“Do it, B-Bug!” Tripp leaped off the counter and started jumping up and down, throwing punches in the air, like a spectator at a boxing match. I saw Del brace himself for the coming blow and felt my own face scrunch up too. Like I was the one about to get hit, not Del.
I didn’t want anything to do with this awful moment. I turned away, closing my eyes and plugging my ears.
I heard Del cry, “Time freeze! Freeze now!” even as I opened my mouth and shouted: “Stop, stop, STOP!”
When the familiar curtain of silence fell, I opened one eye and turned, peeking warily at the stalled-out smack-down in front of me.
B-Bug’s right fist was less than an inch away from the tip of Del’s nose.
Tripp had frozen while jumping up and down. He now had both feet off the ground.
I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past seven and I was alone again, just me against the frozen world. Or . . . maybe not.
“Ha! That’ll teach you losers.”
I nearly shot out of my skin at the sound of the words. Apparently, I wasn’t by myself after all. Time had stopped. Just not for everyone.
DEL AND I STARED at each other. The boy waved his hand. I waved back. Del slowly shook his head. I shook my head too. I silently counted heartbeats: ten . . . twenty . . . thirty-three . . . forty-seven . . . fifty. I wondered if Del was counting heartbeats too.
“Whoa,” he said at last. “Why are you still moving, Specs? You should be a statue, like everyone else. How are you messing with my atomic time-freeze?” Del’s voice sounded muffled and distant, but I got used to the effect quickly. With time stopped, it was a wonder we could hear each other at all.
I watched Del try to squirm out of his hoodie, which was locked inside B-Bug’s grip. My heart pounded ten more times before the full meaning of Del’s words hit me . . . Why are you messing with my atomic time-freeze?
The boy from the convenience store thought he’d stopped the clocks. He didn’t know I’d done it.
Del disappeared momentarily inside his hoodie as he slipped B-Bug’s snare. It was funny to see the sweatshirt hanging empty from the other boy’s big paw. It made B-Bug look like a human coatrack.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Specs”—Del flashed me a grin as he smoothed his shirt and tidied his twists— “you are in the presence of an honest-to-goodness superhero. I just stopped time and saved the day!” Del took a strut-step backward, spreading his arms wide.
A snort of laughter erupted from my nose as Del tripped over a bundle of newspapers. His arms became two propellers as he tried to catch himself. Then he fell, landing squarely on his brash behind.
I stepped forward and stuck out my hand, offering to help Del off the floor.
The boy clasped my fingers and scrambled to his feet. He cleared his throat, straightening his bow tie—and his dignity—like he was the coolest kid on the planet and I was a total nincompoop for not knowing it.
“Maybe you oughtta be my sidekick, Specs—you know, since you’re the only one still moving around and all. Why are you moving? What makes you different?”
I wondered the same thing about him. So far, I hadn’t run into one other person who was immune to the power of my switched-up savvy.
“I-I must be special, I guess,” I said with a shrug. Then I asked, “Why were those boys picking on you?”
“Aw, that?” Del tried to maintain his easygoing bluster, but he tensed as he glanced at Tripp and B-Bug. “That was a whole lot of nothing, Specs. We were just goofing around.”
“It didn’t look very goofy,” I said. “Here, I think you bit your lip when you fell. You’re bleeding.” Del licked his lip and winced. I handed him the paper napkin from my pocket, the one with Grandma’s note on it.
As soon as Del took the napkin, I wished I hadn’t given it to him. His eyebrows rose as he read Grandma Pat’s note aloud:
“I don’t care what you think . . . I’m going to the dance at Larimer High tonight . . . Don’t come after me. That’s right!” he said, snapping his fingers once before dabbing his bloody lip with the napkin. “You were looking for the old lady who came through here a while back—the one in the thrift store party outfit. She’s your grandmother?” Del studied me for a moment, then nodded.
“Yeaaah, I totally see the resemblance. I could tell your gran wasn’t well, Specs. But if I’d known she was trying to get to the old high school . . .”
