02

THE WOMAN ON TV IS CRYING. CAMERA CREWS PRESS their lenses into her grief, soaking up her loss and confusion in the name of increased ratings. Why me? her teary eyes beg. Why him?

I turn my head, only to be confronted with ten identical images pummeling me from an entire wall of TVs. An electronics store is not the place to go if you want to avoid seeing Portland’s hottest news story of the week: Young, pretty Emily Shea came home from a visit to her parents to find her husband in bed, alone, with his throat slashed. He’d been dead three days. The cops said the Shea’s side-door lock had been jimmied, but the burglar alarm never went off, and none of the neighbors saw anything suspicious. The one set of fingerprints the police found in the house had no records attached to them. The crime is surrounded by mystery.

A mystery to everyone but me. I can tell them exactly what happened that night because those unidentified fingerprints at the Shea house are mine.

“Alex.” Jack nudges my shoulder. “What about getting one of those?”

Mrs. Shea’s eyes follow me when I turn away from the screen to see what he’s pointing at, making me snap at Jack with an extra dose of irritation.

“What would we do with a giant speaker back at the squat? Victor won’t even let us have a radio.”

Jack stares hungrily at the box. “We could plug headphones into it,” he says. “Or look at those! I heard that brand is the bomb.”

Jack starts off toward a locked cabinet full of speakers ranging from the size of a toaster to a matchbox. I grab the back of his T-shirt.

“We came here to get cell phones,” I whisper. “That’s it. We are not going to go around stealing a ton of stuff just for fun.”

Jack shakes off my hold and crosses his arms. “Let me see if I understand. Taking stuff is OK if you want it, but when I want something, it’s called stealing?”

I sigh. I couldn’t have managed the last few days without Jack, but that doesn’t mean the guy doesn’t drive me crazy. When we left the Center, I’d been exhausted and still staggering from a car crash. It was Jack who carried KJ out of the clinic, Jack who convinced Shannon to come and nurse KJ, and Jack who found us a place to live. Jack also taught me how to use the bus system, and I have to admit his company makes me less anxious on the endless errands that keep us alive. Still, if it were KJ out here, he would be helping me figure out a long-term survival plan, instead of trying to convince me that taking stuff from a faceless corporation doesn’t count as stealing. KJ would be calm and responsible. KJ would not be trying to impress that loser Victor.

“This isn’t about stealing stuff in general,” I say, choosing my words carefully in an effort to come off as sympathetic yet firm. “It’s about how some things are necessities and others are luxuries.”

Jack makes a disgusted noise and marches off to check out a display of something called sound bars. I glance back up at the TV screen. Mrs. Shea has been replaced by a reporter standing in front of what looks like a small lake, talking about flooding in Puerto Rico. Behind her, a tall man is herding a group of about a dozen children off a wooden rowboat. I’m about to head over to the cell phone section when I notice the words Four Spinners Found Dead scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Prickles erupt all over my skin.

“Jack?” I call, but either he’s too far away to hear me, or else I’m whispering. It’s hard to tell because my ears feel like they’re stuffed with cotton. I step closer to the TV, straining to catch the reporter’s voice through the haze in my brain.

“The survivors,” she says, “were removed from Puerto Rico’s only Children’s Home early this morning.”

Children—spinner children—stagger off the boat. The prickles on my skin feel like a thousand needles stabbing me from every direction. The spinners range in age from about four to eight, too young to start work at a Crime Investigation Center, and they’re all staring at the camera with bewildered expressions.

“Doctors,” the reporter continues, “say the deaths occurred when rising flood waters cut the Children’s Home off from critical supplies. A worker with the Red Cross said the Home had not been marked as a priority location in the city’s rescue plan.”

Not a priority. I put a hand on some shelving to steady myself. Did the spinners starve to death? Or did the Children’s Home realize they had to ration their supplies and chose to do it through a convenient outbreak of “time sickness”? My vision blurs. The faces on the screen morph, the young strangers transforming into the friends I left behind: Aiden, Raul, Yuki, Simon, Angel. I shudder. I have to get them out.

