Before leaving the plaza, I’d left Samson a note. Using the brightest shade of lipstick in Nola’s cosmetics case—a tube of Twisted Tangerine—I scrawled a message across the dashboard inside the SUV.
MEET US AT AARDMAN’S FLOWERS
—G
I knew Nola was going to be mad, but I had to risk it. Grandma or no Grandma, I was going to restart time as soon as I got to the flower shop. I only hoped Samson and Nola would be able to find the place. With Poppa still in Kansaska-Nebransas, and Momma waiting for a tow truck somewhere in Evergreen, my family had already become too fractured. I didn’t want to be separated from Samson for too long. We Beaumonts were supposed to stick together.
But I’d never been too good at remembering my supposed-to’s.
“I’m not steering us crooked, Specs,” Del said, giving the cart a shove. “We boosted a buggy with a bum wheel. This thing won’t roll straight.” Shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, Del and I bumped our way down Denver’s outdoor pedestrian mall, forcing the cart ahead of us through the snow. The 16th Street Mall was lined on either side with towering skyscrapers and old, historic buildings. Lacy snowflakes caught in our hair and on our coats as we pressed forward.
“We’ve got to go faster,” I said, scanning everywhere for Grandma’s tiara and poufy dress. I threw my weight against the cart, trying to maneuver around an unmoving squirrel out in the storm past its bedtime.
“I think we’ve already reached top speed with these wheels, Specs. It feels like we’re trying to push through a river of my gran’s hamburger gravy. That stuff was thick.” Del chuckled, and the smile on his face was the sort people get when they’re remembering something they love, or someone they miss.
“Whoa! Do you see that? Or am I losing it?” Del swiveled his head, pointing up at a building we’d just passed. I followed his gaze to a second-story window, where two identical girls with ebony hair buns and pink leotards stared down at us. Bouncing on their toes, and waving frantically, they looked just as astonished to see us as we were to see them. The girls were twin ballerinas-in-training. A sign below the window read: Michelle Robin School of Dance.
I glanced up and down the mall, listening and looking. “Has time started moving again, Del?”
“Uh-uh.” Del slowly shook his head. “Should we stop?” he asked. “Go up there and introduce ourselves?” He waved halfheartedly at the dancers and sighed. “Maybe we should form a club, or team, or something. We could call ourselves The Timeless Crusaders. I wonder how many more people can resist the power of my time-stops.”
I still didn’t have the heart to tell Del that I was the one stopping time. I had no clue why Del and the girls in the window weren’t frozen in place. Just then, I knew only one thing:
“We can’t dilly-dally. Time or no time, my grandma needs me.”
I kept my eyes peeled for more moving strangers. First Del . . . now a pair of girls who looked like twins? I couldn’t ignore the likelihood that there were even more people in the world who were unaffected by my savvy. Was there a Dutch boy awake in the night in Holland, wondering why the windmills had stopped turning? A tour guide on the Great Wall of China, baffled by a sea of unmoving tourists? Would those people want to be Timeless Crusaders too?
“Aardman’s Flowers.” Del read the sign above the window when we arrived at the flower shop at last.
I stared gloomily at the notice taped to the door. “Closed for the blizzard.”
A man wearing an orange-and-blue parka and a matching ski hat stood like a statue at the door, key poised in the lock.
There was no sign of Grandma Pat.
Del studied the frozen florist for a moment, then he snapped his fingers twice and opened his palm. “Hand over that lipstick you brought with you, Specs.”
I fished in my pocket for Nola’s tube of Twisted Tangerine. “What do you need it for?” I asked, entrusting the lipstick to Del.
“I want to paint this guy’s face orange. He won’t mind; he’s a Broncos fan.” Del pointed to the team colors on the man’s coat.
I shook my head. “I think we’ve had enough fun for one time-stop, Del. Besides, Nola’s already going to be mad at me for raiding her cosmetics case. Let’s not make a bigger mess of her lipstick than I already have.”