I shifted uncomfortably, not sure if Del would understand what a tall order it was to have a grandmother like mine—one who did and said and wore weird things. One who couldn’t remember what decade it was, or recognize her own granddaughter. Even if we did look alike.
“Your gran told Uncle Ray she needed to get to Aardman’s Flowers,” Del went on. “Said she had to pick up a boutonniere she’d ordered for tonight. Ray gave her directions. I told him not to—I told him she was off her nut. But Ray just said, ‘Del, we offer customer service here.’” Del lowered his voice as he mimicked his uncle. “‘I don’t judge my customers, or make mental health determinations. If I did, I’d lose half my business.’ Then Ray packed her off to Aardman’s so that she could get her boutonniere.”
“Her boot and ear?” I repeated, thinking Grandma had lost more of her marbles than I’d realized. Del blinked at me a couple times, then laughed.
“Boutonniere, Specs. You know, a flower that goes on a guy’s lapel?” Del gestured to his chest, as if to demonstrate. “People get them for fancy parties. Like weddings, or—”
“Or high school formals?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure. They can be for dances too. But it’s kinda old-fashioned. Your gran isn’t really trying to get to Larimer High tonight, is she? That place has been boarded up for years. It’s dangerous. Only miscreants and troublemakers go there now. People like them.” Del pointed over his shoulder at Tripp and B-Bug.
The words miscreants and troublemakers worried me. What if Grandma reached her old high school and found herself dancing with some wrong-doing lowlife? I imagined Patrice Beaumont fending off muggers, gangs, and hooligans, unsure who would win.
Wanting to think about anything else, I looked out of the shop’s open doors, into the bus terminal. The bus station could have been a warehouse of shop-window dummies; Del and I were the only people moving.
“So . . . is this the first time you ever, you know, stopped time?” I asked Del, trying to sound casual, like I was asking him about a movie or the weather, instead of a case of mistaken abilities.
“What? Nah. I do it all the time.”
“Really?” I turned back to him and raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, if you gotta know, this is only the third time I’ve done it. It’s the second time today, though. That must mean I’m getting better at it, right? When it happened the first time, last Sunday, I thought the clocks were never going to move again. When they did—” Del glanced at Tripp and B-Bug, then stopped talking as if he were remembering something bad.
Del swabbed his lip with the napkin one last time, then he crumpled Grandma’s note and threw it in Tripp’s direction. The napkin flew an inch from his fingertips, then stopped, hanging suspended in the air the same way my snowballs and pencils and paper butterflies had. It was strange to think that Del had been wandering around on his own during my last two time-stops. Maybe Momma and Poppa and everyone else were right—maybe we never are completely alone.
Del looked at me apologetically. “My uncle really should have called someone to come get your grandmother—but he just thought she was a batty old ding-a-ling.”
“Don’t call her that,” I snapped, surprised by my defensiveness.
“I didn’t call her that, Specs. I’m just telling you what Uncle Ray said.”
“My grandmother isn’t crazy. She’s sick. She gets mixed up a lot.”
Del’s face softened. “I wasn’t making fun of her, I swear.
In fact, I’ll help you look for her. You and I appear to have an unmoving minute on our hands. Your gran can’t have gotten too far. I know where Aardman’s Flowers is. It’s down the mall, less than a mile. That shop has been around for decades.”
With a grunt, Del pried the phone out of Tripp’s rigid fingers and slipped the device into the pocket of his jeans. Del laughed when he noticed the way Tripp hovered three inches off the ground. He pulled the other kid toward him, then pushed him back again, toying with Tripp like he was a balloon made from pale, pocked marble.
Flashing me a wicked grin and waggling his eyebrows, Del pushed and pulled Tripp’s still form until he was on the other side of the counter. He positioned his tormenter directly in front of B-Bug’s clenched fist. As soon as time regained momentum, B-Bug would punch Tripp instead of him. The two bullies were in for a big surprise.
“Don’t just stand there, Specs. Help me! It’s seven fifteen, and it might be seven fifteen for a good long while. I’m still new to this superpower stuff—I don’t actually know yet how I’ve been making time start again. So we may as well have a little fun, then go find your gran. It’s not like she’s going anywhere at the moment, am I right?”
