Chapter 6 – Jace

The evening morphed into the kind of late summer night that picks up seamlessly where day left off. In the fading light, students tossed Frisbees on the green. Others sat on the grass in small groups, speaking in hushed tones, an occasional laugh carried on the light breeze.

 “This is just so weird.” Clare gazed at the field in front of her, elbow planted firmly on a small table, chin cupped in hand. “Don’t you think, Jace? Everything looks so normal, right?” 

A few muffled piano notes drifted through the stone walls of Mathey College. Sick of being ignored, Clare sat up and banged a hand on the table. “Jace? … Jace!”

“Oh, um, yeah,” he mumbled distractedly, eyes fixed on the screen of his cell phone. “This is really weird.” He looked up at Clare. “Not getting any service. Are you getting anything?”

Clare sighed heavily. “Of course not. Pretty sure I would have said something. But that’s not what I was talking about.”

Jace frowned and looked back at his phone. He and Clare, both residential college advisors, or RCAs, for their dorm, were perched under the Blair Arch, handing out information on campus emergency procedures. “Look,” he held his phone up for Clare to see. “This text came from my mom the night the power went out. I can’t stop thinking about it. What do you think it means?”

Judelarjin evils stay way

Love you do much

Clare took the phone from Jace’s hand, read the message, and laughed. “Looks like your mom may have been out partying. I send texts like that when I’ve had too much to drink.”

“Your texts barely make sense when you’re stone-cold sober.”

“Hey! –”

Jace cut her off, snatching his phone playfully back from her hand. “You don’t know my mother.”

“Okay,” Clare said, craning her neck to take another look at the phone. “Well, Judelarjin looks like the name of one of those fancy boutique stores on Nassau Street,” she said, pronouncing the unfamiliar word Ju-Lahr-Jahn. “Maybe she was warning you to stay away. Some of those places charge seriously evil prices.” 

“Yeah,” he joked, “that would be just like my mom – warning me about ruthless capitalists.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s nothing.” 

“Probably just a butt text,” Clare said. 

“I guess,” Jace agreed, although he wasn’t really convinced.

“By the way, how do you feel? You didn’t eat a thing for dinner.”

 Jace hadn’t been hungry. Probably nerves. 

“Just don’t go getting sick on me. I’m not dealing with homesick freshmen on my own.”

“Don’t worry. I never get sick.”

“Yeah, sure, just like you never get wasted, strip down to your skivvies, and pole dance.”

“Hey, that was a dare!” He put his hands together, pleading. “Can we talk about something else? Anythingelse?”

“Sure,” Clare said sweetly, a triumphant smile on her face. “Let’s get back to what I was saying before when you were so rudely ignoring me.”

“Yes, let’s,” Jace answered, glancing one last time at his phone and shoving it into his pocket. 

“This,” Clare began again, sweeping her hand through the air in the general direction of the Blair Hall grounds, “is weird.” 

“Right. I thought we covered that.”

She shot him an irate look and went on. “The power is out all over. Cell service is down. This is MAJOR. Don’t you want to know what’s going on?”

“’Course I do.” Darkness began to fill the spaces around them, and the Frisbees stopped flying. A few generator-powered lights still shone strategically around campus, but the atmosphere was altered. 

“I bet it was terrorists.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Seriously, Jace, you come on. How else could you explain this?”

Students were trickling toward the dorm. An emergency curfew was in effect, and free time was about over. Clare was ready with a sign-in sheet. Jace was fiddling with opaque plastic tubes that he pulled from a box on the floor. 

“Give me a few of those,” Clare said, holding out her hand. She roughly bent them, activating the chemical reaction that made magic in the black night. “Genius,” she remarked, arranging luminescent tubes around the periphery of the sign-in sheet. 

Two freshman girls approached the table. “Hi, Jace,” a mousy brunette said, palpable heat radiating off her cheeks. 

“Hey, Mia. What’s up? Here, it’s going to be dark tonight.”

“Glowsticks?”

“I like to refer to them as Personal Illumination Devices,” Jace said. 

Clare snorted beside him as Jace theatrically bent one of the sticks into a circle and lifted it onto Mia’s head. “There you go. Perfect.” The girl giggled awkwardly and touched the crown with shaky fingers. 

“Look, these are very versatile. They make good necklaces, good bracelets, and, if anyone gets out of line,” Jace continued, “you can use them for self-defense.” He smiled mischievously and gently whipped Clare on the arm.

“Hey!” Clare yelled, shooting Jace an angry glare out of the corner of her eye. “Do that again and you’re dead!” 

Jace pursed his lips in an exaggerated “O” and looked goofily at the girls. “Whoops.” They giggled, and Jace added, “Use at your own risk.” 

“Don’t forget, everyone, common room at ten tonight!” he shouted, as more students filed by.

When the wave had passed, Clare turned to Jace, wearing a mock starry-eyed expression. “Oh, hiii Jaaaace,” she drawled. 

Jace rolled his eyes. 

“Oooh, tell me,” she said, leaning her face close to his and batting her eyelashes wildly, “are you going to protect sweet little old me in the dark?” She punched him on the shoulder and laughed. “Looks like you’ve got a new fan. Move over, Michelle, here comes Mia.”

Jace’s face fell.

“Sorry, Jace,” Clare said, suddenly serious. “Didn’t mean to strike a nerve, just trying to point out there are many fish in the sea. Especially for a guy like you.”

“No problem.”

“Oh, come on,” Clare said, squeezing his hand with rough affection. “I’m sorry I mentioned her name. I’m an idiot. Let’s get back to the terrorists.”

