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  Karen turned to face the hundreds more people lying on their beach towels. She stared at Jeff, feeling fear but excitement at standing naked in front of him. She almost pulled her arms up to cover her breasts, but no, she wanted this. She felt a weird desire to show off, to let him and everybody else be near her body. She wanted to exhibit herself and she wasn’t going to let the fear win over the excitement.

  But she decided not to walk too close to Jeff. Thirty feet away was plenty close enough. The calling would come soon enough. She always had lots of warning when she was going to go back to normal time, but even so, she imagined him blinking and looking at her with that big smile of his. Or would he laugh?

  She turned to look south along the shoreline and then back out to the water. The sun felt so nice on her body.

  “Next time I’m bringing a towel to sunbathe with,” she said. She closed her eyes and looked up, feeling the heat on her cheeks.

  “You can borrow one of mine.”

  She froze, eyes still closed.

  Can’t be.

  Karen wanted it to be her imagination. But another part of her—the lonely part that couldn’t share her secret with anybody—had always wished to find somebody else who walked through time.

  “I know you heard me.”

  It was a male voice. She blinked her eyes open and saw him standing in front of her.

  “Ohmygod….”

  She pulled her clothes to her body, trying to cover her breasts and her groin at the same time. “You can’t watch me.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve been watching you the whole time you’ve been here.”

  He looked to be about her age, but she didn’t recognize him.

  “Turn the fuck around!”

  He laughed. “I don’t think so. I’m enjoying the view way too much.”

  Her face colored again, and she turned her back to him. She walked onto the sand and dressed as quickly as she could. The heat she now felt was not caused by the sun.

  “Nothing to be ashamed of, sweetie. You’ve got a great body.”

  “Ohmygod, I can’t believe you watched me. Who are you?”

  “I’m Bobby Jersey. Who are you?”

  “Karen Richardson.”

  For a minute neither of them said anything. Then she said, “How long have you been able to slip through time?”

  “Since I was a kid. I dunno exactly how long.”

  “Me too. I think I was eight. I thought I was the only one.”

  “I thought so, too. Guess we were both wrong.”

  Bobby was several inches taller than Karen. He wasn’t built like Jeff, but he also wasn’t butt-ugly like some of the creeps she went to school with.

  He wore only a dark blue bathing suit.

  “You live near here?” she asked.

  He smiled, mouth closed, like he was bored and humoring her.

  “Watch this,” he said.

  Karen no longer was blushing and actually felt curious about this stranger.

  Bobby walked over to a middle-aged man standing nearby. Rolls of fat cascaded over his suit, and his back was covered with splotches of black hair. He had been throwing a beach ball with a woman (probably his wife, Karen guessed, though why a pretty, slim woman like that would pair up with that ugly old fart was beyond her). He’d just tossed the ball and it hovered in midair, inches from his outstretched fingertips. He looked like he was grunting from the trivial exertion; he lived in heart-attack territory, and there was always a chance this could be his last trip to the beach.

  Bobby glanced back at Karen and held up his index finger. Watch this.

  He grabbed the fat guy’s shoulder and pushed. Jumbo didn’t seem to want to move for a moment, but when Bobby kept pushing, the body leaned to the left. Bobby kept at it, helping the guy almost all the way to the ground.

  Jumbo stayed on his side, looking ridiculous with his outstretched fingers.

  “You can’t do that,” said Karen.

  But of course he could. He just shrugged. “I wish I could be here when time starts again. His wife is going to think he’s collapsed, and he’ll find himself on the ground without any recollection of falling. He’ll think he’s going nuts.”

  “That’s mean.”

  Bobby took a big bow and laughed. “Gotta have a bit of fun. Otherwise, life’s too boring.”

  “Have you done that before or were you just trying to impress me?”

  When he walked back to Karen, the smile was gone. He stared at her, and for a second he looked as frozen as everyone around them. Then the corners of his mouth raised a bit, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was a smile full of secrets and lies. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “You don’t want to know all the things I’ve done, sweetie. At least not yet, you don’t.”

  He put one arm around her shoulder, holding her tightly. He put his other hand on her breast and squeezed, hurting her. She wanted to run, but she was scared and he was holding her too tightly.

  Then just as suddenly, he let her go and backed away.

  “See you around, sweetie. Next time I see you, I’ll teach you how to fly.”

  * * *

  Karen wanted to run away when he released her, but he beat her to it and started racing south down the shoreline.

  She felt a bruise on her breast where he’d grabbed her, and she rubbed it softly.

  That’s when she felt the calling. It started with her stomach lurching, like some interior elf was shaking it like a pair of dice. The shaking stopped, but then Karen felt the calling again, much stronger now. Her body wanted to move away from the beach, and without even having to think about it, she started walking home. The calling had once been scary, when time first stopped for her, but now it was an old friend, reminding her that she had to rejoin the rest of her family, her friends, her community, hustling and bustling a million miles an hour, not being able to stop and appreciate any damned thing.

  She moved faster and faster as the calling pulled her home and sucked out anything close to free will. It felt like an invisible magnet drawing her like a bent safety pin, back to where she belonged.

