• Chapter 1

    Sierra tapped her pencil impatiently against the desk, her brunette hair falling over her shoulders. Math always seemed to take years. The teacher’s endless drone filled the classroom.
    “Am I boring you Ms. Baechawich?” asked Mrs. Carter.
    “No ma’am!” she quickly replied.
    “Good. Now, as I was saying......” Sierra sighed and glanced up at the clock, willing it to speed up. As she stared at the second hand, she felt a tingly sensation under her eyelids. She stared unblinking at the slowing second hand until it stopped.
    Sierra gave an irritated grunt and raised her hand to tell Mrs. Carter the clock stopped. She suddenly realized how quiet the classroom was. Why is everyone frozen? thought Sierra.
    The minute the thought popped up, the room came back to life. Startled, Sierra looked up at the clock to find that it had started up again.
    “Yes Ms. Baechawich?” asked Mrs. Carter.
    “What are you tal-“ mid-sentence she realized she still had her hand up. “Nothing,” she quickly replied and lowered it.
    When the teacher resumed her lecture, Sierra stared at the second hand again, willing it to slow to a stop.
    Nothing happened.
    Sierra pondered this the whole day, and at the end, came up with nothing.

    When she got home that day, Sierra asked her mother if there was anything odd about her family.
    “Why, yes,” her mother told her, “we are a very odd family.”
    “In what ways?” Sierra questioned.
    “Many ways,” was her mother’s response.
    “That doesn’t tell me anything!”
    “It tells you enough.” With that her mother turned and walked out of the room.
    Sierra sighed. Why couldn’t anything in life be clear? She trudged out of the room and started her homework.
    As she tapped her pencil while doing her math, a thought occurred to her. Maybe, she thought, just maybe I can do it again.
    She stared at the clock. The second hand ticked slowly. The room was deathly quiet.
    Will all her might, Sierra willed time to slow. She thought about the frozen class and the stopped clock on the wall.
    When the clock started to slow, Sierra tried even harder. She concentrated on a frozen world. She imagined the second hand frozen on the clock like a picture on the wall.
    She felt the tingly sensation behind her eyelids and concentrated on it. The clock stopped.
    Sierra scarcely breathed. She focused on the still world. Eyes wide, she slowly made her way to her bedroom door. It opened with a creek.
    She slowly stepped out into the hallway. The tingle behind her eyes began to fade. No!
    She stopped mid-step and focused on the world floating in space, but not spinning.
    She stayed this way until the tingle was strong again and she continued down the hall. She carefully opened the door to her parents’ room. Her dad was standing in the middle watching something on the TV. He wasn’t moving.
    She walked closer and saw that the TV was frozen too.
    She exited the room and maneuvered down the stairs into the soft yellow kitchen.
    Her mom was standing by the sink washing dishes.
    This would be perfectly normal if her mother was breathing and the water from the sink was actually moving instead of staying suspended in the air.
    She was sure now that she had done it. She had stopped time.
    Sierra quickly walked back up the stairs to her room. She let time start again and pondered what had happened.
    Her only thought was that she was supernatural.
    Sierra went back downstairs and asked her mom if she can do anything special. “Why, yes. You can dazzle people with your brilliant smile.”
    “But can I do anything supernatural?”
    “When you were six you told me over and over that your best friend was a ghost named Teresa.” Her mother chuckled to herself. “No more of this silly talk. Go upstairs and finish your homework.”
    Sierra sighed. She turned and walked out of the kitchen and trudged up the stairs.
    She entered her room, flopped onto her bed, and started to think.











    Chapter 2

    After the bus dropped them off at school, Sierra stopped her friend Kirstine in the hall.
    “Hey, Kirstine? Can I tell you something?” Sierra asked her.
    “Sure,” Kirstine replied.
    “This is going to sound really weird, but,” Sierra leaned closer to her friend. “I think I can stop time,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.
    Kirstine looked at her skeptically. “Really.”
    “Yes! I’ll prove it to you in math!”
    “How?”
    “Um, I guess I could write something on the board, play time, freeze it, and erase it before the teacher sees.”
    “How are you going to manage that?”
    “I told you, I can stop time!”
    “If you say so,” replied Kirstine as she walked to language arts. I’ll show her right now instead!
    She had no idea what she was getting herself into.
    Sierra looked down at her watch and focused on the frozen world picture. After the tingle under her eyes, she looked up to see time stopped. Perfect!
    She walked up to the frozen Kirstine. What should I do? I’ll take off her backpack and stand in front of her! But will someone see me? She quickly glanced around the cold tiled corridor. No one was looking in her direction.
    She creaped over to her friend and gingerly removed the heavy backpack. She carefully placed it in Kirstine’s hand, reshaping it to hold it to hold the heavy backpack.
    Then she walked out in front of her. She put on a wide grin and played time.
    Kirstine’s totally I-don’t-care face turned into one of surprise and a touch of fear. She fell over due to the weight of the backpack in her right hand.
    When she stood up she was furious. “What was that for?!”
    Sierra’s smile became a smirk. “To prove to you that I can stop time,” she replied.
    “I believed you! Now you’re going to reveal us with your stupidity!” Kirstine’s hand flew to her mouth.
    “What? Reveal who?” Sierra questioned.
    “N-no one!” Kirstine stammered. She slung her backpack over her shoulder and ran down the hall.
    “Wait! Who am I revealing?” but she was already gone.

    In math, Sierra decided that she was still going to write something on the board, just to scare the kids.
    While Mrs. Carter lectured, Sierra thought about what to write. I should write one word at a time, as if I’m a ghost. But what should I write? She thought about this for a short while, and finally decided.
    Grinning, she turned towards Kirstine. Kirstine looked back, frowned, and shook her head. Sierra just winked.
    She stared at the clock and froze the classroom. She walked up to the board and wrote I’m in the color black on the giant wipe board in the front.
    She returned to her seat and let time play for about three seconds and stopped it again. She erased I’m and rewrote it in green and wrote watching in purple.
    She watched the children’s faces as she let time play. Lucy, the girl beside her, gasped.
    Sierra stopped time again. This time she erased her writing and rewrote it all in blue, but adding you in pink.
    She retreated to her desk and let time start. The students around her gasped and recoiled in there seats.
    Every two seconds, she stopped time and erased her words and rewrote her phrase in different colors. Red, blue, yellow, black, brown.
    “I’m watching you,” whispered Peter, the nerd in the front of the room.
    As Mrs. Carter turned towards the board, Sierra quickly stopped time, erased her message, returned to her seat, and unfroze the world.
    “There’s nothing there, so settle down,” Mrs. Carter scolded.
    Kirstine glared at Sierra. Sierra grinned and smirked.
    Neither noticed nor cared about the boy in the last row, grinning an evil grin, and taking notes in a red spiral notebook.