Freeze

I was 14 when I first realized what I was capable of. I was in the middle of 8th Grade at the time and I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Monday and as usual, I had spent my weekend gaming and ignoring my homework. Little did I know I had a quiz that day. I walked into math class and was confused when I saw everyone reviewing their notes. I located my best friend Coltrane in the corner and sat next to him.

“Whats everyone doing?”, I said to him,

“they are studying for the quiz.”, he replied.

I had completely forgotten about the quiz and this wan no ordinary quiz, it was a call-out quiz. This meant that the teacher would say something like 2 squared or 14 squared and we had to write down the answer as soon as they said it. “2 minutes to prepare!”, my teacher shouted as she handed out papers. I always hated how she yelled in class everyday for no reason. All it did was make me more worried about this quiz and by the time it was about to start I was very upset that I forgot about it.Then the teacher started calling out numbers to square and that's when I lost it. I started yelling in my head as the teacher kept calling out questions. “Why can’t time just freeze!”, I yelled in my head, furious at the situation. And that's when it happened; time just froze. It wasn't for long, but somehow I knew I had 5 minutes.  Don't know why I knew this, but I could feel it. I tapped my friend Coltrane and he didn't move. The clocks had stopped ticking. I tapped everyone in the classroom including my teacher, and nothing. So I decided to give my quiz grade a boost. I went up to the teacher and got the answers off of the paper she was reading from and wrote them on my quiz. Once I did this, I felt the urge for time to start up again, even though it hadn't been 5 minutes. In my head I was trying to harness this power and make time start again, but it took some hard concentration. Long story short I passed the test, and every other test, quiz, homework assignment, and project for the rest of that year. Whenever I froze time, I became more skilled and could do it for longer periods of time. For example, the first time was only for 5 minutes, and by sophomore year I was able to freeze time for an hour. The only downside to freezing time was that the longer I froze it for, the more exhausted I would be when it resumed. This ability was the only reason that I passed in school and it was the best thing I could have asked for. I remember my first time using my powers to steal something. I was in 9th grade and I had been working for about a month at this coffee shop. It was nice there and I made a solid salary of 9 bucks an hour. I had been saving up for this $1000 dollar Drone that I really wanted. I had been eyeing the drone since last Christmas when it used to cost $2000 dollars, but it was half off now. Even with it being half off, I still didn't have enough for it, so I froze time and stole it from the store. I felt odd after doing it because I knew it was no right for me to do this. I ended up returning it and waiting until I had the money to buy it. If there's one thing these powers have taught me it's patience. Things actually take longer for me than other people. For example I could freeze time for an hour to do an assignment and when I unfreeze time it's resumes from the point at which it froze. This means that no matter how long I freeze time for, it all happens in the blink of an eye for everyone else. But back to the story. The truth is, I don't really know how I got these powers. I’ve come up with many different theories, but none of them really make sense. So I just stopped trying to figure it out. My life is truly one of a kind, but in everyone else's eyes, it was normal. I had a few good friends all through high school, my best friend being Coltrane from middle school. Now usually friends are always there for you during tough times, but my life so far didn't really include tough times, so I was always there to help my friends. Whether it was homework, or relationship problems, I was always there for my friends, and if I knew if I ever did fall on tough times, they would be there for me. However, there were also many times when I had to get my friends out of trouble. One time, I was walking home from school, and I saw my friend Coltrane arguing with these 3 guys. It wasn't long before he swung on one of them and then all 3 went after him. I sprinted up to the fight and dropped the guy on my right with a quick right cross while Coltrane dropped the guy on the left with a massive uppercut. The last guy just stood there and looked at us with his hands raised.

“You guys messed with the wrong kid”, he said.

“Oh yea? And why’s that?”, Coltrane replied.

He pulled out a Pistol and fired right at my chest, and luckily I was able to freeze time before the bullet made impact. I grabbed the bullet and tossed it to the ground. Then I grabbed his gun and unfroze time with me pointing the pistol at him.

“Don't mess with me or my friends again buddy”, I yelled at him.

Then Coltrane hit him with a hard jab, knocking him out.

“You okay bro?”, I asked him.

“Yea i'm fine, but how did you do that?”, he replied.

“It's a long story bro”, I said

We never spoke about that day again, and I glad, because that would be really hard to explain to him. There have been other times that I took care of my friends that didn't require my powers. In fact the hardest part of my life was accepting the fact that I couldn't use my powers for everything. That's the one thing I always failed at. Let's fast forward to the darker times in my life. One of my darkest days was when I lost my best friend Coltrane. It was all my fault, I tried to make things better with my powers, but I only made them a lot worse. It was a cold Monday night, and believe it or not, I was having actual problems in life. My other friends all thought I was crazy, but my friend Coltrane actually believed me, because of the incident we had years ago. I kept uncontrollably freezing time. I called Coltrane and told him to meet me at out old middle school at 7 pm. I needed a mutual area where I knew no one would see us and since the old middle school had been shut down, it was perfect for the occasion. I met up with Coltrane outside of the abandoned building.

“Let's go in”, I said

“Ok bro, but make this quick”, he replied. When we went in, the school looked so lost to me. I couldn't believe how a place like this that held such happy times in my childhood could have turned into such a mess. It was awful, the lockers were topples all over the hallways, graffiti was everywhere and the place reeked like nothing I had ever smelled. We were walking through the halls when it started happening. I started glitching with time. For some reason it only happened when I thought about or visited a place from my past, almost like time was urging me to go back and re live the memories, but I knew it was impossible.

“David, what's happening to us?!”,

Coltrane yelled. And then, just like that, he was gone.

“Bro where are you!”, I yelled, then I had a flashback to the call-out quiz that I was taking right before I passed out. And when I woke up, I was there taking the quiz. But something wasn't right, time was frozen and there was nothing I could do about it.