Just a Matter of Time (2 page)

“Yeah. I’m sure it’s fascinating stuff.” He snorted. “But it took you five minutes to eat a single bite. And you know what she did during that time?” He jerked a thumb toward Maya.

I shook my head.

“Finished her extra-credit report. When did you do yours?”

“This morning.” I raised my chin, but dropped it a second later, realizing the move highlighted the dark circles under my eyes. “At about three a.m.”

“That’s probably the only time you could.” Gordon stood, hands planted on the cafeteria table. “Think about it this weekend when you’re far away from her. Think about how you feel, about whether there’s any difference. Then decide whether or not I’m crazy.”

With that, Gordon walked away. I glanced toward Maya, bracing myself for that triumphant little smirk. Instead, she stared after Gordon, her red hair limp, eyes wide with a look I’d seen in my own.

It was terror.

* * *

I would never say I lived for the weekends. It was such a cliché.

But more and more it became my mantra. Not just because Dad was deployed and we got to Skype with him some weekends. (It was hit-or-miss, but he always tried.) All semester long, I’d chalked up the brain fog to Dad’s deployment, to the too-quiet house at night, to how I’d wake at three a.m. and check all the locks before sitting down to finish my homework.

Now, I was contemplating a serious stop at crazy-town. Could Gordon be right? Could Maya actually steal time? For that matter, could anyone?

Saturday morning, I pulled the car keys from the hook by the door. Grandma was in the yard, weeding, her face shaded by a huge straw hat, its brim covered in plastic apples. Back in middle school, I’d cringed every time she wore it in public. Today, the fact that she’d pulled it out and placed it on her head meant she’d shaken the cold. I couldn’t help but smile.

The sun touched my face and made me squint. I shielded my eyes with a hand. “I think I’ll study at the park today,” I told her.

“A lovely idea, but don’t stay too long. Your father might call.”

“I know.”

I headed for Five Mile Creek State Park, where Dad and I used to go camping. In a way, it was like being with him, only lonelier. Once there, I tried to think. That didn’t sound like much, but I hadn’t thought in ages. Not really. Now, with my chin propped on my knees, I allowed my thoughts to wander—daydreams of seeing Dad again and acing the SAT.

Stress, I decided, after a few hours. That was all. No one was stealing my time. I could forget all about Gordon and his crazy ideas.

Monday morning, five minutes after I walked into school, I lost everything—my willpower, my thoughts, my dreams. It was like a physical pull. I knew I had class and I knew I had to get there. But that’s all I knew.

When I finally stumbled into first period World History and saw Maya Milansky fanning herself with an extra credit report—the 100% clearly visible—then glanced down at my measly 92%, something snapped.

I was going to find Gordon. I’d listen to what he had to say. I’d do anything I could to get my time back, even if it meant booking a stay in crazy-town.

* * *

We’d debated where to meet. I didn’t want to explain Gordon to Grandma. His house was in the same subdivision as Maya’s, so that was out. We ended up in a strip mall coffee shop, a place called Jumpin’ Java. It had tables in the back, away from the windows, which was where we sat.

“So,” he prompted, “was I right?”

I hated to admit it, so I pulled my coffee toward me, but didn’t drink.

He tipped back in his chair and took a sip of his Americano, clearly prepared to wait me out.

I sighed. “On Saturday, I drove out to the state park—no one around for miles.” I waved my hands as if that could indicate a lack of people. “And I could . . . think again. I only spent two hours there, but I remember every single minute.” Now, I leaned across the table, nudging my coffee cup out of the way. “Not only that, I remember living for each of those minutes. It was like going from bread and water to a buffet with an endless dessert bar.”

Gordon’s gaze fell to his Americano. I thought he wasn’t going to say anything, and my strange confession had coffee-flavored bile burning the back of my throat.

“So. Yeah,” he said at last. “Some people can steal time.”

“Like Maya.”

“Exactly like Maya.”

“Like you?” It was a guess, an educated one, but still.

“Remember Title 1 in first grade?” he asked.

