by Ginger Rue
I got right up in Mrs. Floberg’s face and studied her. I could see goo in the inside corner of her left eye. I could see hair sprouting from the mole on her cheek. Her mouth was kind of open. I counted five fillings in her teeth.
“Won’t somebody say something?” I yelled. “Anybody?”
Nothing.
“Okay, Aleca. Think,” I said out loud. Sometimes when I get nervous, I do that—talk to myself. Dad once told me I shouldn’t worry about being flaky unless I started answering myself too.
On TV detective shows when there’s a mystery, the detective, who is smarter than everyone else, retraces her steps. I decided that would be the smart thing to do in this situation. “What just happened here?” I went through the whole thing word for word as well as I could remember.
“Then Mr. Vine asked who you are.” It all seemed simple enough. “You didn’t do anything,” I told myself. “All you said was ‘Aleca Zamm.’ ”
Suddenly I heard noise again. The classroom had come back to life. Mrs. Floberg and Mr. Vine were no longer statues.
“What’s that name again?” Mr. Vine said, putting his pen to his notepad.
“Aleca Zamm,” I repeated.
Once again everything stopped.
“Seriously?” I said. I guess I was talking to myself again, since no one else was listening.
I sat down for a while to think.
Saying my name made time stop. Saying my name again made time start back up.
Saying my name!
What was up with that?
I looked around the room.
On the bulletin board next to the cluster of desks where Maria sat, Mrs. Floberg had hung a bunch of posters.
One was an eagle soaring in a blue sky. It said, “Change Your Thoughts, and You Change Your World.”
Another one, with mountains, said, “Believe You Can, and You’re Halfway There.”
And one with no picture at all, just a multicolored background, said, “Seize Every Opportunity.”
I thought about that last one for a while: Seize Every Opportunity.
“Okay, Mrs. Floberg,” I said out loud. “I will.”
5
Seizing a Hamster (and Opportunities)
Remember that bug on the outside of the school office window? He didn’t move at all when I picked him up.
Not even when I put him into Brett Lasseter’s open mouth.
I took a bottle of glue out of Jordan’s desk and squirted some over Madison’s and Jordan’s hair. “Now you two can really stick together,” I said. I couldn’t help but giggle. I really crack myself up sometimes.
Now. What to do with Mrs. Floberg and Mr. Vine?
Oh yes. Perfect.
I walked down the hallway to the first-grade classroom that was home to Wendell the Hamster. Wendell had been spinning merrily in his wheel when time had stopped. Now he was floating in the air, midrun.
I scooped him out of his cage and petted him for a while. You’d think it would be fun to pet a hamster for that long without it trying to escape, but it was really just like holding a stuffed animal, which is kind of fun but not the kind of fun that lasts very long before you get bored. I took Wendell back to my classroom. I placed him in the folds of Mrs. Floberg’s scarf.
Then I inspected Mr. Vine. His jacket had shifted when he’d gotten the pen and notepad out of his pocket to write down my name. I could see that he wore suspenders to hold up his pants.
That one was almost too easy.
But the poster did say every opportunity.
Was there anything else? Anything I was overlooking?
Oh yes. The math test was in a file on Mrs. Floberg’s desk. Nobody would know if I sneaked a peek.
“Mrs. Floberg,” I said, “would you mind if I took a look at the math test?”
She didn’t say she’d mind.
“If you think it would be wrong for me to look at it, just say so,” I stated.
She didn’t say anything.
“If you are one hundred percent perfectly okay with me looking at the test, just don’t say anything,” I went on.
She didn’t say a word.
That was pretty much permission, wasn’t it? And even if it wasn’t exactly permission, well . . . I deserved a little extra help, didn’t I? Maybe it wasn’t really fair to see the test beforehand, but was it fair the way Mrs. Floberg humiliated me in front of the class all the time? Was it fair that she made me work the hardest problems on the board when she knew that I couldn’t get the right answer? Was it fair that no matter how much I studied, I never even once got a Jolly Rancher, and the other kids who didn’t have to study always got them and ate them right in front of me?
