Flash!
The next morning, Hamish had a lot on his mind.
The whole world-stopping thing was troubling him, but even more pressingly he had two rather angry girls expecting a very large delivery of Chomps.
Over breakfast he came up with a plan: all he had to do was avoid Scratch and Mole at all costs.
Hamish had worked out that to buy two million Chomp bars would mean saving his pocket money for 219 years. Either that or convincing his mum to sell their house and he wasn’t sure how well she’d respond to that. So avoidance was the only way forward.
But if that failed, by raiding his old-age savings he’d managed to scrape together enough change to buy at least two Chomp bars. Hopefully, that would be enough to keep the ghastly, grubby girls off his back for a bit.
‘Right!’ yelled his mum, halfway out of the door. ‘See you tonight!’
Hamish watched her hurry off down the driveway, scribbling lipstick over her face while all manner of things fell out of her bag. Every time she stooped to pick one up, something else fell out of another pocket.
‘Oops!’ she said, as change clattered all around her and her paperwork threatened to blow away in the wind.
‘Oops!’ she said, chasing some coins down the street, accidentally squiggling her lipstick over her cheeks and then watching her papers fly off in the opposite direction.
Poor Mum, thought Hamish, setting off for school.
As he passed the sign outside the newsagent’s advertising the Starkley Post, he took in the headline.
MAN LEAVES TOWN
That’s weird, he thought. It must be last week’s paper.
But no, Hamish was wrong. It was today’s paper. The same story two weeks in a row? Well, that seems odd.
Winterbourne School was quite a modern school. It had low buildings with wide windows, and a big yellow sign saying ‘Well, hello there!’ to welcome people in. It was much nicer than St Autumnal’s, down the road. That school looked like a big red prison, or somewhere wizards might go. The kids at St Autumnal were pretty stuck-up and the two schools didn’t really mix much.
Outside the main door, Mr Longblather was talking to the headmistress, Frau Fussbundler. He was obviously being even more boring than usual, because she looked like a flower that was wilting in the rain. She kept saying things like ‘Well, anyway,’ and ‘Goodness, look at the time,’ but Mr Longblather didn’t seem to get the hint and just kept blah-blah-blah-ing away.
The PE teacher, Tyrus Quinn, was doing squat thrusts outside the gym in a tracksuit that was a little too tight for him. For a PE teacher, he was remarkably tubby. Imagine if a cat tried to squeeze into one of your socks. That’s how he looked in that tracksuit. Mr Quinn used to be one of Hamish’s favourite teachers. But recently, he’d seemed a lot . . . meaner.
Talking of meanies, Hamish glanced nervously around. He couldn’t see Scratch Tuft or Mole Stunk anywhere. Usually, they’d be with Grenville in the corner of the playground, making menacing faces at the smaller kids. But today Grenville was alone, reading his wrestling magazine and practising his moves.
Hamish looked at his dad’s watch. It was a bit too big for him, so he’d used rubber bands to stop it slipping off his wrist. It was almost nine o’clock now. If the school bell went on time at just after nine and Scratch and Mole hadn’t shown up, he might just get away with it.
But then . . .
‘OI! HAMISH ELLERBY!’
Oh no.
‘C’MERE, YOU BULBOUS LITTLE PIPSQUEAK!’
There they were! Fresh off their little pink bikes and striding towards him. Hamish felt in his pocket for his chocolate bars, praying they would be enough.
‘YOU WRETCHED LITTLE GRIZZLER, HAMISH!’
He began to walk backwards, away from them, but backed straight into the school fence. Now he had nowhere to go. All he could do was stand there and wait, as they got closer, and closer, and—
Wait.
What was that?
Was that a flash of lightning? Just a brief, quick flash from a faraway bolt?
Hamish looked up to the sky. It was grey, just like it usually was in Starkley, but it wasn’t raining today. He listened for a roll of thunder . . .
Which is when he realised he could hear nothing at all.
Not a word.
Not a laugh.
Not a scream.
Not Tyrus Quinn grunting while he did his squat thrusts.
Not Grenville practising his moves.
Not Mr Longblather’s blather.
It had all stopped with the flash.
Hamish looked around the playground.
Scratch and Mole were just a few metres away from him, angry looks on their furious little faces. Their fists were clumped into tight little balls. Their sharp, wonky, yellow teeth were bared. But they were still. Hamish waved his hand in front of their faces to see if they would move, but their tiny eyeballs just stared into nothingness.
Well, this could be interesting, he thought.
And, as he waved his hand some more, Hamish noticed his dad’s watch rattling around on his wrist . . . It was still ticking.
He checked Scratch’s watch. It had stopped.
He checked Mole’s watch. It had stopped too.
But The Explorer kept going, kept ticking, kept working.
Something about this made him feel braver. It made him feel like he wasn’t alone. He had his dad’s watch here. Maybe that was a bit like having his dad.
Hamish had an idea. The Explorer had a stopwatch on it. He pressed Start and began to time the . . . well, what would you call it? The Pause? He began to time it and slowly started to walk around the playground . . .
A football was hanging way up off the ground. Two boys had frozen in mid-air, trying to head it. Hamish walked right the way around them, checking in case there were any wires holding them up, still not convinced this wasn’t some kind of trick or joke that the whole town was playing on him. He noticed a 5p coin was falling from the smaller boy’s pocket. Hamish reached up and tucked it back in.
Astrid Carruthers was like a floating statue, jumping high above her skipping rope. Her face was frozen in a permanent grin.
Grenville Bile was holding Colin Robinson up and had obviously been about to chuck him in a bush. Poor Colin Robinson.
And look – a bee was about to sting a kid much smaller than Hamish. So very, very carefully, Hamish used two fingers to move the bee right the way to the other side of the playground.
And before he knew it—
The playground erupted into noise once more.
Tyrus Quinn kept grunting.
The two boys jumping for the ball bopped their heads together and fell to the ground, grouching and ouch-ing.
Astrid kept skipping.
Colin was flung into that bush.
The bee stung a tree.
And – oh my gosh! – Scratch and Mole kept running at where Hamish had been standing . . .
Except he wasn’t standing there any more.
CRASH!
Scratch and Mole ran straight into the wire fence then bounced back and landed slap-bang on their bottoms.
‘Oooooooow!’ they yelped. ‘Ooooooow!’
The whole playground filled with laughter as the girls hobbled away, clutching their bums. People used one hand to point and another to hold their aching sides.
Hamish pressed the Stop button on his stopwatch.
‘Seven minutes and seven seconds,’ he said, reading the watch face.
And then, quietly, he wondered what else you could do in seven minutes and seven seconds.