Poppa scrubbed at the scar on his head. It was a mark he’d carried for almost a decade, after a car crash nearly took his life before my sister’s savvy birthday.
“Maybe we won a trip to Disneyland,” Tucker whispered loudly in my ear as we waited for Poppa to find his words. I took my little brother’s hand and squeezed it, wishing I could be as hopeful.
Samson must have sensed my apprehension, because he wrapped his long, thin fingers around my other hand, making me feel a little stronger. A little calmer too. Whatever was happening, I hoped it had something to do with the phone call Poppa had gotten the day before, and nothing to do with me or Mrs. Foster. Or Flint’s Market. Or soap.
“I’m sorry, everyone,” Poppa said at last. “Your mother and I have talked it over and, while we know it won’t be easy, we’ve decided we have to bring Grandma Pat here to live with us.”
I sucked in a breath and held it.
Samson made a muted choking noise.
Tucker’s eyes went wide in horror. He quickly pulled his fingers out of mine and stuck his hands under his corduroys, protecting his backside. The last time Tucker and Grandma Pat crossed paths, Grandma had given him a swat on the bottom. He’d never forgotten it.
Momma continued to pace, not looking at us. I flinched as she caught the toe of her shoe on the edge of the rug again and again. I knew the odds were against her; if she didn’t stop pacing soon, she was bound to trip and fall. But I had bigger worries.
Grandma Pat? Coming to live with us?
“Your grandmother can have Grandpa Bomba’s old room, kids,” Poppa barreled on, his words gaining sluggish momentum, like an express train bound for dreary destinations. “I suppose that room has been empty long enough. We’ll all go to Colorado this week to pack my mother’s things and move her here.”
“Grandma Pat isn’t well,” Momma said. “Her neighbors called here yesterday.”
Poppa nodded. “Mr. and Mrs. Kim are both doctors, and they feel strongly that my mother can no longer care for herself. Her memory . . . her mind . . . well, she’s starting to get very mixed up. But Grandma is family, and we Beaumonts take care of each other, yes?”
No one seconded Poppa’s yes. The thought of Grandma Pat moving to Kansaska-Nebransas—moving into Grandpa’s room—was a bomb detonating inside my chest. I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. I was certain I was turning inside out.
“We’re going to bring Grandma Pat . . . here?” Samson said slowly. His grip on my hand tightened and grew hot—unbearably hot. So hot, I had to let go for fear of being burned. Things were getting worse, and weirder, by the second.
Little Tuck climbed to his feet and stood on the sofa. “But it won’t be forever. Right, Poppa?” he said. “Grandma’s not coming permanently, is she?”
“Yes, Tuck. Permanently.”
“Nooo! Grandma Pat is going to ruin everything.” Tucker voiced the potent thought that all of us were thinking. He began to stomp the sofa cushions, shouting: “Grandma hates us! She hates us!”
It was true Grandma Pat didn’t like us—Momma and us kids, at least. Poppa was Patrice Beaumont’s only child, and her pride and joy. She’d raised him on her own after Grandpa Walter died when Poppa was a boy, and she’d always felt her son should have married someone else. Someone different. Or rather, someone who wasn’t so very, very different. Savvy different.
At Tucker’s cry, Momma stopped pacing and turned toward us, like she’d suddenly remembered she was supposed to comfort us and tell us everything would be okay. Those were the sorts of things a perfect momma would do. But just now, Momma didn’t seem too good at remembering her supposed-to’s either.
“Kids—” she began. Then her toe caught for the hundredth time on the edge of the rug and she took a tumble, rattling the family portraits on the wall. As the rest of us leaped up to help her, a framed photograph of Grandma Pat landed catawampus on the floor. Upside down and glowering, Grandma looked just as unhappy as the rest of us.
Grandma Pat was no relation to Eva Mae El Dorado Two-Birds Ransom, the first savvy-powered girl from Grandpa Bomba’s stories. But maybe she wasn’t as un-magical as I thought. Maybe she did have a savvy. Maybe Grandma’s savvy was the ability to make a muddle of other people’s lives. To turn things topsy-turvy. There was no other explanation for what happened next.
