Chapter 11: The spikes in my stomach.

Sept. 12th, 2015

West and Harry watched as Emille paced the room.

For the past ten days, she had actually collected quite a bit of viable information. On Monday, she had waited for the little boy to leave his house, and sure enough, he met up with the little girl. She couldn’t get close enough to hear what they were saying, but she couldn’t help notice the little girl’s short black hair and the dirty pink and blue sneakers that she was wearing that looked suspiciously like the ones in their picture.

After that, she had looked up when their school got out, and then followed the little girl home. For the next few days after that, she watched her carefully, taking any notes of any anomalies and information she could find.

So far, strong evidence pointed to her hypothesis being true-that this girl named Cadi certainly had some contact or ability to manipulate parts of the time stream. On their chalkboard, she had written a list of things that pointed to this:

1. The dirty blue and pink tennis shoes.

2. The footage of the birthday party.

3. The frozen squirrel in the backyard.

4. The odd way she appears and reappears in completely different places.

“I don’t know Emille, I mean, it’s kind of sketchy stalking an eight year old.” Harry cautioned as she wrote a couple more things on the board from her notepad.

“And I know Cadi.” West added. “She’s naturally… kind of an oddball.” At this Emille shot the teacher a little glare.

“West. You don’t think I’m smart enough to realize the difference between time anomalies and the oddness of a child?”

West shrugged.

There was silence for a moment in the large high ceilinged living room they were all in.

“She might be dangerous.” she said quietly, much to the surprise of the two men sitting on the couch.

“Emille, she’s eight. And besides-she’s never hurt-ok, I take that back, she has been in a couple of fights, but she is still just a kid. She wouldn’t do anything malicious.” West protested. Emille flipped a page on her notepad.

“Even so, if it’s true that she contains this power of the timestream within herself, she might accidentally do something.”

West and Harry still looked a bit skeptical.

“Well, if that’s the case, then shouldn’t we just sit down and talk with her parents about this?” Harry offered. Emille shook her head.

“Where will that lead? We could possibly go to prison Harry. They wouldn’t understand. Not only that, but they wouldn’t understand what is wrong with her, and she wouldn’t get the help she needs. If we do something, it should be done in secret.”

Harry and West exchanged glances.

“Harry, can I speak to you alone for a moment?” the teacher asked. Harry nodded and then followed him outside to the porch.

“I don’t like how she’s talking.” West told him truthfully. “I know Cadi. She’s a really sweet kid, and I don’t want there to be any trouble.”

“Don’t worry, there’s not going to be any trouble. I’ll make sure of it.”

West however, still looked concerned.

“We’ve been best friends for… How long now?”

“Eight years.” Harry laughed.

“Yeah. Well, as a teacher, I sometimes tend to put my students first. They come at a very vulnerable time in their lives, and I’ve done my best over the years to try to help them with that. I’m telling you this because I want you to understand why I might say certain things. I do care about you guys, I promise-I just-also really care about my students. And… I’m a little worried about the direction Emille is wanting to take.”

Harry nodded in understanding.

“I know man. I know Emille can seem a bit… harsh and obsessive at times, but don’t worry. I’ll talk to her. I promise we won’t let things get out of hand.”

West nodded, looking a little more relieved now.

“Ok. Good. I don’t mind if you guys keep an eye on her-I just want to make sure she’s safe is all.”

Harry grinned and held out his hand, where they proceeded to do one of their secret handshakes.  

“Come on-let’s go convince Emille to drop this time stuff for now and play a card game.”

West smiled and nodded in agreement.

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Cadi couldn’t remember the last time her older brother had spent so much time with her. It made her really happy!! Over the past week or so, he had done things with her every day, and it wasn’t just all time stuff either.

She wasn’t entirely sure what had caused things to change between them, but Rick seemed happier as well, even though she had kind of messed up his date with Jessica when she paused time, and even though she was still impulsive and sometimes broke stuff.

Whatever it was, she was glad that Rick was being nice to her now.

At the moment, she was at the park, playing kickball with her friends like she had been the day that the incident occurred.

The incident that gave her the power to manipulate time.

Rick was sitting on a bench not too far away, talking to that Jessica girl he liked-a pretty girl with long flowing blonde hair and cool red glasses. Cadi resisted the temptation to watch them and tried focusing on their game.

Despite all of this, the eight year old and her brother had failed to realize that there had been someone watching them.