I decided that life is full of unfairness and that, for once, that ought to work in my favor.
I took a few minutes (I guess it was minutes—the clock on the wall had stopped, so I couldn’t say for sure) and went over the problems. I memorized the answers for the first couple of rows so that when I got the test, I wouldn’t even have to stop and do the problems.
I went back to where I’d been before I’d stopped time. “Aleca Zamm!” I said.
Just like before, everything went back to normal.
Except that Mrs. Floberg screamed and swatted at her neck as Wendell jumped from her scarf to my desk cluster. (Joanie Buchanan caught him before he could run away.) Meanwhile, Madison and Jordan wailed about the glue in their hair, and Brett Lasseter began spitting and crying because of the bug that came to life in his mouth. And at the exact same time, Mr. Vine’s suit pants fell to his ankles. The class laughed their heads off (except for Madison and Jordan, who were still wailing, and Brett, who was still spitting and crying). Also, I think it is worth mentioning here that Mr. Vine’s boxer shorts had little sailboats all over them. No wonder everyone laughed so hard. Because for the rest of our lives, whenever we see a sailboat, we will all think of Mr. Vine’s underwear, and there is nothing he can do to change that.
Eventually Mr. Vine got his pants back up and Mrs. Floberg stopped screaming. Joanie asked for permission to take Wendell back to the first-grade hall. Then Mrs. Floberg finally remembered that I was in big trouble.
“You!” she bellowed. “This is all your fault!”
“How could any of this be my fault?” I asked innocently.
“I’m sure this is all just a very strange misunderstanding,” Mr. Vine said. He was holding the waist of his pants up, just in case. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” He rushed out of the room, his face still red.
“You heard Mr. Vine,” I said. “A strange misunderstanding.”
Mrs. Floberg sighed. “Very well,” she said. She leaned in and warned, “I can’t prove anything this time. But I’m watching you.” Then she announced to the whole class, “Please clear your desks. We have a test to take.”
I couldn’t wait to get started on the test. Because I knew that the Jolly Rancher I would get tomorrow when Mrs. Floberg gave back the tests would be the best candy of my whole entire life!
6
Nervous? Who’s Nervous?
“I can’t believe you finished the whole test in time!” Maria chattered at lunch. “And you really think you’ll get a hundred?”
“I’m pretty sure I will.”
“I am so happy for you!” Maria said.
“Thanks. Me too.” And I guess I was. I mean, it all felt kind of strange.
“I just knew things were going to start going your way. Something just told me, today is Aleca’s day! Things are supposed to go your way on your birthday, right?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “By the way, did you have any other . . . I don’t know . . . interesting feelings today?”
“Not really.” Maria shook her head. “But wasn’t it weird how Wendell got into our room? All the way from the first-grade hall?”
“Yeah. Weird.”
“And how he just popped up in Mrs. Floberg’s scarf, of all places?”
“Yeah, of all places.”
; “And at the exact same time that Mr. Vine’s pants fell down!”
“Yeah, exact same time.”
“I wonder how that glue got into Madison’s and Jordan’s hair—and that bug in Brett’s mouth!”
“Yeah, I wonder.”
“No manches,” Maria said. “Aleca, do you know something you’re not telling me?”
“No. Why would you think that?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re not saying much. And for another thing, you just put mini chocolate chips in your hummus.”
She was right. The mini chocolate chips were supposed to go in my vanilla yogurt. The carrot sticks were supposed to go in the hummus. “Haven’t you ever had chocolate chips in your hummus?” I asked innocently.
“Um, no.”
“You’re missing out, then. It is what they call a taste sensation.” I took a big scoop of the mixture with a carrot stick and put it into my mouth. It tasted just how you would expect chocolate chips and hummus to taste—awful. “Mmmm!” I said, trying not to barf. “Yum! Want some?”