“Ugh, please,” Jace protested. “I think I’d rather talk about my failed love life.”

“Or pole dancing,” Clare said. “We could get back to that.”

Their conversation was disturbed by the sounds of an approaching bicycle, and Jace squinted in the direction of a red headlight. “Looks like Professor Mitchell,” he said, referring to the student life director for their dorm.

“Yup, and he has a stowaway with him,” Clare added. 

“Hi, there!” Jace called out as the bike braked before them. Mitchell kicked out the stand, stepped off, and unsnapped the fasteners on a child carrier behind the seat.

“Hi there, yourselves,” he responded, placing a tiny preschooler gently down on the ground. “My helper and me,” he said, sliding his fingers under the child’s chin and unbuckling her helmet, “were taking a little ride before bedtime to check things out.” He gently ruffled the little girl’s matted hair. “This is my helper, Ms. Kerry Mitchell,” he said, beaming down at his daughter.

 “Hi, Kerry,” Jace said.

The girl smiled sweetly. Professor Mitchell nodded encouragingly. “So, how’s it going?”

Jace began, “It’s okay so far. Everyone is a little on edge, but no major freak-outs.”

“We had a hall meeting at three,” Clare continued, “and the people from Facilities ran through the drill: only emergency lighting in the halls at night, use flashlights, no open flames, blah, blah.”

“Blah, blah?” Mitchell repeated, raising an eyebrow at Clare.

Clare blanched. “Sorry, you know what I mean,” she said.

“I do,” Mitchell assured her with a kind wink. “I need you and the other RCAs to be on high alert. Patrol the halls tonight and check in with the students, especially the freshmen. They hardly just left home, and now this …”

“What exactly is this?” Clare asked. “I mean, if you know.”

Professor Mitchell let out a deep breath. “Well, our friends over at Peyton Hall,” he began, referring to the location of Princeton’s Astrophysics department, “are saying that this is the result of a solar storm.”

“A solar storm?” Clare asked. “Not terrorists?”

Jace ran through what he knew about solar storms in his head. “Like a coronal mass ejection, you mean?”

Mitchell looked thoughtfully at Jace. “I think so, but not like one huge solar flare, more like several. Actually,” he said, placing a protective arm around his daughter, “they’re not even sure it’s over yet.”

“What does that mean?” Clare asked.

“It means,” Jace said, “that this is not an ordinary blackout, and power may be out a good long time.”

“But it shouldn’t affect us too much here on campus, right?” Clare asked, looking between Jace and Professor Mitchell. “We have the cogeneration plant and the microgrid.”

“Yeah, that should help, I guess, but …”

“But what?”

Jace looked troubled. “This could be really serious. Depending on how big a CME –” He paused here and looked at Mitchell, “– do we know how big we’re talking here?” The professor gave a shake of his head, and Jace continued. “This could knock out the grid for the whole country, or even beyond, and our microgrid can’t work indefinitely if nothing is coming from the outside.”

“You’re scaring me, Jace.” 

Mitchell put up a hand to stop the discussion, casting a meaningful glance at Kerry. “Nothing to be scared of here,” he said and stroked his daughter’s hair. 

Jace leaned down so he was level with Kerry, opened his eyes wide, and said in a hammy, ghoulish voice, “… Unless you’re coming to our dorm ghost story hour tonight.” He contorted his face into a silly, scared expression that made her giggle.

“Ghost stories, huh?” Mitchell said, stroking his chin. “I don’t suppose there will be any alcohol at this gathering?”

Jace and Clare exchanged glances. “No, no, ‘course not.”

“Seriously,” Mitchell continued, “I don’t want reports of drunken students falling down in the dark. Understood?”

Jace and Clare nodded vigorously. Mitchell continued to look at them sternly, and then his face softened back into a smile. “The ghost story thing actually sounds like it could be fun, as long as everything stays under control.”

Jace didn’t mention to him that several residents of the dorm were inside at that moment, applying corpse makeup and arranging “slain bodies” throughout the hall. He wasn’t sure the professor would approve if he knew they were making a full-blown party of it. “It’s going to be a regular Night of the Living Dead!” Clare blurted out, and Jace elbowed her in the ribs. Fortunately, Mitchell was distracted by the box under the table. “Where did those come from?” 

“They were left over from some dance. Figured they’d be perfect for tonight.”

He shook his head and chuckled. “The best and brightest young men and women in the country, playing with light-up toys. Can you believe this, Kerry?” He squeezed his daughter’s shoulders tenderly. “Has everyone signed in?” 

Clare shined a flashlight on the roster. “Almost everyone.”

“Good.” He said a few more words to them about increased security guards on campus through the night and promised to be back in the morning. He began replacing Kerry’s helmet. 

“Wait!” Clare said. “How about a necklace for Kerry?” She offered a Glowstick circle for the little girl. Kerry’s face lit up, and she looked at her father.

Mitchell nodded permission, and Clare secured the glowing necklace about Kerry’s neck. “For daddy, too?” Kerry asked. Clare laughed. “Absolutely.” She held one out to Professor Mitchell. “Shall I fasten it for you, Professor?”

“No, I’ve got this. Thanks.”

“Yes, thank you!” Kerry shouted, pure joy in her voice. Mitchell lifted the little girl up, placed a kiss on her nose, and lowered her back into the carrier.

“Be good tonight, you two!” he called, pedaling off. Jace and Clare waved and watched the darkness swallow the bicycle until all they could see were two receding neon halos.