The third and final book in New York Times bestselling author Scott Westerfeld’s Midnighters series. The five teenage Midnighters of Bixby, Oklahoma, thought they understood the secret midnight hour—until one morning when time freezes in the middle of the day . As they scramble for answers, the Midnighters discover that the walls between the secret hour and real time are crumbling. Soon the dark creatures will break through to feed at last . . . unless the Midnighters can find a way to stop them. From the acclaimed  New York Times bestselling author of the Uglies series, coming soon as a major motion picture on Netflix! “Suspenseful. This powerful page-turner is compelling as it pits heroes against unspeakable evil both human and supernatural.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Quick pacing, high-stakes adventure, and cleverly crafted characters.” - Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books “Excellent. Teens who like fantasy, magic, horror, adventure, or any combination will be drawn to realistic characters in a complex and changing world.” - Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) The five teenage Midnighters of Bixby, Oklahoma, thought they understood the secret midnight hour—until one morning when time freezes in the middle of the day . The noise of school stops. Cheerleaders are frozen in midair. Everything is the haunted blue color of the midnight hour. As the Midnighters scramble for answers, they discover that the walls between the secret hour and real time are crumbling. Soon the dark creatures will break through to feed at last . . . unless these five teenagers can find a way to stop them. Scott Westerfeld is the author of ten books for young adults, including Peeps , The Last Days , and the Midnighters trilogy. He was born in Texas in 1963, is married to the Hugo-nominated writer Justine Larbalestier, and splits his time between New York and Sydney. His latest book is Extras , the fourth in the bestselling Uglies series. Midnighters #3: Blue Noon By Scott Westerfeld HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright ©2007 Scott Westerfeld All right reserved. ISBN: 9780060519599 Chapter One 8:20 A.M. Predator Bixby High's late bell shrieked in the distance, like something wounded and ready to be cut from the herd. Rex Greene was always late these days, stumbling in confusion from one class to another, late with his father's pills or forgetting them altogether. But the worst was getting up for school. It didn't help that he'd unplugged his clock a few nights ago, unable to sleep with the soft buzzing sound it made all night, like a mosquito hovering just out of arm's reach. His newly acute hearing had turned every electronic contraption into something whiny and annoying. But it was more than just the clock's noise; it was what it meant, with its false day of twenty-four hours. Since what had happened to him in the desert, Rex had started to feel time as something marked out in the sky—the rise and fall of the sun, the spinning stars, the interlocking ratios of the light moon and the dark. The rest of the world still had their clocks, though, so Melissa had banged on his window again this morning, dragging him rudely out of his strange new dreams. "Smells like . . . assembly," she said as they pulled into the school parking lot, her head tipping back a bit, nostrils flaring. All Rex could smell was crumbling vinyl—the upholstery of Melissa's crappy Ford broken down by thirty-odd Oklahoma summers—and gasoline fumes leaking up through the floorboard from the car's rumbling engine. Humans loved their oil, a flash of darkling memory informed him. They scoured the desert for it, used it to make clever things like plastic and gasoline. . . . Rex shook his head to clear it. On mornings like these, when he'd dreamed of Stone Age hunts all night, he had more trouble concentrating than usual. The old knowledge inside him seemed more real than his sixteen years of human memories. Sometimes Rex wondered if he would ever recover from what the darklings had done, the half change they'd effected before Jessica had rescued him. Was he gradually healing from the experience? Or was the darkness they'd left inside him like a virus, slowly growing stronger? As Melissa maneuvered the Ford into a parking place, Rex spotted a few stragglers making their way into the gymnasium entrance. The sound of an amplified voice echoed out from the propped-open double doors. "Crap, that's right," Melissa said, gripping the steering wheel tighter. "Pep rally today." Rex groaned and closed his eyes. He hadn't faced anything like this since the change, and he wasn't looking forward to it. The thought of all those bodies pressed in close around him, chanting together, brought a trickle of nerves into his stomach. "Don't worry," Melissa said, reaching across to take his hand. "I'll be there." At her touch, with no more insistence than a cool breeze, a calmness fell across Rex. His stomach stopped roiling, his mind gro