The reporter says something about checking in with people’s reactions, and a shot of a bunch of protestors waving signs flashes on the screen. Angry yells burst from the speakers. The words are lost under a roar of boos and jeers, but in my head, the accusations all point out my failure: of the twenty-four spinners living at the Center, I only rescued four.

My mind scrabbles for the scattered shreds of survival strategy I’ve managed to put together over the past few days. Phones. We need cell phones so we can communicate when we’re not together.

The guy at the phone counter sports a neatly trimmed beard and an earnest expression behind his square plastic glasses. I fiddle with a few of the fancy models on display, pushing random buttons as if I have a clue how the things work. Earnest Guy keeps pace with me from the other side of the counter as I move along the row.

“How’s your day going?” he asks.

“Fine.” My palms are sweating, but I’m afraid I’ll look suspicious if I wipe them off. This turns out to be a bad call since the next time I pick up a phone, it promptly slips out of my hand.

“Oops,” I mumble. The phone, attached to the display case by a thin wire, bounces against my knees.

Earnest Guy places his hands on the counter. “Can I help you find something?”

“Yeah, um…” I glance over at Jack. I’m regretting that I annoyed him so much he’s ignoring me. Jack is good at talking to salespeople. “I want a phone…two phones, actually…but not a contract. Isn’t there a way to just get a temporary one…I mean, aren’t there…?”

My voice trails off. I can feel the heat of a blush spreading up my cheeks. Am I making him suspicious? Any normal sixteen-year-old would know all about cell phones. Earnest Guy cocks his head. My heart starts beating so hard he can probably see it throbbing beneath my sweater.

“You mean a pay-as-you-go model?” he asks.

“Yeah.” I offer him a weak smile. “That’s what I meant. I just forgot the word.” Maybe he’ll just think I’m scatterbrained.

Earnest Guy reaches under the counter and pulls out a phone nestled in a plastic box. He starts rattling on about buying minutes and programming the phone. I nod as if concepts like texting and web surfing are things I know about in any context besides TV. It doesn’t help my concentration that the whole time he talks, Earnest Guy’s eyes keep sliding around my face. I try to picture what he sees: a girl with straight brown hair dressed in jeans and a plain blue sweater. Nothing to justify any heightened interest. OK, except maybe the two Band-Aids my bangs don’t do a very good job of covering up and the fading bruises decorating one cheek. I smooth my hair down over the back of my neck—no sense in letting him see the larger bandage hidden there.

“Thanks,” I say, when he finally finishes. “I’ll think about it.”

I start backing away. The sales guy puts out a hand to stop me.

“Hey,” he says, “is everything OK?”

The enormity of the question leaves me momentarily mute. Is everything OK? The institution I’d called home turned out to be poisoning me with Aclisote, a drug I’d always been told was the only thing that kept me from going insane. My best friend, KJ, was given so much Aclisote he’s now semicomatose. We are living illegally in a warehouse. And, oh, yeah, I watched Carson Ross, the person I admired most, murder Austin Shea three days ago and then threaten to frame me for the crime unless I promised to work for him. So, no, nothing about my life at the moment is what you’d call OK.

Not that I can tell Earnest Guy any of that. I force myself to smile. “Yeah, sure.”

The guy frowns. He seems nice enough. Maybe he has a sister who’s my age. Or a kid. He glances toward the TV section, then leans toward me.

“That guy you’re with,” he says. “Your boyfriend? I saw you arguing.” His gaze flickers over my bruises again. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

He is so completely off base, I almost laugh. Jack might be annoying, but he’s also a spinner. We spinners stick together. We have no reason to hurt each other. The rest of the world takes care of that.

I shake my head, point toward my face, and tell him the truth. “I was in a car accident. I’m fine now.”

Earnest Guy looks like he wants to say more, and when I walk away, I can feel him watching me. Great. Here I am trying to be anonymous, and some goody-goody helpful dude decides to take an interest. I search three aisles before I find Jack in the place I should have checked first. He’s back in the music section, standing in front of a bin of CDs, headphones draped over his dark hair, sampling tracks from an album called Greatest Hits of 2010.

I wave a hand in front of his face. “We’ve gotta go.”

