Time

It started out like any other day. I was late for school and out of breath from running down the street trying to make up some time. I had hit the snooze button one too many times that morning and rather than sacrifice breakfast, I chose to move at double the speed. What I didn’t realize though was that the three bowls of “Lucky Charms” I had would give me “unlucky cramps” by the time I got to the end of my street. I was forced to alternate between running and walking (mostly walking), the whole time hoping that maybe my watch was a little more ahead than usual. Maybe instead of five minutes ahead of school time it had gradually sped up, without me noticing it, and become fifteen minutes ahead. Or maybe one of the busses was late, so they would be letting students into home room after the late bell. It had happened before, on more than on occasion and while it was a long shot, it gave me hope.

Finally, I was in sight of the school (with no sign of a late bus) and decided that the final stretch, no matter how much my midsection hurt, that I would run. At the end of my sprint I threw open the door and charged up three flights of stairs to the second floor. I went left at the top of the stairs, shot down the eerily empty hall, careened right around the corner and all but threw myself through the door.

“Not even close,” my homeroom teacher had said. “The late bell rang almost ten minutes ago.”
As I dropped my head and turned to start my trip to the office I heard one of the students under his breath say, “Maybe if you skipped breakfast now and then, Fatty, it would save you some time.”

Within a few minutes I was in line at the office waiting for my turn to get a late slip. When I got to the counter the secretary asked for my last name. “Girard” I told her, then to specify: “Timothy”. She then checked the big list of students to see how many lates I had. I knew I wasn’t going to get one of the regular slips, because I already had gotten office detention a few
times for being late. I wasn’t prepared, however, for what the secretary said next.

“This is your sixth time tardy, you have to be suspended. Go wait by the vice-principal’s office so he can fill out the paperwork.” Suspended? What the hell! What kind of stupid ass rule is that: Your punishment for missing ten minutes of homeroom is to miss three days of school.

When I finally got into the vice-principal’s office, I just sat there sulking while she filled out the paperwork and told me how they’re just preparing me for the real world and how if I had been late this many times at a job they would have fired me. But at my age I didn’t care about what kind of lesson they were teaching me. All I cared about was that I was going to have to go home and tell my parents. They would lecture me on how I have to get up earlier, but to do that I would have to go to bed earlier, but to do that I would have to start my homework earlier. If I did all this, when would I do all the things that I wanted to do like watch some TV, read a book, hang out with my friends? There just isn’t enough time in the day.

Once I was done being lectured, I was allowed to leave and begin my walk home. I kept going over in my mind how I would tell my parents, how they would react, and most importantly, how this would effect my weekend. I was so deep into thought when I got to the street that I didn’t bother to look before I crossed the street. The speed limit on this street is 25mph, but no one comes even close to following it. The absolute slowest anyone goes is 45mph. Plus, at the point where I was crossing there was a curve in the road, so anyone coming around the corner at 45mph would not be able to stop in time for a pedestrian who stepped right out in front of them…as I did.

The first thing I noticed was the silence. At first I thought I was dead and that’s why I couldn’t hear anything. Then I wondered if getting hit made me deaf. I opened my eyes to see where I was, and I saw that I was standing in the same spot. When I noticed the car coming, I didn’t have time to run or jump out of the way or anything. The only reaction I had time for was to turn my head, close my eyes, and wince at how much I was going to hurt. This was the position I was in now. I turned around in the direction that the car was coming from to see if maybe at the last second it had swerved off the road and hit a tree or something. To my complete surprise, I saw that the car was still there. The car had stopped dead about three feet in front of me. I wondered how he was able to stop in time and why he wasn’t yelling and swearing at me for getting in front of him. Then I noticed why he wasn’t moving at all. It was like he had been frozen stiff. I walked around to the driver’s side and looked in the window. As I walked around , the driver’s gaze remained straight ahead. I was trying to make sense of all this and I happened to look to my right. I noticed that all down the street there were cars, all stopped dead, like this one. I walked down the street a couple of feet and noticed another strange thing. One of the houses on the right had someone coming out if it, but she was frozen mid-step, looking at her watch, halfway out the door. This was nothing compared to what I saw next. On the sidewalk where I was walking there was a bunch of leaves in mid-air frozen in the shape of a cyclone. I went over and put my hand over them, under them, and on all sides, like a magician does to see if there were any strings holding them up. They were somehow suspended in mid-air.

