Chapter 4: Pranks and Pauses

August 30th, 2015

“Juno!! Juno Juno!!” Cadi exclaimed, rushing up next to her friend on her bike.

Her friend waved as she skidded to a stop, and then he jumped on the pegs on the back of her bike so he could hitch a ride.

“Did you ever figure out what happened yesterday?” he asked as she pedaled the two of them to school.

“I made time stop again!” she yelled to him. “I felt some tinglies in my stomach and I made time stop!”

“What?! Can you do it again?”

“I don’t know!”

“Try it now! Try it now!”

Cadi skidded to a stop.

“You want me to try it now?”

“Well yeah. We’ve got a few extra minutes.”

“Ok.”

Cadi closed her eyes tight and felt it in her stomach.

Focus… Focus…

“WOAH!!” Juno exclaimed.

Cadi opened her eyes and to her surprise, time had stopped, but Juno hadn’t.

“Wait. Why aren’t you paused?” she asked, looking around at the silent world around them.

“Maybe it’s because I was touching your shoulders? That’s what always happens in movies with things like this right?”

Made sense.

This was another reason she like Juno.

He was smart.

Slowly, she started to pedal again.

Time had stopped alright. Why wasn’t it working right last night then?

Maybe she just needed to get used to it.

The two children excitedly came up to the school and ran inside the building, time still frozen.

“What do you want to do first?” Cadi asked excitedly as they ran down the silent halls of their elementary school.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about pranks!!” she exclaimed, turning to him and waving her arms in the air.

“Oh. Are you sure you should be using this power this way?”

“Well I’ve got to test some things out first anyways. Why not have some fun in the process?”

Juno took a moment to think about this.

“That is true…”

“Come on Juno! Lighten up for once!”

The boy standing next to her smiled.

“Well… I have always wanted to see the teacher’s lounge…”

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For a moment, Rick did not realize that anything was different.

He was currently listening to the soundtrack of Broken Bride, by Ludo, one of his favorite bands, and skateboarding down the sidewalk towards the high school. Rick stopped at a stop sign, to see that someone was stopped in the middle of the intersection. He waited impatiently for them to continue down the road, but instead, it seemed like they were parked.

“Idiots...” he muttered, skating across the road after looking both ways.

He still didn’t notice that anything was off until he came up to the fire hydrant that always seemed to explode now and then.

Today, it was definitely on, and bursting out water, but…

Rick’s mouth dropped open as he came up to a completely frozen exploding fire hydrant. In his surprise, he did not see the rock in the sidewalk, which he hit at full force and sent him flying into the grass. In the fall, his headphones came off a little. Slowly, he slid them down to his neck as he sat there in the grass, and turned off the music.

The world was completely silent.

It was now that he realized that things were not normal. He continued to look around open mouthed as he observed his surroundings. He looked down at his watch to see that its time had stopped.

What in the world was going on?!

Suddenly, he remembered the events of the previous day, and how Cadi had been acting weirder than normal, and how she had said that she had…

Paused time?!

Rick jumped up and started racing down the street on his skateboard.

Would Cadi be at school?

Did she do something?

Was this her fault?!

Rick wasn’t sure how long he was skating at full speed, but soon, he came up to the elementary school.

Her bike was locked up in the bike rack.

So she was here…

Rick walked up to the building and was about to go through the front office, but then realized that if time was really stopped, then he wouldn’t be able to talk to anybody anyway. Obstinately, he marched off to where he knew Cadi’s classroom was.

He was about halfway there, when he heard laughing.

He stopped.

One thing that was blatantly obvious from the time he had realized that time was stopped, was that everything was completely quiet.

Then why was there suddenly laughter?

Rick followed the sound to a door that read Teachers’ Lounge on the front of it. Slowly, he opened the door.

In front of him, was his little sister and her friend Juno, laughing as they poured salt into a teacher’s cup of coffee.

“Cadi?!”

The two eight year olds jumped, and salt flew everywhere.

“R-Rick?!” she squeaked, completely confused. “How-.”

“What the heck is-how-?!”

The two siblings were locked in a staring match for a moment, while Juno awkwardly stood there looking in between them.

“I told you I could pause time.” Cadi said quietly, sliding the now empty salt packet across the table away from herself.

Rick was still having a hard time fathoming this.

“You… you paused time?”

“Yep?”

“But… but…”

“I think it was from the mad scientists from the other day.”

“What?”

“The strangers in their yard.”

Rick leaned on the doorframe, trying to take it all in.

“So… time… has… stopped…” he said to himself, taking in deep breaths and trying not to freak out.

“Heh… heh… Isn’t it cool?” Cadi laughed nervously.

“Cool?! This is serious!!” Rick exploded. “You can unpause time right?! And-and what does this even mean? This shouldn’t be able to happen!! And-and why didn’t I stop with everything else?! I was a few blocks away!!”

Cadi took a moment as Rick started pacing and talking more to himself as he continued to freak out.