Jack starts singing a flawless imitation of Bruno Mars’s song “Billionaire.” A pretty girl in a red hoodie, the only other person flipping through the CDs, lifts her head to watch him.

“Come on.” I reach for the headphones. Jack dances out of my reach. He starts singing more loudly, his hips gyrating to the rhythm. Hoodie Girl nods her approval.

“Jack!” I lunge again. The headphones reach the end of their tether, and I manage to snatch them off his head.

“OK, OK.” Jack holds his hands up in surrender, laughing as he backs away.

“We don’t want to draw so much attention,” I mutter, as I put the headphones back on their hook.

“Speak for yourself.” Jack winks at Hoodie Girl, who grins.

I clench my jaw so hard my teeth creak. Jack is medium height, well muscled, with a smile that’s charming, but not quite trustworthy. Yesterday, he buzzed his hair so short it sticks up all over his head. I think it makes him look like he’s trying really hard to be cool, though clearly Hoodie Girl doesn’t agree with me.

“Do you have any sense at all?” I hiss at Jack. “We’re going to rob this place, so it’s better if no one remembers we were here. Not to mention that we’re fugitives.”

“Always with the melodrama,” Jack whispers back. “It doesn’t matter if people notice us. We won’t be here when the stuff disappears. And we’re not fugitives. The Sick hasn’t announced we’re gone.”

I grip Jack’s arm and yank him toward the exit, not bothering to argue. Of course the Sick—what we call the Crime Investigation Center, or CIC—hasn’t publicly announced that we ran away. To do that, Dr. Barnard would have to admit that four of his spinners are freely mingling with the public, a fact likely to cause nationwide panic, given how much Norms fear us.

“Chill out.” Jack tries to pull his arm out of my grasp. “You’re going to rip my arm off.”

A muscle in my neck spasms. I let go of Jack’s arm and massage the sore spot with two fingers. Not that it helps. Ever since we left the Center, I’ve felt like I’m a string pulled so taut that I can practically feel myself vibrating.

We head for the store’s main entrance, passing by Earnest Guy, who is watching us from behind the phone counter, a frown creasing his brow. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. I pick up my pace. We’re just normal teenagers, I tell myself, shopping on a Thursday afternoon. My hand creeps up to touch the bandage at the back of my neck, a twin of the one Jack wears. The slice where Shannon cut out the trackers the Center used to monitor us is still tender. I drop my hand back down to my side. Normal teenagers, I think again, just normal teenagers.

We’re nearly at the exit, when two men step into the store. They’re walking in tandem and sporting predatory glares that mark them as security. Their eyes sweep across the busy space and lock onto me and Jack.

We both stop. We’re standing at the lip of an aisle, hemmed in by racks of home security systems. The guards separate. The first moves toward us, while the other circles around toward the back, clearly intent on preventing our escape. My chest tightens so much that blood no longer reaches my brain, forcing my thoughts into a single terrified loop: If the guards catch us, they’ll take us back to the Center. If we go to the Center, Dr. Barnard will put us back on Aclisote. If we go back on Aclisote, we’ll die.

Jack grabs my hand. “Come on, Alex. Do it.”

I watch the guard walk toward us, paralyzed. He’s five feet away. Four. He opens his mouth.

“Excuse me. Can I ask you…?”

Jack’s hand tightens around mine and everything freezes. The man’s words stop mid-sentence, leaving a silence so absolute my heart thuds like a drumroll. The guard behind us hovers with one foot off the ground, the other barely touching it, so he balances on an impossibly small piece of his instep. Near the entrance, two cart-wielding shoppers stand perfectly still, their pasty faces stuck in expressions of disapproving curiosity. No one stirs in the entire store. Nobody—except me and Jack—so much as breathes.

I slump against a piece of shelving. The threat of capture has turned me shaky and hollow, like my stomach decided to take a vacation to visit my feet. Jack glares at me with a decided lack of sympathy.

“Why didn’t you freeze time?” he demands. “You know mine’s useless.” He squeezes my hand again, crushing my fingers. “Come on, I’ll melt right now and you refreeze.”

I shake my head. “We can’t.”