“Aw, come on, Specs! My gran was a makeup artist. I learned more than a thing or two watching her do makeovers behind the cosmetics counter in my uncle’s store.” As he spoke, Del reached up and drew the profile of a charging bronco onto the shopkeeper’s left cheek. When he finished his sports-fan makeover, Del prodded the frozen florist with three fingers, making the man tilt to the left, then to the right.
“Stop it,” I said, trying not to laugh. “If you leave him like that, he’ll tip over as soon as I make time go again. Besides, we need to figure out what to do next.” But I already knew what I needed to do next. It was time to go to plan B. It was time to reunite with Samson and Nola, and then go directly to the old high school building. We’d wait for Grandma there and keep her from climbing to the top of the treacherous clock tower. Only, every time I thought about the tower, I wanted to run and hide. I didn’t think I could face it. Not in person. Not for real. Just watching the scene play out in the bathroom mirror had been terrifying enough. I wasn’t ready to discover if I had the strength to catch Grandma and hold on to her.
What if I failed?
I was nothing but a baby. Silly and afraid.
“Gypsy? Hello? Are you in there, Specs?” When I looked up, Del was waving one hand in front of my glasses.
“What?”
“I said, you mean I have to make time go again. Right?” Del frowned. “You said you have to do it, but—”
“Del—”
“Shh! Just stand back and let me work. I’m going to start the clocks again, just for you, Gypsy Beaumont. Then we can ask this flower guy if he’s seen your grandmother.”
My shoulders drooped as I watched Del try to restart time. He jumped up and down. He punched the floating snow. He closed his eyes, clapped his hands, and cried, “Bibbity . . . bobbity . . . bacon double cheeseburgers!”
“Abba-dabba-doo-cadabra!”
“Shazbot!”
Del quickly ran out of fancy moves and funny incantations, but he didn’t stop trying. He wanted to help and he wasn’t afraid to face the situation head-on.
“Maybe you should try come what may,” I mumbled, lamenting the loss of what I’d believed to be my own magic words.
“Come what may?”
“It’s part of a Shakespeare quote my grandpa shared with me before he died,” I explained. “Come what may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.”
“I like it.” Del nodded his approval. “It’s kinda like saying: Whatever happens, time will keep on moving and bad days will always end. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“But ‘come what may’ could also mean: Bring it on! Don’t you think?”
“Er . . . yes, I suppose so,” I agreed again, this time with more than a thimble-full of hesitation.
While Del spread his arms wide and turned up the volume on his swagger, shouting: “Hey, time! Come what may! Bring it on!” I wrestled with the knowledge that words alone couldn’t stop or start time. I had learned that lesson in the SUV with Nola when I said stop and nothing stopped. I was still missing something. There was an essential puzzle piece I was overlooking—one that would let me scumble my mixed-up savvy. One that would allow me to switch time off and on at will.
I glanced at little Tuck, who was still all bent up inside the shopping cart, and I remembered the first time I stopped the clocks, five days ago. I’d blamed Tucker. He’d made me so mad. He had also made me afraid—a hundred times more afraid than the crazy switch had made me. Fearing Tucker was about to wreck the house, I’d closed my eyes and turned away. I’d done the same thing at Grandma’s,
when the bedroom window was about to shatter; and at the bus station, when B-Bug was going to knock Del’s block off. Each time, I’d turned away, not wanting to face what was happening, or what was coming next. Unwilling to bring anything on.
My chest began to burn, and I realized I was holding my breath. I emptied my lungs, then filled them again, turning my attention back to everything there was to see in the frozen moment in front of me—the snow, the city, the lampposts, the shopkeeper, Del and Tucker. It had been a long and interesting interval since I stopped time back in the bus station. But I was growing keen to move on to the next moment . . . and the moment after that.
“Are you really ready for time to start again, Del?”
“Are you kidding? I’m half past ready. Aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am,” I said. “Come what may, I’m ready.” This time, when I said the words, they felt deep and true. I also knew now that I didn’t have to say them at all. Keeping my eyes open, I spread my arms wide, the way Del had, like I was welcoming back time with a waiting hug. Ready to embrace, or experience, or overcome whatever was going to happen next . . . and next . . . and next.
