Lorraine needed cigarettes.

She pulled into a strip mall and pa.s.sed a nail salon. She remembered taking Sarah here once, when she was eleven.

"Can I have ruby-red polish?" Sarah asked.

"Sure," Lorraine said. "How about your toes?"

"I can do them, too?"

"Why not?"

Lorraine watched Sarah's amazed expression as a woman placed her feet in a small tub of water. She realized how little anyone doted on her daughter, what with Lorraine working and Tom always getting home late. When Sarah turned to her, beaming, and said, "I want whatever color toes you're getting, Mom," Lorraine vowed that they would do this more often.

They never did. The divorce changed everything. Lorraine walked past the salon window and saw many empty chairs, but she knew Sarah would rather be arrested these days than sit next to her mother for a manicure.

Grace needed groceries.

She could have written a list, sent someone from the staff. "You don't need to do ch.o.r.es," Victor always told her. But over time, she realized the tasks that swallowed many people's days only left a hole in hers. Gradually, she took them back.

She moved her cart up the supermarket aisles now, taking celery, tomatoes, and cuc.u.mbers from the produce department. In the last few months she had resumed cooking to prepare healthy meals for Victor-nothing processed, everything organic-hoping to buy him more time through a better diet. It was a small gesture, she knew, a stick against the wind. But all she had to cling to was hope.

A healthy salad tonight, she told herself. But as she pa.s.sed the ice cream freezer, she grabbed a pint of mint chocolate chip, Victor's favorite. If he wanted a moment's indulgence, she would have that ready, too.

34.

It was a December festival in a small Spanish town.

Street musicians gathered in the plaza, amid tables loaded with tapas of shrimp, anchovies, potatoes. A fountain in the plaza's center contained coins thrown by hopeful lovers. Visitors sat on the edge and dangled their feet in the water.

Hanging near that fountain, from a plywood base, was a life-sized papier-mache mannequin of a bearded man holding an hourgla.s.s. EL TIEMPO, the sign read. FATHER TIME. Beneath it was a plastic yellow bat.

Every few minutes, someone walked by and swatted the mannequin with that bat. It was tradition. Whack out the old year, welcome in the new. Onlookers yelled, "Ooyay! Ooyay!" and laughed and toasted.

A little boy broke free of his mother's grip and ran to the mannequin. He lifted the bat and looked for approval.

"OK ... OK ...," his mother yelled, waving.

Just then, the sun emerged from behind a cloud, and a strange light cloaked the village. A sudden wind blew sand across the plaza. The boy paid it no mind. He brought the bat around full force on the papier-mache figure.

Whack!

Its eyes opened.

The boy screamed.

Dor, hanging from a plywood wall, felt a twinge in his side.

His eyes opened.

A little boy screamed.

The scream so jolted Dor that he jerked backward and his robe ripped off two nails from which it hung. He fell to the ground, dropping the hourgla.s.s.

The boy's scream suddenly stopped. Actually it held and faded, like a long trumpet note. Dor scrambled to his feet. The world around him had just slowed to a dreamlike state. The boy's face was locked in mid-scream. His yellow bat hung in the air. People at a fountain were pointing but not moving.

Dor picked up the hourgla.s.s.

And he ran.

At first, he ran as fast as he could, keeping his head down, hoping no one would notice him. But he was the only thing moving. The whole world had been paused. No wind blew. No tree branches swayed. People Dor saw appeared nearly frozen-a man walking a dog, a group of friends holding drinks outside a bar.

Dor slowed. He looked around. By our standards, he was on the rural outskirts of a small Spanish village, but to him, there were more people and structures than he had seen in his lifetime.

Herein lies every moment of the universe, the old man had said. Dor observed the sand in the hourgla.s.s. It, too, had slowed to a near stop, only a few grains dripping through, as if someone had choked the flow.

Dor walked for miles, holding that hourgla.s.s. The sun barely moved in the sky.

His shadow followed behind him, although all other shadows seemed to be painted on the ground. When he reached a more deserted area, he climbed a hillside and sat. Climbing made him think of Alli, and he longed for that old world-the empty plains, the mud-brick homes, even the quiet. In this world he heard a constant hum, as if a hundred sounds were being mashed into one note. He didn't yet know this was the sound of a single slowed moment.

Down below Dor saw a stretch of road, straight and charcoal-colored with a white stripe down its center. He wondered how many slaves were needed to build such a smooth surface.

You sought to control time, the old man had said. For your penance, the wish is granted.

Dor thought about his arrival on Earth, how he had fallen and dropped the hourgla.s.s. That was when everything changed.

Perhaps ...

He turned the hourgla.s.s sharply to the side, then back again.

The sand began to flow freely. The humming stopped. He heard a whoosh. Then another. He looked down and saw cars speeding along the road-only he had no concept of cars, so he could only imagine they were beasts of some unimaginable speed. He quickly snapped the hourgla.s.s back.

The cars stopped in place.

The hum returned.

Dor's eyes widened. Had he just done that? Brought the world to a near standstill? He felt a surge of power so great, it made him shiver.

35.

The night started awkwardly, but the alcohol changed that.

Ethan brought a bottle of vodka. Sarah acted nonchalant. Although she was in no way a drinker, she quickly took a sip. Even a girl ranked third in her cla.s.s academically knows enough to pretend she's had vodka before.