“Um . . . you guys? I feel sorta funny.” Tucker stuck out his tongue, lolling it around the way he did whenever he saw cauliflower. Only now his tongue was HUGE. He looked like he was having an allergic reaction to Poppa’s news. Already, Tucker’s hands and feet were twice their normal size. The rest of him was ballooning fast.
I turned from Momma to little Tuck, then to Samson. “Samson! Look at Tucker’s hands and—”
But Samson wasn’t looking at Tucker. He wasn’t looking at Momma or Poppa. He wasn’t looking at me either. He stood staring down at his own hands instead. Rather than vanishing, the way he so often did, Samson had begun to glow. His fingers and palms were turning as orange and as bright as the embers of a campfire, or the burners on a stove.
Like Tucker, Samson looked all wrong.
My brother tugged at his shirt collar, muttering, “Did it just get super-hot in here?”
“Samson!” Poppa gasped, just as Momma shrieked, “Tucker!”
Head and shoulders, knees and toes, nose and clothes—Tucker was now three times his normal size. And Samson was on fire.
“Whoa!” Samson barked, glancing down at his hands as each of his fingers lit up in licks of red-and-yellow flame. He looked like he was holding ten candles. A second later, there was a whoosh and a crackle, and Samson’s entire body became a bonfire. His normally dark eyes shone crimson.
Where did Poppa keep that fire extinguisher? I was about to run to look for it, but I stopped short after taking two steps . . . I was beginning to feel a wee bit strange myself.
I forgot about the fire extinguisher as loony-switcheroony sensations twisted through my innards, making me feel sick and weak and peculiar.
Samson’s blaze turned the living room oven-hot. The air smelled strongly of struck matches. Yet my brother’s sudden combustion didn’t appear to be hurting him. Engulfed in flames, his clothes weren’t even burning. Samson wasn’t on fire—he was generating it. But that didn’t stop him from dashing out the front door and diving into the snow.
Tucker didn’t bother with the door. As soon as he grew large enough for his head to hit the ceiling, my brother boomed: “I TOLD YOU GRANDMA PAT WOULD RUIN EVERYTHING!” He then plowed straight through the wall, like the Kool-Aid Man, leaving a giant, Tucker-shaped hole in the house. While Tucker’s tremendous size was shocking—and not at all the talent I’d expected him to get—it was even more shocking because he was so young. Getting a savvy before age thirteen wasn’t completely unheard of: My twin cousins, Mesquite and Marisol O’Connell, had been pestering people with their powers of levitation since they were five. Whatever force was jumbling things up, it must have brought on Tucker’s savvy early.
Still feeling strange, and hoping I wasn’t about to grow or catch fire, I followed Momma and Poppa outside as they chased after my brothers. Samson had successfully doused his inferno in the snow; steam rose from his skin as the ice around him melted into puddles. But he continued to lie on the ground, too dumbfounded to move.
Tucker PUM-PUM-PUMMED around the yard, growing as tall as the house itself. Throwing the biggest tantrum ever seen west of the Mississippi—maybe even east of it too—he seemed unaware of his colossal size, or of how powerful his size made him.
“No, Tuck!” I cried as I watched my younger brother uproot trees in our front yard like they were daisies. With the jumbo ears he had now, Tucker should have heard me. But he didn’t. Or wouldn’t. Or couldn’t, over the thunderous sound of his king-sized corduroy pant legs rubbing together. I was thankful Tucker’s clothes had grown as big a
s the rest of him. Otherwise he would have been running around the yard both giant and naked.
I watched helplessly as Tucker tossed two leafless maples and a blue spruce into the field across the road. Seeing an old bird’s nest and a squirrel’s collection of acorns go flying, I whispered a quick prayer for any small creatures hibernating in those far-flung trees.
Poppa hollered, “Tuck! You need to calm down.”
Momma cried, “Take a breath, Tucker! Try to—” Then she slipped and fell, landing on top of Samson.
Nothing stopped Tucker’s raging. The rest of us could only stare, openmouthed, as he kicked over the tool shed. As he stepped on the frozen birdbath. As he picked up Momma’s knee-high garden gnome like it was a grain of rice and threw it so high, none of us saw where—or if—it came back down.