I chewed my lip, torn between my need to find Grandma Pat and the lure of having a bit of fun for the first time during one of my time-stops. I stood in place and watched as Del darted into a storeroom and returned with two rolls of toilet paper. He handed a roll to me, but I didn’t know what he wanted me to do with it. I wavered between disbelief and delight when Del started wrapping Tripp and B-Bug in swathes of white, turning them into mummies.
“Sorry about this, B-Bug,” he said as he reached up to wrap bath tissue around the boy’s thick neck, talking to B-Bug like the larger boy could hear him. “I used to like you, dude. But now that you let this idiot Tripp order you around all the time, I’ve got no sympathy. It’s not like you don’t deserve this. You were about to hit me.” When he ran out of toilet paper, Del turned back to me.
“Come on, Specs, live a little! Why are you just standing there?”
I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. My heart thumped a bit faster. Setting down my roll of toilet paper, I looked around. TP-ing someone wasn’t my style, but there was a bucket near the door filled with five-dollar bouquets of mixed flowers. While Del tied B-Bug’s shoelaces together—and then moved on to Tripp’s—I fashioned two quick circlets out of flowers.
“Ha! I like the way you think, Specs.” Del grinned when he saw what I was doing. He gave me a leg up, helping me crown both bullies. After which, I stuck a long-stemmed rose between Tripp’s front teeth.
“How did you make those daisy chains so fast?” Del asked, stepping back to admire our handiwork. “You braided those stems like lightning.”
I felt myself flush.
Silly, dancing, flower-picking baby.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” I said, waiting for Del to make fun of me.
But Del just nodded and said, “Cool.”
When we were done giving the bullies their May Day mummy makeover, Del wiped his hands on his jeans, like he was wiping them clean of the older boys.
“That was some serious entertainment! If only I had some special-effects makeup—I could scare the pants off these two numbskulls by making them look like gruesome, gnawed-on zombies.” Del turned to me, still grinning.
“What’s your name, Specs?”
“Gypsy,” I answered. “Gypsy Beaumont.”
“I’m Antwon Delacroix,” Del said, pressing a thumb to his chest. “But only my parents and teachers call me Antwon. You can call me Mr. Kool-A Iced-Tea Time. That’s what I’m thinking of calling myself now that I can stop the clocks. I’ve always wanted to be a superhero.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Del the truth. I didn’t want to be the one to take away his swagger. I needed this boy. He knew things about Denver I didn’t. And it was nice to have company. If I crushed Del’s superhero fantasy by telling him my secret, would he still want to help me?
I couldn’t take that risk.
I couldn’t risk trying to restart time yet, either; it would be easier to find Grandma Pat if she was standing still. Maybe Del and I could shortstop her at Aardman’s Flowers and keep her from getting anywhere near Larimer High.
I was halfway up the unmoving escalator, ready to execute Plan A—Intercept Grandma at Aardman’s Flowers—when I remembered Tucker.
“Drat and drabble! I almost forgot my little brother!”
“YOU’VE GOT A BROTHER?” Del asked, pulling on his coat as we sped back down into the terminal.
“I’ve got four,” I called over my shoulder. “A sister too.”
“Are they all here?”
“No, most of them are grown up. Only Tucker is here—and Samson. Samson’s outside, in the car.”
Del and I threaded our way through the frozen crowd inside the bus station. We found Tucker squatting in front of the three orange kittens in the box. He held his coat tightly closed around him, like he was trying to keep himself small and contained despite his enormous love of cats.
“Help me pick him up.” I hooked my fingers under one of Tucker’s elbows, motioning for Del to grab the other.
“Are you serious? We’re just going to lift the little guy and carry him? He’s not a cooler full of Gatorade.”
“We can’t leave him,” I said. “And he’s not going anywhere on his own now that I—er, now that time has stopped.”