This was the last straw, now I started getting freaked out. Why was there no sound at all and why was everything frozen in time? I didn’t like this, it was creepy. I wanted everything to start moving again…and then it did. I was knocked down by the barrage of sound and motion that returned all at once. Luckily I had moved to the sidewalk while everything was frozen, otherwise I would have been hit by all of the oncoming traffic. After a moment I got up, crossed the street (this time making sure to look both ways) and walked the rest of the way home.

Later that night, when both my parents were home and they began to lecture me (as I knew they would), I could not stop thinking about what had happened that afternoon. How come things had frozen just in time for me to not be hit by a car? How come I was still able I move? Why wasn’t there any sound? These questions plagued me well into the night until I had finally fallen asleep.

Well, I was off to a great start. It was my first day back after being suspended and guess what: I was running late. This time I opted to not eat breakfast, but I still left the house ten minutes after I should have. Some time before I got to the bottom of my street I started thinking about what happened three days ago. What if I walked to school while everything was frozen? What if I walked to school while everything was frozen? What if the clocks at school would be frozen too? Remembering that it happened last time when I almost got hit by a car, I ran into the street, just as a car was turning the corner. Unfortunately the car wasn’t going very fast and almost as soon as I stepped in front of it, the driver stopped short and began yelling at me questioning my mother’s species, insinuating that she was a canine. As I stepped out of his lane and onto the other side of the road, I got a little luckier. A black Monte Carlo had come roaring down the street and I had just enough time to glance over my shoulder and think that it wouldn’t stop in time when all of a sudden that silence came. I opened my eyes and looked and saw that the front bumper of the Monte Carlo was less than a foot from my legs. “That was too close,” I said, but this startled me because even though I know I said these words aloud, I didn’t hear them out loud. All I heard was a mumble inside my head.

“Oh well,” I thought, “no time to think about that now,” without realizing that I had as much time to think about it as I wanted to. I looked at my watch and it said 7:14. This meant that school time was 7:09 and in one minute the first bell would ring meaning we have ten minutes to get to homeroom. From where I was standing it usually takes me over fifteen minutes to get to school, so I hoped this would work. I began to jog down the street (not realizing that I could walk as slow as I wanted) all the while thinking how weird all this was but not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth. I would pass other people who were on their way to school and laugh to myself at the thought that I would get there before they did. When I got to the door that I usually enter the school through something occurred to me: What if because everything is frozen, I can’t open the door? Oh well, only one way to find out. I grabbed the handle, pressed the button, and pulled, and to my dismay, it opened. I guessed that things could move if I moved them. Once I let go of the door, it stayed open, so I pushed it shut.

As I was about to run up the stairs I realized that if I unfroze everything and I was standing somewhere that I wasn’t standing before, it would look kind of peculiar just appearing out of nowhere. So to remedy this I found a corner where no one was around and concentrated as hard as I could (not really knowing what to concentrate on).

The sound hit me like an explosion. The voices of about 1200 teenagers all entering my ears at once was like getting slammed with sledge hammers on both sides of my head. I staggered out of my hiding spot and made my way to homeroom. On the way I heard a bell ring, and thought, “Oh man, what bell is that?” Frantically I pulled back my coat sleeve to look at my watch and saw that it said 7:15 (which meant that school time was 7:10). The last time I looked at my watch it had said 7:14 and that was about fifteen minutes ago. Out of disbelief that it actually worked, I stopped someone in the hallway.

“Hey, what bell was that?”

