Chapter 13: The Good and the Bad.

Sept. 13th, 2015

“Cadi, it was an accident. You didn’t mean to hurt him. Besides, he was trying to hurt you.”

Cadi sat in the passenger’s seat silently as Rick drove them home from the park. After Danny’s arm had broken, his mom just so happened to show up a few minutes later. She had exchanged phone numbers with Rick so that she could talk to their parents, and then rushed her son into the car so she could take him to the hospital.

This had shaken Cadi down to her core. Never had she thought that she could ever hurt someone with this power. It suddenly seemed like a completely bad thing, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to have it anymore. In fact, she was so upset by it, that she couldn’t even enjoy the front seat, which she never got to sit in. (Their father would be completely livid if he saw her. He kept saying she was too young to be up front.)

“Woah-what’s going on up there?” Rick asked in a bit of awe as traffic came to a halt. Cadi suddenly forgot all about Danny Wilkins and strained in her seat to see what the commotion was. She could see a bunch of police lights up ahead, but she couldn’t see what was going on.

“I can’t see!!” she whined, plopping herself back into her seat.

Rick suddenly gave a grin.

“Well… there is always a way we could see what’s going on…”

Cadi immediately caught on and grinned with him.

“Good idea!!”

A few moments later, the two of them were walking closer to the frozen police cars and people impatiently waiting in traffic.

“I bet it’s a car accident.” Rick told her.

“I think it’s a bank robbery!!” Cadi, replied, sticking her tongue out and smiling. Rick stuck his tongue out at her too.

Soon, they came up to a bank.

“Woah! It actually might be a bank robbery!!” Rick exclaimed. “I thought that type of stuff really only happened in movies and tv shows!”

The two of them studied some of the police officer’s faces. A mustached man near the front of the line looked super stressed out, standing in a paused image of talking to someone on a walkie talkie. Several other policemen near the front also had their guns out at the ready.

“I want to see what’s happening inside!” Cadi exclaimed, ducking under the barricades and running up to the building.

“Cadi!! Wait!”

“Rick-time is paused! Nothing can get us here!” the eight year old smiled before running into the bank.

Her older brother shrugged.

Guess she had him there.

Once inside, the two of them stood open mouthed, looking at the apparent hostage situation going on inside the bank. A rather skinny man with short spiky hair had a very large gun and duffle bag, and several people were kneeling on the ground looking very scared. Currently, the man was pointing the gun at one of the people on the ground like he was going to shoot them.

“Rick!!!! We have to do something!!!” Cadi yelled, waving her arms. She waited for him to say no, only for him to stand there thinking.

“Ok. You get two sets of handcuffs from the policemen outside, and I’m going to do something with this guy’s gun. Then help me move everybody.”

Cadi nodded and ran outside.

About thirty minutes later, within the confines of paused time, the two of them had succeeded in handcuffing the bank robber and dragging him and everybody else outside. The gun was sitting next to the mustache guy, and everybody seemed to be safe.

“Ok… Is that everybody?” Rick asked, slightly out of breath from dragging a bunch of adults everywhere.

“I… I think so…” Cadi huffed, feeling tired but excited.

“Ok. Let’s get back to the car.”

“But I want to see what happens!!”

“I know, but the car is in traffic. We can’t just leave it empty. Besides, there’s some camera men over there, and I’m sure they’ll get it on camera. Look.”

Cadi turned to see that he was right.

“Is it ok for it to be on camera?” she asked steadily.

Rick paused.

“Um… I don’t know… I mean, everybody would realize something weird was going on… Not to mention that there are probably cameras inside the bank…”

Cadi swallowed, feeling nervous. Rick shrugged.

“I mean hey-what are they going to do? It’s not like anyone will know it was us.”

Cadi nodded as the two of them walked back to the car, feeling like maybe her power was a good thing after all.

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That night, for some reason, Cadi kept waking up. One moment she would be asleep, and then the next moment she would be awake again. For a moment, she lay there in her bed in her dark room, a bit of moonlight shining through her window and illuminating things like a cool rock she found outside on an adventure with Juno, or a weird stuffed frog she had found on a family vacation.

The eight year old snuggled deeper into her covers, trying to get comfy enough to fall asleep again.

That’s when she heard a strange sound.

Cadi froze, a shiver running up her spine. Slowly, she pulled the covers down a little, and then found her heart in her throat when she saw a dark figure of a person standing in the corner of her room. She wanted to scream, or call for help, or something, but at the moment, she was petrified with fear.

The dark figure slowly started to come towards her. Cadi thought she saw something glisten in the soft moonlight.

A knife.

What should she do?!

Of course! Duh! Pause time!!

Quickly, she reached for the bubbles and felt time pause, but to her horror, the person in her room did not freeze with everything else. Desperately, she tried again and again, but the person kept coming closer and closer.

“G-Get away from me!!” she stammered, pulling the covers up to her chin in fear.

The person raised the knife over their head.

“RIIIIIICK!!!” the eight year old screamed.

But before her older brother could come to her rescue, another dark figure of a person showed up without warning. Cadi wasn’t even sure how these two people were in her room in the first place. The new person tackled the first person, and Cadi was left watching a fight take place beside her bed. It was too dark exactly to see what they looked like, but she became even more surprised when two more people showed up.

The three new people were attacking the knife person now. Cadi wished she could see.

“Cadi? What’s going on?” Rick asked as he opened her door.

“THERE’S PEOPLE IN MY ROOM!!” she screamed, jumping out of her bed as the knife person lunged again. Cadi ran to her older brother and hid behind him, curious as to what was going on, but still scared.

“Who are you people?!” Rick asked angrily, flipping the light switch to shed some light on the situation.

But as soon as the light was on, the four people in Cadi’s room vanished without a trace.

The two siblings stood there dumbfounded.

“R-Rick? Was-was someone trying to kill me just now?” Cadi asked, shaking a little.

“I don’t know Cadi. I know about as much as you do.”

The eight year old swallowed and held on tighter to Rick’s leg.