“No, thanks,” Maria replied. “But are you sure you’re okay? You seem a little . . . shaken up.”
“Shaken up? Me? Why would I be shaken up?”
Maria shrugged.
“If there is one thing I’m not, it’s shaken up,” I assured her.
Just because I’d stopped and started time—TWICE—cheated on a test, put a hamster in the teacher’s clothing, and showed our principal’s underwear to my entire class, that was no reason to be shaken up.
Neither was lying to your best friend—for the first time ever.
Okay, so maybe I was a little shaken up.
7
Dance Like No One Is Watching (Because They’re Not)
For the rest of the school day, I was pretty quiet. Which was probably good, because Madison was really gunning for me. She couldn’t explain the glue incident, but she sensed I’d had something to do with it. So I kept to myself. I didn’t talk much, even to Maria. Paying attention in class was almost impossible. All I could think about was how I’d stopped time earlier that day.
I stopped time, I kept repeating in my head. I actually stopped time.
I’d never heard of anything like it. Could other people do it too? I doubted it. I was pretty sure I would have heard about that somewhere down the line.
But now what was I supposed to do? Should I tell my parents when I got home? I didn’t think so. I just felt like probably I would get in trouble for time stopping. I didn’t think that would be entirely fair, because no one had ever told me not to stop time. It’s not like my parents ever said, Aleca, stopping time is not allowed. It wasn’t the kind of thing that just comes up. Aleca, don’t stop time, don’t paint polka dots on elephants, and don’t fill the bathtub with Skittles. (I’d always sort of wanted to do that last one.)
And of course, if I couldn’t tell my parents, I couldn’t tell Dylan. She’d tell on me faster than I could say “Aleca Zamm” to stop time to keep her from telling.
Then I thought maybe I could tell Maria. But that seemed risky too, since Maria can’t even keep a birthday present secret. But maybe with something as important as this, she’d do a better job. But I figured that even if I did tell Maria, first I’d have to figure out what was going on so she wouldn’t be too freaked out.
If I couldn’t tell Maria or Dylan or my parents, who was I supposed to tell?
I was going to have to keep this to myself. Which was harder than you might think, because it was either the scariest or the coolest thing that had ever happened to me in my whole life.
I decided to figure out the answer to that question. Was being able to stop time scary, or cool? I considered it while I was supposed to be listening to Mrs. Floberg lecture about the Civil War.
On the one hand, stopping time was scary, because I’d never done it before that day. And because . . . Well, I couldn’t really think of any other becauses.
On the other hand, stopping time was cool. Because probably it could come in handy in all sorts of situations, like sleeping late, or when you want to think of a good, snappy comeback and your mind goes blank. Because it gave me an advantage to be able to walk around and see things and do things when no one else knew what I was seeing and doing. Because I could do all this and then just as easily start time up again when I was good and ready.
So the more I thought about it, the less scared I felt and the more excited I became.
Just for fun I decided to stop time again, so while Mrs. Floberg was saying something about 1861, I whispered, so that no one else could hear, “Aleca Zamm.”
And everything stopped, just like it had before.
Nothing was all that different from how it had been the first time. Joanie still had her nose in a book. Madison and Jordan were leaning in to each other, whispering. Brett had one raised eyebrow and flared nostrils. I think this is because sometimes he needs extra oxygen so he can be extra mean. And as for Scott Sharp . . . wow, did that guy ever do anything besides pick his nose? You’d think he’d eventually run out of boogers.
I went over to Maria’s desk. She was taking notes, which didn’t surprise me. She makes straight As. I took her pencil out of her hand for a minute and drew a smiley face in the corner of her paper. When I started time again, maybe she would see it and not remember drawing it but feel happy that it was there.