Standing inconspicuously in the bushes surrounding the old house, were Harry and Emille. Well, Emille was watching. Harry was doing a crossword puzzle.

“Harry-we need to be vigilant! We don’t know when something could happen.” At this, Harry sighed.

“Emille, they’re just playing a game of kickball. Like I said before, I think you’re getting a bit obsessive.”

“You must not realize how important all of this is.”

“Of course I do! But-.”

As the two of them started to argue, Cadi rolled the ball to someone on the opposite team.

THUNK!

It soared over their heads, and in a scramble, the kids on Cadi’s team all raced for the ball, and barely missed the kid as he made it to second base.

The game probably would have gone fine and would have been uneventful, if it hadn’t been for the arrival of some certain sixth graders.

Cadi was so focused on being the pitcher, that she did not realize that anyone had come up behind her. When she went to roll the ball, she suddenly lurched forward and fell to the ground as someone snatched the ball from her.

“What the-.”

She turned around to see someone she hated more than anybody.

Danny Wilkins.

The sixth grader smiled at her with his crooked yellow teeth, holding the ball up high in the air. Cadi scowled. Danny had left them alone for much of the summer-due to the fact that he had broken his arm in a dirt bike accident, but it looked like he had finally had the cast taken off.

Danny always had at least two friends with him, but this time, he had three. One of the boys even had a nerdy little mustache that only a thirteen year old would try to grow out.

“Danny, give the ball back.” Cadi said rather impatiently, standing up and dusting herself off.

“Why should I? You guys have been playing with it long enough! It’s our turn!”

“But you’re just going to set it on fire or something!”

“So?”

“Hey guys-please-just give it back. That’s the ball I got for my birthday…” Juno said mousily, coming up from behind Cadi. The older boys laughed.

“Figures. Only a noob would put Spongebob stickers on a soccer ball!”

Cadi could feel her blood boiling.

“Give it back!” she yelled, her hands clenching into fists.

“Make me!”

With an angry yell, Cadi pushed him, causing him to drop the ball. The smile disappeared from his face.

“Alright! You started it! That gives me permission to hit you now!”

At this point, Cadi’s older brother finally realized that something was about to go down, and he jumped up in the middle of his conversation.

“H-hey!!” he yelled, starting to run over to his little sister as she backed away from the older boy. She tripped and fell on her butt as Danny raised his fist to hit her.

At this point, Cadi felt angry painful spikes shoot up in her stomach, and a weird kind of familiarity like when she would rewind things. She gave the boy standing above her the meanest glare she could.

There was suddenly a snap, and Danny screamed.

Cadi sat there in shock as the boy’s arm bent at a weird angle. He fell to the ground clutching it.

She would have liked to believe that he had simply been over exerting himself and he had sprained it or damaged it in the process, but deep down, she knew this wasn’t true. Somewhere inside herself, she knew that she was the one to cause this.

Danny had recently broken his arm, and somehow, using her powers, she had rewound it back to the time it had broken. She could feel blood trickling out of her nose, but by now, her stomach was also churning with pain. She rolled over and threw up.

“Cadi!! Are you ok?!” Rick asked as she began to cry.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!” she sobbed as she threw her arms around him.

“Aw-Cadi-you didn’t do anything wrong! The boy punched you. It’s his own fault if he got hurt in the process.” Jessica soothed. Rick subtlely bit his lip. He knew the blood from her nose was not from Danny, and he knew that Cadi had just done something with her power accidentally. Currently, the rest of the kids were screaming in horror at Danny’s recently rebroken arm. Rick sighed as Cadi bawled.

“Jessica, could you maybe try to calm down all these kids? I’m going to call someone…”

Back over in the bushes, Emille and Harry stood transfixed by the chaos.

“You did see that-right Harry?” she asked, staring with her mouth open wide. Her boyfriend blinked.

“Y-yeah. Did-did she somehow break that kid’s arm? Without touching him?!”

“Yes… That’s Donna Wilkin’s boy-he’s had a cast on that arm for weeks…”

“Are you saying that the little girl-.”

“I think so…”

The two of them watched as some adults came onto the scene-probably some parents.

“Now do you believe me that she might be dangerous?” Emille asked, a bit of a smirk in her voice. Harry did not take offense to this.

“Maybe you’re right… If we don’t do something-she could really hurt someone.”

Emille continued to stand there silently in the shrubbery for a moment, staring from afar at the little eight year old with a nosebleed.