Jack flings my hand away like it’s a piece of trash. Jack’s right that his freeze is not going to get us out of this mess and mine could. Two weeks ago—a couple of days after I stopped taking Aclisote—my skills changed. Now, unlike any spinner I’ve ever heard of, anything I do during frozen time stays that way after time starts again. Which means I can do lots of things without getting caught—like steal expensive electronic equipment. Or avoid getting nabbed by threatening security guards. Or give Carson Ross the opportunity to murder a defenseless man sleeping in silver-gray pajamas inside a locked house.

“If we run away in frozen time,” I say, “everyone will see us disappear into thin air.”

“So? You did that when you got away from Dr. Barnard.”

“That was different. He was going to kill me. I didn’t have any other choice.”

“And we have a choice now?” Jack points toward the semi-floating guard.

My stomach hurtles back into place, landing in my middle with a sickening lurch.

“We still can’t just disappear. There are too many people.” I wave my hand to include all the shoppers paused in their pursuit of new acquisitions. Normal people going about their unremarkable day. Normal people who believe spinners are lower than maggots. “Think about how much the Norms already hate us. If they find out we can change things while time is frozen, they’ll freak.”

“Let them freak.” Jack kicks at a box of surveillance cameras, denting a hole into the cardboard. “Why should we hide what we can do?”

“If the Norms freak,” I say, “every spinner back at the Center will be sent to the Central Office. Our photos will be broadcast on all the news channels. We’d be caught within days. And given how much Aclisote Dr. Barnard gave KJ, I don’t think we’d live very long once we got back.”

An image of how KJ looked when I left him in Shannon’s care this morning, an image I’ve taken great pains to repress all day, flashes into the forefront of my brain: His long body stretched under a pile of blankets, skin so washed out its natural warm brown appeared gray. Even his lips hung slack. I held his hand, whispered his name, and got no more response than if he’d been a turnip. Just a few nights ago, I’d kissed him for the first time, and we’d planned a future so perfect I should have known it would never come true.

I wrestle all my fears back into the box called denial and focus my attention on our immediate disaster. The electronics store is near the end of the mall’s central hallway. I peer past the guard through the open doorway. Statue-like shoppers stand among padded benches and ceramic planters. Stores line the space around them, their wares spread out in colorful displays—here a mannequin in artfully shredded jeans, there a basket overflowing with fruity bath gels. I chew on a thumbnail, a bad habit I’ve picked up lately. We can’t stay and get arrested. We can’t just disappear.

“What if we run,” I say. “In real time, I mean. You let time go, we run until we find a place to hide, and then I’ll freeze and we can disappear.”

Jack kicks a bigger hole in the box. “Where do we run to?”

I point down the hallway. “Over there.”

Just beyond a discount clothing store stands a furniture outlet. Its glass windows hold two large mahogany dressers and an oversized bed with so many pillows there’s no room left to lie down.

“Fabulous Furnishings,” Jack reads off the gleaming green-and-black sign.

“That place is jammed with stuff. It will be easy to get lost.” I lick the rough edge of my thumbnail. “The problem will be outrunning the guards.”

Jack narrows his eyes at our twin pursuers. “We can use this.”

He stalks over to a display rack and gives it a hefty shove. Controllers fly in all directions, bits of plastic splintering off them as they hit the ground. The rack itself smashes against the closest guard, knocking him to the floor. In the quiet of the freeze, the sound is apocalyptic. I stare down at the wreckage. This is not my first choice for an exit plan, but we’re so far from my first choice of anything at this point that I barely waver.

“It’s worth a shot.” I take a breath. “You ready?”

Jack sends one of the controllers spiraling across the store with a well-placed kick before nodding. The scene around us flickers for a second as everything we’ve moved—ourselves, the toppled display rack, the crunched-up controllers—whisks back to their prefreeze positions. I blink away the momentary blur. We’re standing together, Jack holding my hand, the display primly upright, and the guard advancing steadily in our direction.

“…a couple of questions?” he says, finishing his sentence.

Jack drops my hand and hurls himself at the display stand. I leap past the falling mass and take off across the store. Earnest Guy gapes at me, helpless behind his glass-topped counter. I shoot one glance over my shoulder. The guard is disentangling himself from the heavy shelving, and his partner, who started the chase at the far end of the aisle, has just reached the debris.