Amazingly, I did. It was one of those memories I’d pulled out during ninth grade and reexamined. The two of us were a team, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, wrestling with the words on the page. The words confused me so much that the Title 1 teacher thought I must be dyslexic or have ADD.

“I didn’t know it then,” Gordon said, “but I was stealing your time to get through class.”

“You what?”

He held up a hand. “I was six years old. All I knew was whenever I leaned against you, I could think better and make it through class.”

“The teacher thought I was ADD.”

He dropped his gaze, then peered up at me through thick black lashes. It was a swoon-worthy look. Part of me suspected he knew that. If he had done that during the epic ninth-grade crush, I might have fainted.

“Sorry?” He gave me a little shrug.

And that would’ve slain me. But I wasn’t back in ninth grade; I was thinking about first. Over the summer, Grandma, disgusted with the teacher, had taken me to the library every day. She wrote articles that eventually found homes in places like
Ladies’ Home Journal
and
Woman’s Day
. I read. By September, I was reading at a fourth-grade level. Goodbye Title 1 and hello challenge reading.

“Do you steal time now?” I asked.

“Look,” he said, like I’d bumped a recent bruise. “People are incredibly careless with their time.” He cocked his head, his expression thoughtful. “Imagine if everyone let dollar bills float out of their pockets and litter the street. Would you blame me for walking behind them and picking up all that cash?”

“Technically, isn’t that stealing?”

“If the other person doesn’t miss it, does it matter?”

“I’m seriously missing my time,” I said.

“That’s because you have quality time.”

“What?”

“You’re smart and creative.” Gordon’s cheeks went this amazing pink. It made his dark eyes brighten so I could see the tiny flecks of green. Deep down, the embers of that long-ago crush flared. My own cheeks heated. Between us, we could’ve brewed a fresh pot of coffee.

“You really don’t want some people’s time,” he continued, “like if they’re drunk or high. Easy to steal, but pretty worthless.”

“Oh.”

“And some adults, like workaholics?” Gordon rolled his eyes. “Just clutter and full of static.”

“Can anyone steal time?”

“I don’t know. Some people seem born to it.”

“Like you?”

“Maybe.”

“What about Maya?”

“Maya’s special. She’s a time leech.”

“A what?”

“You know that saying about how everyone has the same twenty-four hours in a day?”

I nodded.

“Well, if you can figure out how to steal time, you end up with more—or at least better—time. Maya’s been using yours. It’s why I’ve been trying to run interference. That’s why I gave you a little bit of my time.”

“You can do that?”

“It was extra, from someone else, and I didn’t really need it.”

Those little bursts. I felt my eyes grow wide. Despite everything, I smiled. “That was you?”

He nodded. “Except, I can’t always do that. I mean, I won’t always be around.”

“How do I get rid of her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I learn to steal time?”

“No idea.”

Then what was the point to all this? “So you’re trying to help me, but have no idea how to do that?”

“Pretty much.”

I sighed, took a sip of my coffee, but it had gone cold. I scrunched up my nose and Gordon laughed. “I’ll buy you another,” he said.

“And then what?”

He stood, picked up my cup, and gave me a grin. “Time will tell.”

* * *

According to Gordon, you didn’t actually need to touch people to steal their time, not when you got good at it. But you did need proximity. In my case, distance was the best defense. I could simply avoid Maya when he wasn’t around.

And when he was, like in AP World History, Maya faded into the background. Gordon talked Mrs. Harmon into letting him switch seats, so he sat by me and, as he called it, ran interference. Maya scowled, but I hardly cared. At last, I could breathe in that room, and concentrate on the lecture, and earn 100% on extra credit reports.

We returned to Jumpin’ Java, day after day. Gordon schooled me in the finer points of time thievery; I asked endless questions.

“How did you figure it out?” I asked him during one of our sessions.

“Over time,” he said, then grinned as if he’d been waiting forever to tell time jokes. “Seriously, you get a feel for it. You start recognizing who else can do it too.”

“Any honor among thieves?”

“Not really.”

“Is that why you’re helping me?”

He grinned again. “Maybe.”

