night."

"Goodnight."