The day I died, my life flashed before my eyes. Although "flashed" is a rather deceptive term, it was like I got to view it, as much of it in real time as I pleased, pieces of it playing by quickly. My attention waning and the snippet speeding by. I remembered being five, on my dad's shoulders as he carried me, exploring the wonders of a fair at night, the carnival rides, and the bright lights and sounds popping in my vision. The safety and comfort of my dad's arms on my feet. Feeling like the surest thing in the world.
Lots of mundane days speed by. Then I remembered being eight. My dad's disappearance. The lights that danced in the sky. Mom arguing with the policeman. Them telling her to calm down, to be reasonable, reassuring her that things were not what she thought.
The next little bit was hazy. I remember mom getting a job, mom losing her job, us losing the house. I remember living in the car. I remember mom always having a bottle with her. I remember mom begging. I remember mom doing things that I can't remember. She would go off with people. I remember moving across the country and mom getting a new job. Phone calls from neighbors and the social workers showing up. I remember being in court. I remember being in a stranger's house, stuck with them. I remember mom showing up and taking me back. She had a house, although that was stretching it. The building shared space with three other families. She had a car. It wasn't very nice, but it got us around. She had a job. She had to wear a suit. She said she was lucky. I remember her eyes always seemed sad.
I remember being in school for a little while. It's strange that I can't remember school before this point. They gave me a test. They told me I had a gift. I didn't think that I believed them. But that portion speeds by quickly. Hard to hold on to. I was taken out of middle school where I could keep my head down and occupy myself with my own thoughts. I didn't get along with the other kids, but it was okay. They left me alone.
I remember Mrs. Grady, my last middle school teacher. She was stern, but she was always nice to me. She would take me aside and ask me how things were at home. Then the test happened. This was the beginning of big changes. Things speed forward for a while, and then I'm able to lay hold of time again as I'm put into high school. This was the pivotal moment. I know it now looking back. Everything changed after the second move. Mom's promotion. My involvement in high school. My involvement in underground drug rings. I was 12 by this time. How in the world, you might ask? Yeah, looking back on it, it baffles me too.
I found that this was the point, and I thought to myself, if I could change things here, at this pivotal point, then everything would be okay. If I could only go back and have a different effect on it, then things would turn out different. Even as I thought this with all my might, I fought my brain's urge to move forward, refusing to let go of this memory, refusing to let go of this time period. I held on to it, though my fingers bled. My brain seemed to be trying to crawl out of my head. What did it matter? I didn't care. I was dying. I would not let go.
A screaming pain tore through every fiber of my being, and still, I refused. A voice confronted me and told me,
“Relent. You will rip your soul.”
Strange, that. Being confronted by a voice in the ethereal darkness of death. I refused.
“No,” I told it. “Tear me apart. I will not let go.”
And then it broke. What precisely I can't say, but I felt it break. Something inside me or outside me. I don't know. But it broke. And I was no longer reliving these moments in my head. I was reliving them in the physical. I had apparently stepped into my own memory. My own past. I wandered the high school halls in a daze. Unsure of what time it was or where I was going, my feet taking me forward on autopilot, 12 years old once more. Was this what death was? Did you get to live the portion of life that you chose?
I had just enough time to bitterly think, I should have held on to the part of life when Dad was still here. Before it came crashing back, and my awareness of having gone back in time began to slip. And my head began to spin. Was I really here? Was this real? Was I 12 again? Or was I lost in a deluded fantasy, living out my memories as my mind tried to cope with death?
Someone bumped me in the hallway, and my awareness of my future self slipped as I was swept into the crowd's movement.
***
Chapter 1– Time Slows
I wondered if this was how the ball in a game of breakout felt. I was being jostled back and forth in an overcrowded hallway of students. Every one of them bigger than me. I was trying to swim upstream to my locker, being physically shunted from side to side by the passing bodies and heavy backpacks. No one seemed to care they had run into me. It didn’t help that almost everyone had their face buried in a screen, moving through the hallway like a human rumba.
I had just reached my locker and begun the combination, when I was struck hard enough to bounce me off the metal door.
“Hey!” Came the voice of walking hall traffic violation. “Watch where you’re going nerd!”