Unfortunately, when it came to technique, my mind couldn’t grasp even the basics. Intellectually, this new interpretation of time fascinated me. On a practical level? It was Title 1 all over again. More often than not, I drifted off, savoring the luxury of un-stolen time. Gordon was the salt for my time leech.

Not that he was always happy about that.

“You’re daydreaming,” he said during another session at the coffee shop.

“I am?”

“I can feel it.”

“You can?”

“Yeah. So cut it out.”

I hadn’t daydreamed in ages, it seemed, and I hated to give it up just because he said so. I touched my cheek as if that could bring back the elusive images floating just out of reach. They had been, in fact, images about Gordon—

“I said, cut it out.” He pulled my hand from my cheek and gripped my fingers. “It’s like a beacon, okay? I’m surprised every time thief in a five-mile radius hasn’t come crashing in here. I’m surprised Maya hasn’t—”

The bell over the door jangled and in waltzed Maya, violin case swinging from one hand, book bag slung over the other shoulder.

“Time to leave,” Gordon said.

“What?” I glanced at my half-f cup of coffee, then to his face, his eyes dark and fierce. I blinked a few times, trying to collect all my stray thoughts. We’d been doing . . . what?

“Wow. That was fast.” He stepped to the side, blocking Maya’s line of sight. All at once, my thoughts were mine again.

“Come on.” Gordon extended a hand to help me up. “Let’s leave before you end up needing a time transfusion.”

I hated being so helpless—the classic damsel in distress. I hated those, too. There had to be a way I could fight Maya on my own, so she’d leave me alone, once and for all.

In orchestra, we sat side by side, her first chair to my second. Mentally, I tried pushing her away. Her grin told me I was like a toddler trying to wrestle with a ten-year-old—cute and totally ineffective.

The only relief came when Maya played her solo, the highlight of our upcoming spring concert. For weeks, I lived for that moment. For weeks, I never knew why. Then, that Friday, it hit me. When she was the only one playing, she couldn’t steal time. Her full concentration was on that solo, and every last bit of my leeched time came rushing back. It made me wonder.

What if I tried to steal Maya’s time?

I focused all my attention on her, bit my lower lip in concentration. I thought about Gordon giving me some of his extra time, how it felt like a burst—a cool drink of water on a hot day. Maybe time wasn’t like money at all. Maybe it was more fluid, more like water. You could bend it and make it do what you wanted it to, if only you knew how.

So I imagined sucking up Maya’s time through a straw. All at once, I felt that little burst. Not as intense as when Gordon had given me time, but still there, still wonderful.

Maya’s violin screamed.

* * *

Maya came after me in the hall outside of Orchestra. She shoved me into a practice room, her arms like steel from years on the violin. She slammed the door behind us, then leaned against it so I couldn’t escape. We were both going to be late for next block. When I opened my mouth to speak, no words came out.

“That wasn’t funny,” she said.

“Yeah. Well, now you know how I feel.”

“You don’t have a clue.”

In a way, Maya and I were alike, both of us girls whose names kids remembered during calculus and then forgot by lunch. We filled our days overachieving—extra credit reports, extracurriculars, extra-everything—to forget how lonely we were. And once upon a time, we’d been friends.

“I don’t know what I did to you,” I said, “but—”

“Right. Like you and Gordon aren’t laughing about it.”

“Laughing about what?” Nothing about this was funny: not Maya stealing my time, and not me stealing hers.

She pushed off the door and stepped close enough that I could see where the red in her hair ended and the brown roots began.

“Here’s what you don’t understand,” she said. “It’s an addiction. And there’s no rehab for it, no twelve-step program. And do you know just how dangerous it is to get between an addict and his supply?”

Was she threatening me? Really? After all this? This time, I stepped closer. “I just messed up your solo,” I told her. “I can do it again.” At least, I was pretty sure I could.

Her lip curled in a sneer. “I’ve been doing this for years, and you’re way behind the learning curve.”

The bell for last block rang, then a hush fell over the hallway. I was a statue in the center of the room. Maya’s hand was frozen on the doorknob.

“Listen,” she said, and if her voice wasn’t softer, at least it wasn’t harsh. “You’re the one who needs to be scared, okay? Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

With that, she threw open the door and ran from the room.

* * *