When Tucker turned around, barreling toward our house head first, like he planned to knock it over, I couldn’t watch. I turned away, my heart hammering in my chest. All I wanted to do was forget this terrible moment.
Hunching low, I closed my eyes and pressed my hands over my glasses, shouting: “Stop, stop, stop, stop, STOP!”
And everything did just that. Everything stopped.
Everything but me.
MY FAMILY MEMBERS WERE statues. A flock of geese paused mid-flight, a frozen V on the horizon. Everything around me had gone dead silent. The only thing I could hear was my breathing. And the pounding of my heart. I counted heartbeats: Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty-three . . . forty-seven . . . fifty. It was like the entire Earth had stopped turning, giving me one and only one moment of time to gaze at: The present moment, motionless and fixed.
The world had become a timeless wintry snapshot instead of a moving picture. Needless to say, I freaked out, right and proper.
“Help!” I cried. “Someone help!” My voice sounded strange in the unmoving air. It bounced back at me, like I was shouting into a mixing bowl. I didn’t know what was happening. Or what to do.
I tugged on Poppa’s arm, stopping when his still form began to wobble. I waved my hand in Momma’s face; she didn’t blink. Delicate beads of melted snow decorated Samson’s long hair. More water drops hung suspended around him, untouched by gravity. When I captured one of the drops on the tip of my pinkie, it immediately began to jiggle, and to drip. But when the water slipped from my finger, it fell only an inch. Then it lingered in the air again as if it couldn’t move without me. Fascinated, I flicked at the remaining drops, watching each of them sail a short distance, then stop. It was calming to watch the small globules sail and stop, sail and stop. And it gave me hope.
I pressed my fingers against Momma’s cheek, thinking she might move if I touched her. She didn’t. I poked Samson in the stomach. He didn’t twitch a muscle. I placed my hands on Poppa’s shoulders.
Nothing.
I didn’t try to touch or even look at Tucker as he stood frozen, about to destroy our home. It was Tucker’s fault that I’d stopped time, and I was vexed with him.
Stopped time?
Was that what I’d done?
I looked around helplessly. “Wh-what if the world is stuck this way forever?” I stammered aloud. Fear and cold combined to make me tremble; my teeth began to chatter. I took off my glasses and peered at Momma, hoping for a familiar savvy vision, the kind that would show me the precise moment when everything would return to normal.
I bugged out my eyes. I squinted until it hurt. I even tried staring cross-eyed. But I saw no swirl of images inside my mind. No spinning vortex. No dizzying stream of visions, past or future. My rightful thirteenth-birthday savvy was gone. I had a brand-new power to control—a switched-up talent that needed scumbling. And since my everyday eyesight hadn’t improved at all with the bewildering switch, I couldn’t even throw away my glasses.
Eager to reverse what I had done, I recalled how I’d covered my eyes and yelled STOP right before time ground to a halt.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and hollered the first opposite word that sprang to mind.
“Go, go, go, go, GO!”
I peeked one eye open to see if things were moving. No luck. I tried again, using different words.
“Start, start, START!”
“Move, MOVE!”
I chanted abracadabra and go-back, go-back. I even offered up a pretty please. But I didn’t know what cosmic force to push or pull. I couldn’t find any magic words.
Frustrated, I scooped up a handful of snow and packed it hard and tight. I aimed my snowball at Tucker’s giant head, angry at him for making me say STOP in the first place. But my snowball only flew an inch, just as the water drops had, stopping short as soon as it left my troposphere.
I threw snowball after snowball, until I was winded and my hands were numb, and the air was painted in big white polka dots.
I’d always been taught that I was never truly alone. Poppa had said it. Momma had shown it. Pastor Meeks had preached it. And being the fifth of six kids, I’d forever had someone to keep me company. For the first time in my life, I felt like a solitary astronaut on the moon.
