The car hangs in midair—nose dipping, wheels spinning, frozen inches from the pavement. Time… has stopped.
Or maybe I've just lost my mind.
I blink, expecting the moment to snap back into motion, for the screaming to return, for gravity to catch up. But everything holds still. The girl is staring wide-eyed, stuck mid-step, hair suspended like it's underwater. Her mouth is open, but no sound comes out.
And I'm just… standing here.
In the middle of the street.
While the world forgets how to move.
My heart's pounding in my ears, loud enough to feel. I reach out without thinking, grabbing the girl by the arm and pulling her toward me. My hand slides through the air like I'm pushing against syrup. It takes all my strength to move her just a few feet to the side.
The second I let go—
Time slams back into place.
The car screeches past, missing her by inches. She stumbles, falls to the sidewalk, gasping like she'd been drowning.
"What—what just happened?" she stammers, looking around.
I don't answer. I can't. I'm still standing in the street, heart hammering, palms slick with sweat.
Did I do that?
She stares at me, eyes wide. "You… moved me. I didn't see you, but then—" She stops talking, like she's scared she'll sound crazy.
Too late. I feel crazy enough for both of us.
I mumble something about being lucky, that I saw her just in time. She thanks me, still shaky, and walks off fast like she wants to forget it all. And maybe I should too.
But I can't.
Not when I felt everything stop. Not when I moved through it.
That night, I can't sleep. I sit on my bed, flipping through my sketchbook. I don't even remember drawing half of it. Clock faces. Broken watches. People melting into shadows. What is wrong with me?
At some point, I close my eyes. I try to tell myself it was adrenaline. A fluke. A trick of the brain. That's all.
But the next day, it happens again.
In the hallway between classes, I bump into a teacher. He drops a glass of water. Instinct kicks in and—snap—the moment pauses. The glass hovers mid-air. Water frozen in mid-splash. Students like statues.
And again, I move through it like it's normal. I catch the glass. Time resumes.
No one notices. No one says anything. But I feel it.
The shift. The pull.
Something in me is awake now. Something that shouldn't be.