The Practicalities of Freezing Time: Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

School came and went the next day, quicker than had happened for a while for Naledi.  Miss. Schnabeltier had been impressed by her recent improvements in German, which made her feel happy, and her mum seemed to be more relaxed.  At the very end of the day, they were all given letters to go home with, except for her of course.  There was little point her taking home a piece of paper that her mum had saved on her work laptop.

     The letter was from Mr. Holly and the gist of it was that the school was doing just fine.  Not brilliantly or perfectly, but fine enough to keep everyone off their collective backs.  Naledi felt relieved by this, but also a bit sad.  It would mean Mr. Plant round again tonight for a celebratory bottle of wine or four.  Then again, if the news had been bad, it would have meant Mr. Plant round again that night with a commiseration-tainted bottle of wine or four, so when all was said and done, a good result fared better than a bad one since the end result was much the same, only with fewer tears.

     Her mum still hadn’t said the words ‘Clive is my boyfriend’ yet, but she didn’t need to either.  Naledi just didn’t know how to start processing it.  Whenever she dropped her guard and truly thought about it, the first pangs of anxiety would claw her, and before she knew it, she’d be pacing the floor, feeling awful, clenching her fists and sucking air as the nails dug in and felt sharp relief.  She would be over the basin and toilet, failing to be sick but being super attentive to everything around her, from the weft of the carpet outside to the fact the bathroom mat was covered in tiny hairs that never seemed to get vacuumed away.

     She blinked these thoughts away and started the walk home.  The clouds above were dark and her head tingled with the pressure of oncoming thunder.  Still though, those four words— Clive is my boyfriend— circled her head, round and round and round.  Naledi felt her skin flush hot, prickling, and knew that anxiety was coming.  She struggled to concentrate as she crossed the road, tripping slightly on the kerb and noticing a distant cyclist wobble precariously as they went over a pothole.

     She took off her jacket, feeling it brush against her skin, but the cold wind did nothing to ease that sudden, anxious warmth.

     Clive is my boyfriend. Clive is my boyfriend. Clive? He’s my boyfriend

     Naledi thought of her dad and blinked back a tear and suddenly there was the blast of a car horn and the slam of brakes and a cyclist not so distant anymore about to hit this car going too fast on the wrong side of the road, and Naledi found herself jumping, diving, towards them, linking together her fingers, freezing time just before impact.  Her whole body slammed into the frozen cyclist, knocking him to the ground, her fingers linking again just before they thudded painfully on the kerbside and the car smashed into the bicycle, the crunch of glass and metal audibly cutting through the gasps and screaming of relief and surprise as the passers by realized that the cyclist was unsafe.

     The car came to a halt and the driver scrambled out, trying to make out how in the wrong the cyclist was, which no-one believed as everyone had seen them speeding the wrong way.  The faint waft of whiskey didn’t help his case.

     “You… you… you saved me?” questioned the cyclist to Naledi, hesitantly.

     “Yes,” she replied, simply. “I did.”

     She stood up and went to walk away, but people tried to stop her, talking about being in shock and being cut and wasn’t she bleeding and she should get a reward and Naledi didn’t want this, not any of this, and so she screwed her eyes tight and froze time once again, screaming as it all stopped, screaming so loudly and so hard that her throat burnt.

     She started to run, but as she did so, Naledi thought about the cyclist saved and the shoplifting she had stopped whilst time was frozen before and she pondered on this whilst a stitch bit her right ribs.

     Maybe she had been selfish with this gift of hers? Maybe she should concentrate more on other people as a first priority rather than an occasional thing?

     She stopped running and turned back to the cyclist.  She flicked her mind’s eye back to firemen and her dad instead.

     Maybe this was what she did now.  Was it her time to be the hero?

     Maybe that was what this was all about: not painting nails or doing homework or reading books or playing the guitar or postponing the effects of heavy periods.  Maybe it was about the shoplifting prevention and the cat rescues and saving lives.  Maybe that was what she should be doing with her time.

     She walked back to the cyclist and sat down.  She couldn’t draw more attention to herself by vanishing (though saving a person’s life in broad daylight by doing a dramatic dive across a busy road was pretty show-offy in the first place, it had to be said).  She thought about her dive and how she’d never thought twice about it.  How little worth she had put on her own safety.  Because of heroism, or something else… she shook her head, her chest pumping again, and made time start up.  The crowds surged round her and someone dumped a denim jacket which smelt of cigarettes onto her shoulders.  She would be the hero, she vowed, but do it without the press next time.  She felt the sting of blood, air and gravel on her knee as the adrenaline wore off and waited for the police and a nurse to arrive.