Still wearing my Sunday dress, I fell to my knees, clasped my hands, and prayed. I asked God and all the angels to make everything go back to the way it was before Mrs. Kim called . . . before we learned that Grandma Pat was ill and had to live with us . . . before Samson caught fire and Tucker grew big. I apologized to God for not saving Mrs. Foster from her soapy accident. And for talking during the final hymn at church.
Receiving no immediate response to my prayers, I began to cry. I cried until I couldn’t cry any longer. Then I went inside, leaving my tears hanging in the air, alongside the water drops and snowballs.
My feet led me automatically to Grandpa Bomba’s room before I remembered it didn’t belong to him anymore. It was Grandma Pat’s room now—or would be, if time ever started moving again.
I fled upstairs to my bedroom instead, where I crawled under my quilt and buried my head beneath my pillows.
At some point, I slept. And when I woke, I sprang up joyfully, believing I’d had a frightful dream. But drawing back my curtains, I found myself staring straight into Tucker’s enormous face. I quickly pulled the curtains closed again, still unable to look at him.
Chagrined at having left my family standing in the cold, I put on my coat and boots, and carried blankets and bundles of outerwear outside. I put a hat on Poppa’s head, and a scarf around Momma’s neck. I jammed wooly mittens over Samson’s hands. I couldn’t do much for Tucker; he was simply too big. Plus, I was still upset with him for lumberjacking the trees.
As soon as I finished tending to my family, I walked to the highway, wanting to see if my time-stop stretched that far. I only paused once, to glower at a soft country rabbit frozen mid-hop in the middle of the road. “Don’t come near me, Mr. Bunny,” I said, still remembering my vow from the previous day—my pledge to avoid sparkles and lace, and fur coats of all kinds.
Looking up and down Highway 81, I could see that no one was going anywhere. The cars were like forgotten toys on an empty playground.
I turned around and went home, chewing anxiously on my bottom lip.
Without day turning to night, or any clocks tick-tocking, blinks and heartbeats became my new units of time. Eventually, I decided I’d despaired for long enough. When Momma and Poppa starting moving again, I wanted them to be proud of me. I wanted them to see how responsible and mature I could be without any supervision. Keeping this goal in mind, I straightened the house and did my schoolwork, making pencils float whenever I got bored. I got out a pair of scissors to clip coupons from the Sunday paper, but instead ended up cutting butterflies out of the funny papers, suspending my cutouts in the airspace between my ceiling and my bed.
By the time I slept and woke again, my sense of maturity began to wane. Tummy rumbling, I found a bag of chocolate chips and ate them all. I gobbled cereal straight from
the boxes so greedily, I got Cheerios in my hair, and left Corn Chex hovering above the table. Finding it impossible to pour juice from a bottle, or run water from any faucet, I cut into a milk jug with my scissors and scooped the creamy liquid into my mouth with my hand.
I tried on Momma’s shoes and dresses. Her jewelry and makeup too.
I even slipped past the DO NOT ENTER sign on Samson’s door and plumbed the dark depths of his messy bedroom.
Worried I was going to grow up, grow old, and fall off some clock tower somewhere before another real-time second passed, I began to check the length of my fingernails and measure my hair with a ruler. But I couldn’t have aged more than a day or two; I’d only slept twice.
Aside from the question of how to restart time, my biggest problem was Tucker. As soon as I figured out how to make the clocks tick-tock again, Tuck would still be a whisper away from ramming into the house. I had to find a way to distract him the moment his tantrum resumed.
That’s when I remembered Poppa’s secret stash of gummy bears, the bag he kept hidden in his tackle box. Momma didn’t believe in rewarding bad behavior. But it was a well-known fact that Tucker’s tantrums ended fast when there was candy handy. The rest of us were not above using bribery to calm him down.
Armed with Poppa’s emergency gummy bears, I returned to my bedroom window. Ready to face my brother at last.
As soon as I looked at Tucker—really looked—my anger at him began to melt away. He was, despite his size, just a little boy. The tears that swam in his big blue eyes were so large, I could see myself reflected in them. I suddenly longed to grab a towel and wipe my brother’s tears away. I didn’t want him to stand there forever, crying. For the first time since I’d stopped time, I felt ready. Ready not to be afraid. Ready to let whatever was supposed to happen next happen.