“Go back to walking school, and get a walking license,” I retorted without looking. Reaching for my locker again, I felt a meaty hand land on my shoulder.
“Why don’t you say that to my face?”
“Ok,” I said, turning and taking in a breath to do just that.
I thought it was only a metaphor that time would slow down when you're in a car wreck. This wasn’t a car wreck.
It was a punch.
I saw it coming. Every agonizing inch of it. And despite being able to watch it crawl towards my face no faster than a snail, I couldn't do anything to move my body out of the way. It was like I had lost control. All I did was stare as it crept closer to me.
Something tickled my awareness. Was I controlling time? This felt familiar. Had I done this before? I don’t remember times slowing down before. Why did this feel familiar?
I lost hold of the ability to keep time slow. The fist sped up all at once. It came crashing in with terrible force, straight into my nose, knocking me against the locker. Then, overbalanced by my heavy backpack, I fell on the floor. My eyes began streaming along with my nose.
"Oh, what's the matter? Is the little baby gonna cry?" came the voice of my adversary.
Have you ever been punched in the nose before? The fact is, your eyes water. It's involuntary. Yeah, I was angry enough to cry, but that's not what was going on. But of course, there's no reasoning with an idiot. My tormentor was mocking me after having inflicted physical pain.
“No!” I shouted, my voice cracking.
My brain was full of all sorts of good comebacks, but it betrayed me. Shouting “No” at the class idiot was not any of the witty responses that I could have made. Why was my brain not working? Maybe it was because I had just been punched in the face. How fast did brain damage set in? Maybe that's what was going on.
I looked up.
There was, of course, a crowd. Who had anything better to do than watch Timmy Thompson get punched in the face by Billy George?
I'd read somewhere that having two first names was a dangerous sign of encroaching psychopathy. I didn't know how that could possibly be. But I figured I was close enough to it with Timothy Thompson.
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My hallway adversary on the other hand, Robert George, he definitely crossed the line. Maybe that's why he was the way he was. His parents had given him two first names, and his brain had gone crazy his whole life trying to decide which one was his real one.
Of course, all this was spinning through my head while I was sitting there on the floor, having intelligently yelled, "No," in response to my opponent's crippling opener. I wondered if it was impossible for me to drum up a witty rejoinder in the middle of a fistfight. Should I really be trying out for debate class?
Apparently, there was more humor in the statement than I could have believed. Because the crowd of kids standing around watching the spectacle were, all of them—well, I double-checked—most of them, smiling. I didn't see anything funny about it, but I was the one dripping blood onto my shirt.
I looked down.
Yep, that's what that feeling was. I was dripping blood. Well, no sense in trying to hide the evidence now. I pushed myself to my feet. Having to unstrap my backpack before this was possible. The thing nearly outweighed me.
“Are you hungry for more?” Said Billy George, looming close enough I could smell him.
Standing up seemed ludicrous. I was coming back for more. What was this, a lunch line?
Luckily, my brain was able to kick out something more intelligent than "no" this time. Instead, I retorted,
"What are you, the lunch lady? Yes, please. I didn't get my fill with the first knuckle sandwich."
Apparently, this was the height of humor, because the circling crowd proceeded to burst into laughter. I knew I was going to get punched again, but this was truly my best defense. If I could disarm the feeling of control, then surely the bully would get bored and leave. Or at least, that's what the books had said.
Plus, truth be known, I had the death-defying urge to see if time would slow again.
It did not.
The second punch caught me right on the cheek. I tried to roll with the punch, having read that somewhere, but I don't know what that actually meant, and I think I did more harm than good. My head bounced off the locker behind me, and again I found myself on the floor, although this time it was no fault of the backpack. I saw spots, and then suddenly I was on the floor.
Was this lost time? Time was doing all sorts of interesting stuff today. Maybe I wasn't in control of what it did, yet. But what can you expect from a 12-year-old? I was sure that by the time I was 15, I would have control of this power.
“Thompson! George!” Mr Pheizer’s voice cracked like a whip over the gathered students, parting them like Moses parted the red sea. “My office, now!”