After that I couldn’t really think of anything else I wanted to do, so I did a weird little tap dance—I don’t actually know how to tap, so that’s why it was weird—and sat back down. I decided that whenever I stopped time, I should do a dance to put a kind of “ta-da” on it, because one time Dylan had this T-shirt that said, “Dance Like No One Is Watching.” But how many people get to actually do that in a room full of people? Probably nobody but me, so it seemed like it was my duty. I made a mental note to look up videos of dances so that maybe I could do a different one each time.
I said my name again, and Mrs. Floberg just kept right on about whatever it was that happened in 1861. (I still wasn’t listening.)
I had decided. Stopping time—definitely cool.
8
Even More Secret Than Raspberry Filling
My birthday dinner that night was fun. Mom made my favorite—cheese-steak sandwiches. My cake was lemon raspberry. The lemon part is in the cake and in the icing, and the raspberry part is in between the two layers of cake. You don’t even know it’s there until the cake is cut. So it’s almost like the cake has a secret. So me and the cake had something in common.
Because I most def had a secret, which I kept. Even though Mom and Dad asked me how my day was. And even though Dylan was actually kind of nice to me and gave me a present—a leather bracelet like the ones that she and her cool middle school friends wore. Mom and Dad gave me a pair of pink sneakers and a gift card for some new apps for my iPad. Also, they were letting me have my party Saturday at Super Skate!
After two cheese-steak sandwiches and a big piece of cake, I watched my favorite TV show, took my bath, and went to bed.
My tenth birthday had been the best one so far.
9
This Time-Stopping Business Has Its Perks
“Aleca, wake up, honey,” my mom said the next morning. Mom is always the one who wakes me up gently. She does that about three times before my dad finally has to say in his stern voice, “Aleca, feet on the floor!” That’s when I actually get up.
But this time when Mom left my bedroom, I felt really tired. And I remembered what a good day I’d had yesterday, and then I got this great idea.
Why should I have to get up if I didn’t want to?
“Aleca Zamm,” I said. Everything in the house got quiet. I could have gotten up to check that everything had stopped, but I was too tired. Then I remembered about my dancing-when-no-one-was-watching deal. Problem was, I didn’t want to get out of bed. So I did a very unjazzy jazz hands real quick, and then I rolled over and went back to sleep. I figured if time hadn’t stopped, I would
still have a couple of more gentle Mom wake-ups and one stern Dad wake-up to get me going.
But that didn’t happen. Instead I just slept for a while (I’m not sure how long, since my clock stopped) and then woke up when I felt ready.
Downstairs Mom was standing over the stove, scrambling an egg. Dad was in their bedroom, tying his necktie. Dylan was in her closet, picking an outfit for the day.
I went back up to my room, got dressed, and then came back downstairs. I felt very extra rested.
“Aleca Zamm,” I said. The stove began sizzling, and Mom stirred the eggs.
“My, you got ready in a hurry this morning,” she said.
As I started to put the chocolate syrup into my milk, I realized that I had been so happy about my birthday and my new stopping-time thing the day before, I hadn’t done any of my homework.
“Aleca Zamm,” I said.
I finished up my language arts worksheet and did my math page. I could’ve actually used some help with the math, but of course no one could help, so I just did my best.
I put my work into my backpack, said “Aleca Zamm” once again, and ate breakfast. Then we piled into the van like always and Mom drove Dylan and me to school just like any other day.
This new ability was very convenient.
10
There’s a Sherbet-Haired Lady in Our Car
I stopped time at school only twice that day. Once because there was a pop quiz on the Civil War, and I needed to go back and check my answers since I hadn’t listened to anything during the lecture the day before, and once to go swing on the playground for a few minutes because I was bored. It was okay, but it wasn’t as fun without Maria.
Also not fun: Mrs. Floberg hadn’t graded our math test yet, so I wouldn’t get my Jolly Rancher for a whole extra day.
As I waited for Mom in the car pool line that afternoon, I wasn’t thinking about time stopping. All I was thinking about was getting another slice of my birthday cake when I got home. But as soon as I got into the car, I knew immediately that something was weird.