  Karen slipped into her kitchen chair (but first enjoyed her last few seconds of freedom by tossing half of her mashed potatoes and all of her carrots into the garbage). Pressure was building inside her as the final moments approached. She sucked in one last breath of freedom as she sat and grasped the knife and fork she’d left suspended above her plate.

  “—will just follow the damned idiots who never bother to vote but bitch about the result.” Dad stabbed a piece of carrot with his fork.

  Karen nodded and looked down to her plate. She took one last piece of ham and chewed it.

  “I think I’m full,” she said.

  “Oh, Karen, you haven’t—” Her mother looked at her plate. “Oh, I guess you have eaten enough after all. Okay, dear.”

  Karen took her dishes to the sink and headed to her room. Tina was gone, thank God, off to give Jimmy a blow job or a fuck or whatever the hell she gave him.

  She lay down on her bed and closed her eyes, wanting to think of the kiss she’d given Jeff. Instead, her mind insisted on conjuring up Bobby Jersey, full-blown, pulling her to him and squeezing her breast. He’d scared her, but it’d happened so unexpectedly, she hadn’t had time to really think about it. Now, though, she imagined his brown eyes staring at hers, his arms holding her too tightly for her to imagine escaping, and his mouth forming a thin line. It looked like anger or hate, but that didn’t make sense.

  Did it?

  She never wanted to see him again, and she vowed to never go to the beach.

  But one more thought rattled around her head, grabbing her attention.

  Next time I see you, I’ll teach you to fly.

  Chapter 2

  Karen Marie Richardson was a straight-A student. She had to be or she’d have the wrath of her father to deal with. Although he wasn’t a big man, he seemed to grow six inches taller when he was mad, and the one time she’d come ho
me with a midterm C in her math class, he just about blew a gasket.

  Getting a C in subjects that were useless, like art, was bad enough, but in science or math …that was like stabbing him in the heart with an icicle at Christmas time. He was a geologist who worked at the university. Every year he published one or two papers researching stuff Karen didn’t understand and would never care about. She vaguely understood that her getting bad grades in science was somehow a slight to him, but she never really grasped why.

  That all changed once, when time stopped and she snuck into her parents’ bedroom and went to the walk-in closet. On the top shelf, she found the box he’d referred to once upon a time after he’d downed a few beers: the old shoe box that held his ancient report cards. The first one she grabbed was grade ten and she almost laughed when she saw the grades.

  * * *

  Math: D

  English: D

  Science: F

  Music: C

  Social Studies: D

  * * *

  “Oh, man, Dad, have I got you now.”

  She skimmed through a bunch of other reports, and, although his grades improved through high school, she never found a single A to mark his progress.

  Hypocrite.

  She had been sixteen when she snooped through her father’s belongings, and after she amused herself with the report cards, she found herself wondering what was in the other boxes nearby. They were hidden behind the one she was already snooping in, and she grabbed them. There were three others.

  The first box held a gun. She’d never seen a gun before, never held one, but she grasped this one solidly and held it out.

  “Do you have any bullets?” She had no clue how to check. It wasn’t a revolver, where she might be able to see the point of the bullets hiding in their chambers. Rather, it was a shiny, sleek gun with a clip that would have been smacked into the bottom. She’d seen that done on countless TV shows.

  The gun was heavy, and she walked back to the kitchen and pointed it at her mother.

  “Oh my God, what am I doing?”

  She aimed the gun at the floor and then walked back to the secret box and restored it. A year later she’d realize she couldn’t actually fire a gun when time was stopped, but that day she hadn’t clued into that yet.

  The next box was heavier than the one with the gun, and she hesitated before opening it. A wave of guilt rushed through her as she imagined her father’s reaction if he caught her snooping through his stuff.

  Fuck it. I bet he snoops through my stuff.

  The box lid lifted off easily, and inside was a stack of magazines. She took the top one out. The title was written in fancy lettering. Asian Girls. The cover was true to the title, showing a teenaged girl from China or somewhere, naked, holding one breast in her hand while smiling at the camera.

  “Jesus, Dad.”

  She smelled a weird odor and frowned. The magazine had been opened many times, but she doubted he’d read much of the text.

  “Bet it’s old. Before he met Mom.”

  She snapped the magazine shut and searched for a date, disappointed to find it was only two years old.

  The magazines below the top one were older issues of the same publication. All of them had a naked Asian girl on the cover, and inside all were more explicit, showing girls having sex with other girls or masturbating with vibrators. Karen didn’t want to keep looking but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Some part of her wanted to understand why her dad would want these things, but another part of her was … well, just interested.

  Finally she forced herself to stop looking and put the magazines back in the box, shoving it back on the top shelf in the closet.

  Part of her was tempted to leave the box where her mom would find it, but Dad would surely figure out it was Karen who’d moved it and there’d be hell to pay.

  I guess your secret has to be safe. At least for today.

  There was one more box. She opened it and studied the contents.

  “Oh my God … .”

  Karen looked at the items in the box for ten minutes before replacing it.