I tried not to think about the things I couldn’t change. About the things I was afraid might happen. I could feel Del watching me, like he could sense the powerful pull that radiated out from where I stood—a pull that made the whole world turn again.
THE HUBBUB OF THE stormy night returned in a rush. A glacial gust slammed the floating snowflakes sideways, gluing them to newspaper boxes, street signs, and us. I bubbled with pride at the return of the blizzard.
I’d started time again—on purpose!
Ignoring the wind and weather, I twirled a triumphant twirl. Then I slipped on a patch of ice and fell. I felt like Jack Frost was mocking me, reminding me that I was supposed to be growing up and acting my age, not spinning and dancing around in the snow like a ninny.
Lying flat on my back on the sidewalk, I heard Tucker cry, “Hey! What’s going on? How’d I get in this cart?” and the shopkeeper say, “Where’d you three come from? Are you okay, kid? Did you hit your head?”
Rushing to help me off the ground, Del and the shopkeeper both dusted snow from my coat and leggings.
“I’m okay,” I said, feeling foolish. “Nothing hurts.”
Nothing but my pride.
I didn’t know how long it would take Samson and Nola to catch up to us. But once I explained our situation to the shopkeeper, he kindly allowed us to wait inside. He was worried I might have injured myself in front of his store. Like it was his fault I fell on the ice, not mine.
“No self-respecting Aardman would leave three kids standing alone on a city curb in a blizzard, after dark,” the man said, introducing himself to us as: “Thomas G. Aardman, fourth-generation florist to the governor of Colorado.” Then he hoisted Tucker out of the shopping cart and escorted us into his store—completely unaware of the decorative orange markings on his face.
Mr. Aardman turned on all the lights. Colorful ribbons snapped and fluttered from the rafters, rippling in the warm currents issuing from the heating vents. The shop was filled with the aroma of hundreds of cut flowers blooming by the bucketful inside glass coolers. I closed my eyes and sucked in the scent of roses, freesias, and carnations. For half a heartbeat, I was able to forget where I was, and why. I imagined I was standing in a meadow of wildflowers, surrounded by towering glass jars—jars like the ones my savvy grandma, Dollop O’Connell, once used to can storehouses of radio waves.
How I wished Grandma Pat could have been born into a savvy family too! Why couldn’t Patrice Beaumont have a touch of shimmer-glimmer in her DNA, the way both of my mother’s parents had?
I was disheartened to learn that Mr. Aardman hadn’t seen my grandmother. The snow was coming down so hard now, I wasn’t sure what I was beginning to fear more: Grandma Pat making it to the clock tower, or Grandma Pat not making it to the clock tower. What if she was already a grandma-shaped Popsicle?
Tucker started acting strangely the moment he was out of the cold. He barely glanced at Del, even after I explained, in a rapid whisper in his ear, how Del had helped me, and how, for some reason, Del didn’t freeze with the rest of the world when I stopped time. I thought Tuck would be brimming with questions. Instead, he wiggled and squirmed, hugging his arms across the front of his coat, like he was working hard to keep his heart from popping out of his chest. I hadn’t seen Tucker so jumpy since he tried to smuggle a dozen freshly baked cookies out of Momma’s kitchen, in his underwear—not realizing the cookies were still hot.
“Do you have to go to the bathroom or something?” I asked him, looking around the shop for a washroom.
“Nope, nope!” Tucker shook his head. Then he ducked away from me and Del, whispering soothing things into his coat, as if trying to reassure his own belly button that everything was going to be all right.
“He could be feeling queasy,” I told Del, remembering my brother’s tummy troubles after previous time-stops. Mr. Aardman was holding a hand over his stomach too as he disappeared into the back room.
Del also looked like he felt sick. No . . . not sick. Bereaved. Deflated. Disappointed. Robbed. Del had watched me restart time; his belief that he had superpowers had just been totally obliterated.