I tear through the store and burst out into the mall. Jack whips ahead, faster than me, thanks to the hours he spent working out during his free time at the Center, and to the blast of pain I get from my bruised ribs every time I breathe. I dodge around mall patrons, scared that someone might try to stop me, but most people just step aside to get out of my path.

Jack darts into Fabulous Furnishings; I hurtle through the entrance seconds behind him. The front part of the store is laid out with sample room decors, and I catch a glimpse of Jack disappearing around a pair of white leather sofas perched on a carpet that’s long enough to need mowing. I hurry after him and collide with someone in a green smock.

“Sorry,” I say. Green Smock stumbles. She isn’t much older than I am, with frizzy hair and an apologetic smile. I duck my head and slip around her. Jack is no longer in sight.

“Hey!” one of the guards shouts from behind me. “You.”

I race around the white furniture set.

No Jack.

My heart bangs in my chest. To my right, a mock study advertises dark oak furniture. To the left is a girly bedroom set with a pink ruffled canopy. I choose the bedroom set and dive into the space between the bed and a dresser. A woven rug with a flower pattern skids as I drop my weight on it. I reach out for time, mentally grabbing the threads I imagine moving through the air all around me and yanking them to a halt just as my body collides with a thin-legged nightstand.

Time stops, wiping out the sounds of pursuing feet, shouting voices, and even the faint hum of the abruptly weakened fluorescent lights. Only I keep moving, right into the nightstand, which tips over and crashes down onto my back. I lie still, waiting for my ragged breathing to slow. Time hangs around me, the invisible strands firmly in my control. Things aren’t just not moving, they’re stopped, frozen, immobile. Even the nightstand resting on top of me seems somehow more inert. Only I can move, only I have thoughts, and for the first time all day, I feel safe.

I take a deep, calming breath, stand up, and check for my pursuers. The two guards are just rounding the white leather sofa. Neither of them is close enough to see me in my hiding spot.

I set the nightstand back into place and straighten the flowered rug. Jack is about halfway through the store, legs outstretched in his race to escape. I check the area around him. A woman is standing one row over in front of a display of sheets. Her head is twisted away from the plastic packages, probably in response to the yelling elsewhere in the store. A man stands only a few steps from the far end of Jack’s aisle, one foot raised in the act of walking forward. I’ll have to work fast to keep him from seeing us.

Steeling myself, I take a firm hold of Jack’s wrist and let time go. The time strands slip back into their endless journey, a seamless transition without the blur of moving back to my prefreeze position. Lights brighten, the buzz of commotion fills the air, and the momentum of Jack’s reinstated dash yanks both of us forward. Clinging hard to Jack’s wrist, I refreeze time as fast as I can. Sound disappears again. Jack’s hand tears away from mine as he hurtles forward. I collapse on the floor, smashing my knees against the hard tiles. Jack trips, too, catching himself against a shelf full of pillows, which promptly tumble into a heap.

“You could have warned me,” Jack says.

“You could have waited for me,” I answer. My knees hurt. I should have covered the floor with the pillows before I let time start. “Where were you going, anyway?”

“The back room.” Jack tosses a pillow back on the shelf. “I figured there must be another door out of here and the guards would think that’s how we got away.”

I have to admit, it’s a good strategy. Briefly, I consider starting time again so we can both run for the back exit but decide the back room might just bring a whole new set of complications.

Jack and I work together to put all the pillows back where they came from before making our way through the unmoving store. Even though they’re frozen, I give the security guards a wide berth. We decide not to return to the original electronics store and instead take two phones from a Radio Shack upstairs. When we’re done, we make our way out to the underground parking garage and hide between two cars so I can start time again without anyone seeing us.

“That went well,” Jack says, standing up and stretching.

I rub the ache along my ribs. It matches the dull pain throbbing in my temple. Time work causes headaches, which get worse when you have to drag someone else along.

“You think this is fun,” I accuse him.

Jack grins. “Don’t you?”

“No. It’s terrible—hiding, running, stealing.”