“The ten past bell, man.”

It worked. It really worked. By sheer will I had stopped time, was able to move around and get where I needed to be, and then restart time. This event more than any other had changed my life.

Throughout the years I found many advantages of having my little gift. I was never late for homeroom, or any classes for that matter, ever again. Whenever there was a timed test, especially the SAT’s, I was able to take as much time as I needed. If there was ever a day when I had homework that wasn’t done, I would just take care of it the minute before it was due. If my parents made me do something before I went out with my friends on a Saturday, like clean my room, my whole Saturday would not be wasted. I did not however use my ability to cheat. If I was taking a test, I wouldn’t stop time to look in my books for the answers, or go up to the teacher’s desk and look at the key.

There were limitations, however, to what I could do while time was stopped. Things could move if I moved them, but anything using electricity or having moving parts was useless. That’s why I can take a test while time is stopped, but I can’t type a paper on a computer or electric typewriter. This is why, even when I got a car, I never drove to school. The car would not run if I stopped time and I would still have to deal with traffic. If I walked though I could walk as slow as I wanted and still get there with plenty of time to spare. Also, the reason why I couldn’t hear anything was because nothing could vibrate to produce a sound and the sound waves of a sound couldn’t move. This is why I couldn’t even hear my own voice outside of my own head.
Having this power was a great advantage and was also useful for some fun and pranks, which I won’t get into. However, in my later years of college I learned that it came with a price. Going into my freshmen year I was used to it being a part of my life. If some of my friends called me to go drinking with them and I had some homework to do I’d tell them that I’d be done in a minute…and that’s all it would take. By the time they walked from their dorm next door to my dorm, I would have an entire 10 page paper done, and be wearing a new set of clothes for going out. The problem I ran into was that there were a lot more papers that needed to be typed so I would have to do them without stopping time. These were in addition to my regular homework which I could do while stopping time. There were also many projects I had to do that involved other people or going to other places. All these things I had to do without stopping time. Then when I moved to a house off campus, I had to drive to school so I couldn’t stop time then. There were chores around the house that I had to do, like laundry and doing the dishes, where time couldn’t be stopped. Also, I had a campus job that time could not be stopped for. Because of this, I had to stop time to do other things like eat, read, brush my teeth, get dressed, and sleep. The one that affected me the most was sleep. If I pulled an all-nighter and then it was time to get ready for school, I would stop time, go to sleep, and then when I woke up on my own, I would start time again and then get ready for school. This I had to do very often because of all my new (time requiring) activities.

I continued on like this, growing more and more dependent on my addiction as the years went on until, in my senior year, when someone, I don’t remember who, made a comment that my hair grows fast. This made me start to wonder, so I did a little experiment. One morning when I got up at 8:00, I shaved my face and by about 4:00 it started to get a little prickly. The next few nights I purposely didn’t get enough sleep: only about 5 hours a night. On about the fifth night, I shaved again, and went to bed at 4 in the morning, but before sleeping at all I stopped time. When I woke up I went into the bathroom to inspect my face. I had more stubble on my face than I did the other day when 8 hours had gone by! This meant that while time was stopped, my hair continued to grow, which meant that I continued to grow, which meant that I continued to age. This had never occurred to me before. Franticly, I ran and got a pencil and paper and began to do the math. I figured that, on average per week, I stopped time for 32 hours. Times 52 weeks in a year, times 6 years that I’ve had this curse. This came to a total of 9984 hours, which I divided by 24 for the hours in the day.

“416 days! That’s over a year extra that I’ve lived in this span of time! I’m going to be a year older than everyone I graduate with! This wasn’t a blessing, it’s a fucking disease that ate my life away! I can’t stop using it now, I don’t know how to manage my life without it! Oh God, it’ll probably keep getting worse and worse until I die 40 years before I’m supposed to!”
After this screaming fit, I dropped my pencil and stared blankly at the wall for some time. How much time? I do not know.