Chapter 2

I had done this. It was the only thing that made sense. How I had done it was beyond me – but I had to have done something for this to occur. Something I did, when threatened by that tree branch in Mark's hands, had stopped time.

Or ... maybe it hadn't. Maybe Mark had killed me with that tree branch. Maybe this was the very last second of my life – maybe this was how ghosts were made. They weren't aimless spirits; they were just people who'd escaped in the last second of their life.

Except that didn't make sense. If that were the case, there should be a great many people around me, living their last second of life. Unless the last second was personal, everyone in their own personal last second. Then time would stretch into infinite number of threads and...

My head hurt from thinking about it. I had definitely read too much science fiction.

If this was my last second, there was nothing I could do about it. I'd just have to go on like I was until something happened. However, if I had done something then maybe I could do something else to get time started again. I thought back, to the moment when this had occurred. I was scared but resigned but...

Wait. There was that aneurysm thing. It was something like a tightness in my head that I never knew I had that was suddenly released. Maybe that's it. Maybe I had an aneurysm – then this would be my last second on earth and...

Stop. I'd been through that before. If it were so, there was nothing I could do about it. If not ... if not...

I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to get in front of the headache that was re-developing. Mom had a friend who taught yoga. Lauren was a new age kind of woman, big into yoga and crystals and meditation. She'd gotten into something she called self-hypnosis that was supposed to teach you to relax; Mom had agreed to let Lauren teach her but I didn't think it was so she could learn to relax – Mom is an assistant district attorney and relaxing is the absolute last thing she ever wanted to do. I think she'd been throwing Lauren a bone; letting her ramble on so she'd back off a bit.

I hadn't wanted to listen to her. Really, I hadn't. It's just that I was doing my homework and I hated U. S. History with a passion so my mind naturally wandered ... right over to what Lauren was talking about to Mom.

I tried to remember what she'd said. The first step was concentrating on a single part of the body and really noticing how the muscles felt. I tried ... and was immediately thinking of a part of Lauren's body and how that might feel. As I recalled, that's what I'd been thinking about back then, too. Lauren was fit and trim but was more than a little top-heavy. For an older woman, she looked really nice. I often wondered...

Counter-productive. Concentrate on my muscles. Tighten them so I know how they feel and then ... let them relax. Move to the next set of muscles, tighten and relax. Concentrate on my breathing, too; in to the count of 5, hold to the count of 5, out to the count of 5 and hold to the count of 5. Repeat. Keep the breathing in the back of my head while concentrating on the next set of muscles. Keep repeating.

I knew I was supposed to be lying down, a pillow under my knees, but at the end I was definitely relaxed even though I was standing. I opened my eyes ... but nothing had happened. Everything was stuck in that interminable moment.

So much for that theory. I decided to go to the opposite; tense up, feel my whole body tense my head concentrating hard on making things move. Harder, keep the tension up. Feel the muscles burn in my arms and legs and core and face and ... I felt it, felt that place in my head growing more and more tense until it was wound tight and...

Noise. Movement. A series of loud explosions I couldn't place, one after another after another. The crunch of two cars meeting. I opened my eyes in relief to see the world all around me moving to its own beat. People were looking at me awkwardly as they passed me by but I didn't care; I was grinning the grin of the saved. I looked out at the world with new eyes, ecstatic to see the birds flying in the air and the noise of a city late in the day caressing my ears. I didn't care if the entire world thought me weird; I was alive again in a world of the living.

I was halfway home when I thought about where I'd left David, Bart and Mark. As I recalled, Mark was in the middle of a swing, swinging the makeshift bat right at my head ... only my head wouldn't be there. Bart's head would be there. The thought of that kept me smiling all the way home.

I noticed something else as I ran up the porch, taking the stairs three at a time. Mark had hit me on the side of the head; I should have some swelling there. I should have a bruise and it should hurt ... but it didn't. I felt my face, gingerly running my hands over the skin. There was no pain. It was as if Mark hadn't hit me at all ... but he had. So either he didn't hit me hard – and I knew he'd hit me hard enough to drop me, so that wasn't it – or else being in that no-time place had let me heal much faster than I should have.

I stopped myself from hyper-ventilating a few minutes later, just at the point where I was getting dizzy and about to pass out. What the fuck was happening to me? What had I done? How had I done it?

I locked myself in my room. My younger sister, Nevaeh, was home and starting on dinner. She might have said something to me but I didn't pay attention. Nothing new there, really, but this time I had an excuse.

I could explain this. I was pretty damn smart, straight A's since forever and I had dreams of being a physicist when I grew up. So, I could explain this. There had to be a rational explanation...

I had nothing. Absolutely, unequivocally NOTHING. No rhyme. No reason. Nothing in the pantheon of my scientific gods that could explain what was going on.

Okay, deep breaths. Try to hold it together. Think, damn it. There must be something ... anything. Fact: I'd somehow made time stop.