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The Slow-Motion Thing

The first time I see her, following Mary Agnes Brady out of Peas n’ Pickles at 3:47 on a Wednesday afternoon in the second week of March, the slow-motion thing happens. It’s like the pause button’s been pushed on everything I see. The image—a beautiful girl with butterfly braids, snapping back the tab on a can of ginger ale—freezes for a millisecond. After the sound of the can’s sharp pop and the little breath of fizz that follows it, time stops, and I think, Who is that incredible girl?

Then the picture comes to life again, but slowly, one frame at a time, as if an invisible thumb has pushed play without unpausing. So slowly that I don’t miss a single detail: from the mist of carbonation that sprays into the air and disappears, to the puzzled look on the girl’s face as she pulls the inch-long paper wrapper off the bent tip of the straw, to the shy smile that spreads across her face as she takes the first sip. Then she says, “Mmm,” and she licks her lips like she’s never tasted ginger ale in her life.

Nomura and I are in a long line of kids from St. Cat’s and St. Chris’s, waiting to pay for our food, and Mary Agnes is walking out of the store backward, like a tour guide, pointing to snacks near the cash register and explaining the names, prices, and pros and cons of 3 Musketeers, Fuji apples, and Fritos. She enunciates each syllable, as if speaking to a child or someone hard of hearing. The girl doesn’t seem to mind, though. She’s paying close attention, nodding every few seconds, hungry for information.

Her uniform is brand-new. Her shirt, its collar stiff with starch, is whiter than Mary Agnes’s, and not only because it stands out against her skin. Her red plaid skirt is brighter, too, and her patent-leather saddle shoes are as shiny as mirrors, not a scratch on them. Every piece of clothing on her looks like it was bought in the last forty-eight hours.

As usual, Mary Agnes is talking nonstop, and the girl looks like she has to concentrate to keep up. Every time she nods, her braids do a little dance, shimmying like a grass skirt, before coming to rest. At the end of each braid sits a tiny purple bead in the shape of a butterfly. I wonder if she twists her hair into braids herself or if someone has to do it for her. I wonder whether she can sleep with the beads on. And, if she took the butterflies off, would the braids unravel?

I don’t normally notice stuff like this. I only do when the slow-motion thing happens. Which is not something I choose or have any control of whatsoever. Someone else is controlling it. It’s like God, or somebody, is saying, Pay attention. This is important!

Time speeds up again, although I feel like I’m still two seconds behind. “Who’s that?” I whisper to Nomura.

He doesn’t even hear me. I have to say it twice because he’s reading something on his phone and dipping into a bag of Utz chips we haven’t paid for yet.

“Who’s who?” he answers at last, his lips forming a round “o.” Everything about Nomura is round. His moon-shaped face, his black bowl-cut hair—even his glasses—are all circles so perfect they look like they’ve been drawn with a compass.

“Do you want a microphone?” I whisper, praying none of the girls can hear us. Nomura is as loud as he is circular.

Mary Agnes is still lecturing the girl. “The black girl?” he asks. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.”

I pay for Nomura’s chips and my Butterfinger, and Mr. Lau, the old man who owns Peas n’ Pickles, slaps my change on the counter like he’s placing a bet in a Chinese poker game. Then, a loud metal-on-Formica slap: the girls are out the door already. Too fast for me to say hello, or to do anything else that will help me meet that beautiful girl.

“She must be new,” I say. “We would have seen her before.”

“She’s cute,” Nomura says. “Really cute.”

“I saw her first.”

“Slow down, cowboy. All I said was she’s cute. But if you want to chase after her, go right ahead. She’s out of your league, and she’ll probably break your heart into a million pieces, but if that’s what you’re after, she’s all yours.”

By the time we’re out of the store, though, the girls are past Pineapple Street, probably on their way to the subway. They’re walking in regular time, their hard-heeled shoes clicking musically against the concrete, nothing slo-mo about it. But I know that something has happened, something worth paying attention to. Something monumental.

I need to find out who that girl is, where she came from, and why I’ve never seen her before, even though Nomura and I know, or at least know of, all forty-four girls in the seventh-and eighth-grade classes at St. Catherine’s School for Girls.

Somehow I know that the answers to these questions are going to change my life forever.