“Of course I can unpause time.” she told him. “But… I don’t know why you didn’t stop too…”

She suddenly remembered how last night, she was going to prank her brother, but he was still unfrozen. Then she remembered how the power hadn’t worked right when she was touching his arm, and he had gotten some kind of shock…

“Maybe you got some of the power too? Like when I accidentally hurt your arm yesterday?”

Rick stopped pacing to stare at her.

“Well… whatever is going on, stop doing it for now. We don’t know what’s going on. I’m going to go back to school, and you are going to unstop time and we’ll-we’ll talk about this later!!”

Then Juno and Cadi watched his her older brother stormed out the door.

The two of them paused for a moment, and then Cadi couldn’t help herself as she poured another packet of salt into Mr. Flaherty’s coffee.

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“I wish I could have seen the look on Mr. Flaherty’s face!!” Cadi laughed as she and Juno walked down the sidewalk after school.

“That’s what he gets for making us do extra laps at P.E. the other day.” Juno agreed.

The two of them thought about his as they continued down the sidewalk.

“Do you think your brother’s going to be mad at you?” At this, Cadi shrugged.

“I don’t know. I don’t think he even knows what’s going on or how to deal with it.”

“Hmmm. Well, you’ll have to let me know how it goes. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Ok. See you tomorrow Juno!”

And with that, the two of them went their separate ways.

Instead of hopping on her bike, Cadi walked alongside it as she lost herself to her thoughts. She could hardly wait until her brother got home from school so she could talk to him about all of this. Maybe he would finally be proud of her for something and stop calling her a noob all the time.

When she got home, her mother was painting something.

“How was school today Cadi?” she asked as the eight year old walked in and set her bookbag down.

“It was good. Is Rick home yet?”

“No. But he should be home soon. I think they’re having testing, so they have early dismissal again today.”

“Ok! When he gets home, tell him I’m in the computer room doing some research for a science project.”

“Ok. Sounds good.”

With that, Cadi ran into the computer room so she could try to do some research on people stopping time.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t having much luck until Rick came home.

“What are you doing?” leaning over to look at the desktop screen.

“I’m trying to do some research on the time stopping thing.”

“Move over. Let me sit there.”

“But I was sitting here first!”

“I type faster than you.”

Rick muscled her out of the big computer chair, and so Cadi pouted and pulled up a stool to sit by him.

Rick began to scroll through google and type some things in as Cadi sat next to him.

Even though he had stolen the comfy chair, she was happy that he was actually spending time with her. He never seemed to have time otherwise.

“Hey Cadi-what were the names of those strangers from the other day?”

“Mr. Harry and Ms. Emille.”

“Hmmm. Well look at this. It’s an article about two scientists name Harry Penegar and Emille Wilson. Apparently they’ve been trying to dip into the time stream or something with their machines, but most of the scientific community think their nuts…”

“So are they really mad scientists?” Cadi asked, looking at her brother’s illuminated face as he concentrated on what he was reading.

“No. But they are scientists. Just… scientists that have been discredited…”

“What does discredited mean?”

“It means that the other scientists basically think they’re stupid and that their machines and experiments are baloney.”

“Oh… But… if I can pause time… Doesn’t that mean that… their machines are working?”

“I don’t know…”

Rick sat back in the large comfy computer chair, thinking.

“How long can you pause time for?”

“Um… I think for as long as I want.”

“And can you control it?”

“Yeah. At least I think so.”

Rick sat there quietly for another minute.

“Can we tell Mom?” Cadi suddenly blurted. “Or Dad?”

“Um… Let’s wait on that for a second Cadi… We need to figure this out, but if Mom and Dad know, they might not let us do certain things to figure it out…”

“Are you saying that… we might need to do some things that are…”

Cadi changed her voice to a whisper.

“...against the rules?”

Rick glanced to the open door beside them, and then slowly shut it.

“Um… Kind of… Maybe… Ok yes. This is what I’m thinking… You know how usually we say not to go into stranger’s yards?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I want to find out what those scientist did to you-or… us. So we’re going to go spy on them tonight using your new… power.”

Cadi suddenly felt her heart pounding with excitement.

“Really?!”

“Yeah. Don’t tell Mom or Dad. They would kill us if they found out what we were doing.”

“Ok. But won’t it be past my bedtime?”

“Yes. Which is why when it is time for bedtime, you are going to pause time and let us sleep. That way, we’ll see if it will really pause time for that long. Then, when we wake up, we’ll go to the park and see what we can find.”

“Ok.”

“Rick, Cadi, can you come in here and help me with dinner please?” their mother called from the other room.

“Ok Mom! We’ll be there in a second!” Rick yelled back to her.

“Now remember- not a word to Mom or Dad.” Cadi’s older brother reminded her. Cadi nodded and slapped a hand over her mouth and gave him a big thumbs up.

Rick nodded, and then left the computer room. Cadi quickly exited out of their research and then ran out after him.