“That’s true,” Del said, and he helped me hoist Tuck off the floor. “You know, Specs . . . you’re taking this whole time-freeze business pretty well. Most people would be flipping out right now.”
“I guess I’m still in shock.” I wasn’t lying. I was still shocked—shocked to meet someone who was completely unaffected by my savvy.
“How can a kid this small weigh so much?” Del complained as we half lifted, half dragged Tuck up the escalator—bump, thump, whump. “I always thought it would be nice to have a little brother, but this gives me a newfound appreciation for being an only child.”
When we reached the top of the escalator, the automatic doors wouldn’t open. “We’re going to have to pry them,” I said. Del glanced back down into the terminal, imagining, perhaps, that two toilet-paper mummies were about to rise up and grab him. Working together, we wrested the doors open wide enough to squeeze through them. Then we stepped out into a field of snow, and a wall of cold.
The city’s glow illuminated the wintry night, turning the sky into an otherworldly yellow-gray dome. Snowflakes hung like magnified dust motes in the time-stilled air. I smiled as the most delightful idea popped into my head: I wondered if I could make upright snow angels, just by doing jumping jacks.
How I longed to try!
“Wow,” Del whispered next to me, sounding as awestruck as I felt. I almost suggested that we try out my jumping-jack snow-angel idea together. Then I remembered the way Shelby had looked at me inside Flint’s Market, and I made myself as still and as motionless as Tucker.
I would not embarrass myself in front of city boy Antwon Delacroix.
“Tell me that’s not your other brother over there in the SUV,” Del said. “The one with the five-oh sitting on his six?” Poppa was ex-military, so I knew the word six could also mean behind. But—
“Five-oh?” I gave Del a quizzical look.
“Five-oh. The police, Specs. The police.”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s him.” I frowned, feeling every inch a country bumpkin.
“Ouch!” Del winced. “Who’s the girl having the serious makeup malfunction next to him?”
I narrowed my eyes at Del, trying to see if he was making fun of Nola. But his concern seemed more humanitarian than mocking, like he was a first aid worker witnessing a natural disaster.
“That’s Nola Kim. She’s Grandma’s neighbor. We sort of bor
rowed her mother’s car after Grandma Pat climbed out the window.”
Del raised his eyebrows. “Your gran went out the window?”
I nodded. “I’ve got to find her, Del.”
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s put this little dude in the back of your ride. Then he’ll be safe and sound, and you and I can make a break for Aardman’s Flowers. Your gran can’t have gotten too far, right? Especially now that I stopped time. Don’t worry, Specs! Mr. Kool-A Iced-Tea Time is on the jo—”
“No!” I stopped him. “I can’t leave Tucker behind.”
“What?” He blinked at me. “Why not? I’m all for helping find your gran—it’s exactly the sort of thing we superheroes do. But you can bet your badink-a-dink that I’m not gonna lug a little kid all the way down the 16th Street Mall in the snow.”
“I promised I’d look after him,” I said, wishing I’d done a better job of looking after Grandma. “And Tucker might get . . . upset when he realizes we took him away from the kittens. And when my brother gets upset . . . well, let’s just say Tucker knows how to throw a really big fit. The kind I wouldn’t want the police—I mean, the five-oh to see.”
Del glanced down at Tucker with new respect. “That must be one heck of a tantrum.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“I’m still not carrying him all the way to Aardman’s.”
I pushed my glasses higher on my nose and looked around the snowy plaza, searching for a solution. The three bearded men were still huddled under the shelter with their cluster of shopping carts.
Eyeing the buggies, I turned to Del and smiled. “I have the best idea.”
“This was not the best idea,” Del said after we’d gone two blocks.
“That’s because you keep steering us crooked, Del.” I gave the grocery cart a shove, trying my best not to look at Tucker; it was unsettling to see him lying on his back inside the basket, with his limbs cramped up like a dead bug, and a silly, kitten-loving grin glued to his face. Our cargo wasn’t heavy. We’d removed everything from the cart before dumping Tucker into it, but it was still difficult to push. I felt guilty for taking it. Guilty for skipping out on Samson too.