I pressed my eyelids together tightly. I was beginning to understand a thing or two about scumbling my savvy now. Closing my eyes was an important part of stopping the clocks. Drawing in on myself was another. More out of habit than anything else, I silently mouthed the words stop-stop-stop, sticking a pin in time so that Del could have a semi-private moment to recover. I could feel myself do it this time. I could feel the way the world slowed to a standstill, like I was pulling on the reins of a runaway horse.
When I opened my eyes again, I was enormously pleased with myself. The floral coolers had fallen silent. The ribbons overhead had stopped waving. Del’s lips were pressed into a tight line.
“Seriously?” Del rolled his eyes, then mumbled, “Show-off.” But the corners of his mouth tugged into a grudging smile when he said it, so I knew he wasn’t entirely angry.
“I just thought—”
“Gah! Will you just start time again, Specs?”
“Yes, of course! I . . . I could use the practice.” I grimaced and whispered, “Sorry.” Then, standing tall and strong and ready—and with my eyes wide open—I released the reins again and let time gallop on.
Mr. Aardman returned a moment later, carrying a snow shovel, a bag of ice melt, and a first aid cold pack.
“Really, I’m fine,” I told him, when he thrust the cold pack at me. “I swear, I didn’t hurt myself on the ice.” Mr. Aardman looked so addlepated with distress, I took the cold pack and held it to the back of my head, just to make him feel better. Nodding to me and Del, the shopkeeper carried his shovel out the door, determined to make the sidewalk in front of his store safe for twirly-whirly girls like me.
Del and I slumped into two of the cushy chairs in the bridal consultation corner, waiting for Samson and Nola to arrive with the car. I continued to hold the cold pack to my head, even though I didn’t need it. Del fidgeted with the zipper pull on his coat.
“Soooo, did you trip over a radioactive sundial or something?” he asked. “Or were you bathed in magical clock oil on the day you were born?”
I sighed, knowing I owed Del a proper explanation. I had wanted to let him believe he had the power to stop time, hoping to spare him the disappointment he felt now. I knew I was going to have to tell Del the whole impossible-to-believe truth.
For the second time that night, my family’s secrets came spilling out—thirteenth birthdays, savvies, the switch, my clock tower vision. I told him everything. Del listened without interrupting, but the truth only seemed to make things worse. Del looked more depressed than he had before I’d told him anything.
Mr. Aardman was still shoveling the
sidewalk, barely getting a section cleared before the snow covered it up again, when the front door opened and Samson rushed inside, with Nola at his heels.
“Gypsy! Tucker! We got here as fast as we could!”
“DON’T EVER DO THAT again, Gypsy!” Samson said as he and Nola joined us inside Aardman’s Flowers. “We can’t split up like that. What if we hadn’t been able to find you? That police officer thought I was crazy when I pointed to your message on the dashboard and asked him for directions to Aardman’s Flowers.”
“Did you have to use my lipstick, Gypsy?” Nola gave me an exasperated look. “Couldn’t you think of a cleaner way to leave us a note? Erm, hey there . . . who’re you?” Nola noticed Del for the first time.
“Me? I’m nobody,” Del said glumly. “Nobody special, that is.” Del frowned as he studied Nola’s heavy, inexpertly applied makeup.
“This is Del, you guys,” I said, waving my cold pack in his direction. “Don’t worry, he knows everything. I’ve already told him about savvies, and he’s been helping me look for Grandma. You’re not gonna believe it—Del’s not affected by my time-stops! He helped me—”
“Gypsy!” Samson’s eyes blazed ember bright as he ignored Del and crouched down in front of me. At first I thought he was going to get angry at me for telling another person our family secret. But then he said, “Why were you holding an ice pack to your head, Gypsy? Did you hurt yourself?”
“Let me look at her!” Nola pushed my brother aside. Before I could object, Nola began a two-handed examination of my scalp, searching for a bump that wasn’t there. Peering intently at me, she held up one finger and moved it back and forth in front of my eyes.