***
In Mr. Pheizer's office, I sat as far away as I could from Billy, which amounted to two padded chairs and my backpack set beside me as a barrier. My retreat wasn't due to fear of a second encounter. It was actually due to the smell. Billy stank. He was 15 or 16 years old, and apparently, puberty was doing awful, awful things to him. His face was pockmarked and covered with hair that made him resemble a plague victim, and he had an odor that was irrepressible. I felt certain, deep down, that you could submerge him in a tub of water and his odor would still escape. It was truly awful.
I had a box of generic brand tissues in my lap, a pile of blood-soaked tissues slowly filling up the small office-sized waste receptacle that had been so kindly provided to me, and currently one stuffed up each nostril, which was making me breathe like I was some sort of lizard. It should have also made it impossible to smell Billy, but somehow, I still could.
Oh well.
I couldn't see the clock from where I was positioned and didn't have a watch, so I didn't know how long we'd been sitting there, but it had been long enough that I felt certain that I had missed that morning's history period.
Billy, meanwhile, was sitting as if he had won some sort of award, a semi-smug look plastered onto his face, which he curtly dropped every time Mr. Pheizer was in the room—which I was sure hadn't been any time in the last hour.
I sighed.
I could be learning about the Roman Empire right now, but no, here I was, trying to escape the stink that was slowly filling up Edmund's high school sports coach's office.
I should explain.
I'm the youngest kid in Edmund's High School. They told me it was a gift. I went in for one of those tests where they measure you against other people, and then tell you whether or not you're smart.
Well, they told me that I had what was called a gift. I could read and write and remember better than anybody my age, therefore I had to be tortured with being sent to high school early. I was now in sophomore year.
I think the reason that Billy didn't like me was because I was already a grade higher than him. I didn't feel this was fair. I didn't ask for any of this. Mostly, I was told, and I didn't get much of a say.
Like being told to go to this office.
I couldn't understand what had been so urgent about getting us both in his office if he was just going to leave us here for an hour. Honestly, he could have left me in my history period to quietly bleed and take notes.
I was interested in how the Roman Empire fell. They'd conquered the world. Well, not really the world, but you get the idea.
This was so frustrating.
I couldn't even get out my history book and read it because I had been punched before I got it from my locker.
Why did noses have to bleed so much anyway? When I moved it back and forth, it didn’t feel like anything important was broken, but it just kept bleeding.
In my mind, I had this morbid curiosity. How much of my blood would leak out my nose if I just let it and did nothing whatsoever to try and staunch the bleeding? Would all of my blood exit through my nose? Was this some sort of release valve that was built into human anatomy?
I didn't understand it. There was so much I didn't understand.
It wasn't fair.
The whole world was full of interesting things and adults treated you as if you were the problem for being in it, instead of helping you understand things.
Ugh.
Don't even get me started about how adults respond to questions about things they don't understand.
Like time slows.
I wondered if I could do those everyday, or if I'd have to escalate in order to exercise the power again.
Escalation didn't seem like a good idea.
After a punch, what came next? A kick? A baseball bat? A car? This sounded like it would be a very short-lived adventure.
I would have to find a safer way to test my powers. Maybe I could sign up for dodgeball. I bet there was a good chance that I could not only test the time slow there, but whether or not my life would flash before my eyes.
I wondered about that. Why would the brain replay one's life right before the end? Was it fact-checking? Did our brains get uploaded to a server and they had to make sure there were no syntax errors before upload? Something tickled my awareness. It felt like I had forgotten something important. Something I had to do.
The door to the office opened, breaking me from my questions. Mr Pheiser stepped in, carrying a pair of manilla folders.
Perhaps I should say, he lumbered in. I didn’t know what the weight classification cut off was, for when you were too heavy to walk, and then began to lumber, but whatever it was, Mr Pheiser had crossed it.
He was huge.
He could palm a basketball and had to duck through doors huge. I was pretty sure his gut outweighed me by itself.
The weird thing was how all that weight set on his frame. From a distance, Mr. Pheizer looked like a portly, but normal sized human. Up close, his very mass seemed to emphasize exactly what I was not. Perhaps this is how planets felt getting around each other and experiencing gravity. Mr. Pheizer had gravity, and I was caught in his orbit.