  She’d never look at her father the same way again.

  * * *

  Karen left her father’s secret hideaway and walked out of the house. She didn’t feel the calling yet, so she went out to wander around her neighborhood.

  The silence that surrounded her when time stopped was like nothing she ever felt when the clocks ticked normally. Sometimes she’d wake up in the middle of the night and have to go to the bathroom. The house would be quiet, but there was a type of white noise that permeated any place in southern California. She couldn’t exactly hear anything, and anybody else would say it was deathly quiet, but the true quiet, the quiet that resulted from absolutely no movement whatsoever, was so very different. It always creeped her out, and she never got used to it.

  Her footsteps made no noise.

  If she crinkled a piece of paper in her hand, it was like crunching the softest toilet paper.

  Once she used a fireplace poker to smash a window. The poker slid through the glass but not a whisper of a sound came out. She knew that once time started again, the window would shatter and crash, but she had no intention of being anywhere nearby when that happened.

  The only sound she’d ever heard in her secret time was when she’d talked to Bobby, and a back part of her mind wondered how that had been possible; no answer was forthcoming.

  She walked through the deathly silence and then suddenly stopped.

  She’d just found out her father’s deepest secret, a secret that she never imagined he could have buried inside him.

  What secrets do other people have?

  Mrs. Montgomery, her next door neighbor sat on the rickety old glider on her front porch, perched like she was about to row a boat. She and Mr. Montgomery were old, in their forties, and they were known as the happiest people on the block. They always had ridiculously happy smiles pasted on their faces. Karen hoped she’d be that happy when she was old like them.

  She walked into their home and looked around. She’d been there a couple times with her mom, but that’d been years ago. The house was immaculate, as if the Pope were due for a visit. Karen looked around but didn’t find much of interest until she snuck into the master bedroom and found Mrs. Montgomery’s diary in her bedside table, hidden beneath several pairs of rainbow-striped socks. She turned to the most recent entry, dated the day before.

  The asshole can just eat cold fucking pork chops as far as I’m concerned. I’m sick of just being there to jump as high as he fucking demands. Cold potatoes for him, too. I’ll smile for the damned neighbors, but I sure as hell don’t have to smile for him.

  After rereading the entry, Karen flipped back to find similar nasty thoughts about Mr. Montgomery, and she couldn’t help but smile at the two of them pretending for years to be the happiest of clams when in reality they couldn’t stand the sight of each other.

  As she left the house, she stared at Mrs. Montgomery, grinning like she was the happiest of the happiest, and Karen couldn’t help laughing. She knew the truth.

  This is fun.

  The next house belonged to the Carletons, and the only person in the house was the thirteen-year-old boy, Jesse. He was in his older sister’s bedroom, sneaking a sniff from her discarded panties. They were pink, with a faded Minnie Mouse printed on the crotch, right where Jesse’s nose was planted.

  Jesse was peeking toward the door, trying to be sure that nobody snuck in. The door had been closed, but Karen decided to leave it open when she left. It’d look to him like it suddenly swung open, and he’d just about shit his pants. She wished she could be there to watch.

  Bonnie MacDonald lived in the next house. Bonnie was one of Karen’s closest friends, and they often hung out together. Bonnie had blonde hair like Karen, but it was longer and silkier, and Karen often thought of just reaching out and touching it. She couldn’t do that normally, but now … .

  Even though it was o
nly about six o’clock in the evening, Bonnie’s mom was sleeping on the couch. Her dad was out of the picture, having run off three years ago with some young thing. Or so the rumor mill said.

  Karen crept to Bonnie’s room. She pushed the door open and found the room dark. The tan-colored window shades were drawn and only filtered light crept in.

  Must not be home.

  After a moment, though, her eyes adjusted to the light, and she could see Bonnie lying in her bed. Karen stared at her.

  Bonnie was naked. Her eyes were closed, and she had a smile on her face. Her breasts were much larger than Karen’s, who couldn’t help stare at them. She then looked down Bonnie’s body and saw her hand between her legs. One finger was pressed inside herself.

  Karen felt her face turn red, but she was entranced and moved closer. She sat on the bed beside Bonnie, slowly reaching out to touch her left breast. It was warm and the nipple was hard.

  Bonnie’s smile was wide, and Karen wondered if she was having an orgasm. She moved her hand over Bonnie’s belly and placed it on top of her hand. Then she leaned over and kissed Bonnie on her mouth. Her tongue reached in to touch her friend’s.

  She left one hand on Bonnie’s and used her other hand to feel the long blonde hair she’d come in to see. She kissed Bonnie harder, feeling guilt and shame rush through her but having desire and pleasure win out.

  She pulled back and once more felt Bonnie’s breast. Then she let out a long breath and stood, leaving Bonnie to finish her orgasm in private.

  * * *

  Later, the calling forced Karen to come home, but her mind was filled with her neighbor’s secrets. One boy in her class was fucking the history teacher, another liked to dress up in girls’ clothes. Major Higgins beat his wife, and their ten-year-old daughter kept razor blades in her bedside table, waiting to gain the courage to slit her wrists.