“We’re doing fine,” Jack says. We turn and head up the parking ramp. Even though I know the guards are all the way across the mall, I still look back over my shoulder. Rows of parked cars fill the bunker-like garage, which smells vaguely of gasoline. I search the shadows between the hulking pieces of metal and find only emptiness.

“I don’t know why you’re so worried about everything,” Jack says. “Isn’t this a thousand times better than living at the Sick? We can do whatever we want. No one gives us a schedule, there’s no chores, no boring police missions. Plus, we’re never leashed.”

I shudder and touch my wrist. Leashes are hard and uncomfortable, and they make this buzzing noise that sounds like a thousand bees are trapped in your skull.

“We have nowhere permanent to live,” I say.

“We’ll find somewhere.”

Jack and I step out into September sunlight so bright it makes me squint. I used to love getting out of the Center, even wearing a leash, treasuring the rare day passes that allowed me to wander around downtown, just another anonymous person in the crowd. I’ve lost that feeling since our escape. Now, I walk around with an uncomfortable itch at the back of my shoulders, sure someone is watching me. I shade my eyes and move closer to Jack.

We turn right and start the mile-long trek down a neighborhood commercial street back to the squat. Jack whistles as he walks. I tuck the bag of phones under my arm to make it less conspicuous. When a driver turns his head as he passes us, I flinch.

“Jesus, Alex,” Jack says. “No one’s going to jump us when we’re just walking down the sidewalk.”

“How can you be sure? We know they’re searching for us.”

“Listen to yourself. Next, you’ll be hearing voices and wearing tinfoil hats.”

We stop at a red light. There’s a pet shop on our right and a line of cars idling to our left. I turn my back to the traffic so the drivers can’t see my face.

“I’m not being paranoid,” I tell Jack. “When Dr. Barnard found out what I can do, he said flat out that I was too dangerous to let run loose.”

Jack waves a hand. “The Sick never has any money. They won’t be able to do anything but pass our photo around a police station and ask them to keep an eye out. As long as we stay out of trouble, we’re fine.”

I must not look convinced, because he adds, “It’s only for a couple more days, anyway. Once KJ perks up, we can blow town. The Portland Sick is hardly going to chase us across the country.”

Is Jack right? Will the CIC give us up so easily? And what if KJ doesn’t perk up? I don’t voice the questions because thinking about him makes my chest squeeze so tight it hurts. I focus instead on a jumble of kittens displayed in the pet shop’s front window. The smallest one, gray and striped, pounces on a knitted ball.

“What about everyone else?” I ask.

“The other spinners? What about them?”

“We can’t just leave them there.”

Jack gives another dismissive wave. “You don’t even like half of them.”

“Not all the time, but it doesn’t matter. They’re our family.”

“I guess,” Jack says, “but how is a group of twenty-four kids supposed to slip quietly out of town?”

“So you’re OK with it?” The kitten, bored with the toy, starts sniffing the glass separating us. “You’re OK with letting Aidan and Raul die?”

Jack faces the blinking red hand across the street.

“Look, it’s great you’re so altruistic and all, but I’m not going to risk getting caught again. Besides, they don’t know they could live past their teens if they got off Aclisote, so they don’t know what they’re missing.”

The light changes and Jack hops off the curb. The kitten’s mouth opens in a mew. Although it’s impossible for me to hear through the glass, the cry looks plaintive. I turn away and scurry after Jack.

“It just doesn’t seem fair,” I say. “That we’re free and they’re still facing a death sentence.”

“Yeah, well, life isn’t fair.”

I chew on my thumbnail again. Jack is right. There are lots of ways life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about abandoning the other spinners. We are the only family any of us will ever have. If we don’t stick up for each other, who will?

A breeze sends a chill through the uneven weave of my sweater. I wrap my arms around myself in an effort to generate some warmth. When KJ and I talked about running away from the Center, I’d imagined escape as a one-time thing: you run, you leave, you’re gone. But gone is turning out to be a very unstable place. It means second thoughts and hiding and always checking over your shoulder. Running away doesn’t happen just once. Unless something changes, we’re going to be running away for the rest of our lives.