Me, 4 foot 5 inches, all of 70 pounds. I felt just about as out of place as I possibly could in Mr. Pheizer's presence. He turned sideways as he edged past filing cabinets to swing his gut over the edge of the desk in a practiced movement that was remarkably nimble for a man of his size.
My brain skipped a beat as he came within a hair of knocking over a pencil cup without touching it. I wondered how often that cup had been knocked over and then reset before it found the perfect place for it to live, or if this man actually somehow had the sort of proprioception where he knew exactly how far out his gut swung and had never knocked that cup over.
He settled into the desk chair and steepled his fingers, peering at us over them after having laid the manila envelopes in front of him. I noticed they had my and Billy’s names on them. Billy’s was a lot fatter than mine.
"What am I gonna do with you boys?" he rumbled. His voice did that. It rumbled. It was a low, gravelly tone that was perfect for a man his size.
I realized that me and Billy were being lumped in together. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to speak up or raise my hand, so I tried both, raising my hand and speaking up. Unfortunately, Mr. Pheiser's gravity must have been affecting my ability to speak clearly as my voice came out as a squeaky,
"Umm…"
Which was completely not what I had meant. I'm much more articulate than this. Except, apparently, after being punched in the face.
“Mr P.” Billy said, “He started it, I just finished it, because I’m not a quitter.”
The statement was so ludicrous that I didn't even say anything in my own defense, waiting for Mr. Pheizer to mock Billy into silence. But instead, to my horror, Mr. Pheizer seemed to take my silence as assent. After giving me a hard look, he began nodding.
"Hey! That’s not true,” I said, “that’s not how it happened."
"Quiet," Mr. Pheizer said, his voice cutting across both of us, as Billy had begun to speak up as well. "I've heard enough. You know our school has a no-tolerance policy about fighting, no matter who started it. You're both equally guilty."
“Wait a minute,” I said, not having learned my lesson yet, “That’s not fair. He walked up and punched me.”
“One week detention for the both of you,” Mr. Pheizer said.
"Detention," I squeaked, still not judging the situation appropriately. "This is the first week of school. You know what my mom's gonna do to me?"
Mr. Pheizer lowered his head so that he could aim a glare at me. "I could have you expelled for fighting. What would she do then? Now it's two weeks for both of you.”
I sputtered, barely keeping what I had to say under control. The injustice of it absolutely astonished me. I get punched in the face and have to share the punishment of the boy who punched me.
I looked over at Billy. Instead of looking chagrined, he looked smug. He had the gall to look smug. Clearly, he was enjoying my discomfort and didn't seem to care at all that he was facing detention. It occurred to me then to wonder how much detention he had already faced.
I could be expelled for being punched in the face? That would go on my permanent record.
I had plans.
I wanted to go to college. I wanted to become a paranormal researcher. I wanted to be a scientist. I imagined that the line of research that I wanted to go into could be a well-paid position in the government.
And here, in this little backwater corner of the great American Northwest, my entire future was being held hostage by a pimple-faced thug and a retired football coach.
Unbelievable.
I kept my mouth shut, figuring the punishment was going to increase again anyway, and I best get on with it. Otherwise, I would only make it worse.
It got worse.
Before we got out of Mr. Pheizer’s office, Billy— clearly enjoying my discomfort with detention far more than he was worried about the punishment— managed to poke the bear, so to speak, once more and got our punishment increased to three weeks.
I was given a slip of paper that had to get signed by my legal guardian, which was my mom. Sweet bouncing curse words, I dreaded that encounter. I was told to show up for my first day of detention after classes Monday.
I discovered I had in fact been in Mr. Pheizer's office for two hours, and I had missed that morning's history and math. Both classes I found relaxing, but now I would have to catch up with extra homework. Not relaxing, just a chore.
My high school experience was off to a great start. I wondered if this news was going to cause Mom to relapse. Honesty is often the best policy, but when living with someone recovering from addiction, sometimes the time to be honest is tricky.
I decided I was going to forge my mother's signature rather than attempt an encounter that would potentially put me in the foster care system. If only I could hurry up and do my paranormal research, I was sure I could find Dad.
***