They sat in his uncle's warehouse-Ethan's idea, since he didn't really commit to the evening until 8:14 P.M., by texting, "Over at my uncle's if u want 2 come"-and they drank from paper cups and mixed in orange juice that Ethan grabbed off the shelf. Sitting on the floor, they laughed about a dumb TV show they both confessed to watching. Ethan also liked action movies, especially the Men in Black series, where the actors wore suits and ties and sungla.s.ses, and Sarah said she liked those movies, too, although truthfully she hadn't seen them.

She wore the same low-cut blouse she had worn the morning at the shelter, figuring he must have liked it, and he did seem attentive. At one point her phone rang (her mother, G.o.d!) and when she made a face, Ethan said, "Lemme see." He took her phone and programmed a special ring tone, a shrill, heavy-metal music lick, that would signal whenever her mom was calling.

"You hear her, you ignore her," he said.

Sarah laughed. "Oh, that is so great."

After that, things got blurry. He offered to rub her back and Sarah gladly accepted; his hands on her shoulders made her shiver then melt. She tried talking, nervously, about how she didn't really have friends at school because they all seemed so immature, and he said yeah, a lot of those kids were losers, and she said she was stressed over getting into college, and he rubbed her shoulders deeper and said she was smart enough to get in anywhere, which made her feel good.

And then the kiss. She would never forget that. She felt his breath on the nape of her neck and she turned to the left, but he edged onto her right, so she turned back that way and their faces nearly b.u.mped-and it happened. It just happened. She closed her eyes and honestly, she almost fainted (her mother used to say the word "swoon," and Sarah had a vague idea this was that), and he kissed her again, harder, and turned her toward him and grabbed her closer, and she remembered thinking Me, he's kissing me, he wants me! But what started softly got a little rough, his hands moved quickly all over her, until she nervously pulled away and then, embarra.s.sed, tried to laugh it off.

He filled her cup with more vodka and orange juice, and she gulped it faster than she should have. The rest of the night she remembered laughing and pushing Ethan and him pulling and them kissing again, and Ethan getting more aggressive and her pulling away and drinking and repeating the pattern.

"Come on," he said.

"I know," she murmured. "I want to, but ..."

Ultimately, he backed away and drank more vodka, until he almost fell asleep against the wall. Not long after that, they each went home.

But now she wondered, chewing the crust of her whole wheat toast on a Monday morning-7:23 A.M.-if she had done the right thing, the wrong thing, or the wrong thing by doing the right thing. She realized Ethan was a better-looking boy than she was a girl, and she pondered how much "grat.i.tude" she was supposed to show him for that. They'd kissed-a lot-and he'd wanted her. Somebody wanted her. That was what mattered. She kept seeing his face. She pictured the next time they'd be together. Finally, something to look forward to in her drab and ordinary existence.

She put her plate in the sink and flipped open her laptop. She was going to be late for school-Sarah was never late for school-but Christmas was coming and she had a sudden urge to buy Ethan a present. He'd said the actors in Men in Black wore these special, cool-shaped watches. Maybe she could buy him one. He would like that, wouldn't he? Something only she would think of?

She told herself she was just being thoughtful. Christmas was Christmas. But deep in her heart, the equation was simple.

She would buy a present for the boy she loved.

And he would love her back.

36.

Can you imagine having endless time to learn?

If you could freeze a moving car and study it for hours? Wander through a museum touching every artifact, the security guards never knowing you were there?

That is how Dor explored our world. Using the power of the hourgla.s.s, he slowed time to suit his needs. Although he could never stop it completely-a train might move an inch in the hours he spent investigating it-he could easily hold people in place while he circulated through them, touching their coats or their shoes, trying on their eyegla.s.ses, rubbing the clean-shaven faces of men, so different from his time, when long beards were common. These people would remember nothing of his presence, only the quickest flicker across their field of vision.

Dor wandered the Spanish countryside this way, living days inside a moment, exploring neighborhoods, cafes, stores. He found clothes that fit his frame (he preferred the type you pulled on, as b.u.t.tons and zippers perplexed him), and at one point he wandered into a low-level brick building marked PELUQUERiA, a hair salon. He looked into a long mirror and yelled out loud.

Only then did he realize he was seeing his reflection.

Dor had not seen himself in six thousand years.

He moved closer to the mirror, alongside a businessman in a high, spinning chair and a female stylist with her hands in a drawer. Dor observed the man's reflection-blue suit, maroon tie, hair short, dark, and wet-and then he looked at his own unruly image. Despite his ma.s.sive beard and flowing hair, he appeared to be younger than the businessman next to him.

In this cave, you will not age a moment.

I deserve no such gift.

It is not a gift.

He stepped back, crouched behind a counter, and tilted the hourgla.s.s.

Life resumed. The stylist removed scissors from the drawer and said something that made the businessman laugh. She lifted his hair and began to cut.

Dor peeked over the counter, fascinated. She moved so adeptly, the scissors snipping, the locks of hair falling. Suddenly, someone turned on a stereo and music blasted, a thumping beat. Dor clamped his hands over his ears. He had never heard anything so loud.

He looked up to see a fat, middle-aged woman, with her hair in plastic curlers, standing over him, staring.

"Que quiere?" she yelled.

Dor grabbed his hourgla.s.s and she-and everyone else-slowed to a near-freeze.

He rose, walked around the woman (her mouth still open), and went to the stylist. He took the scissors from her hand, put the blades near the bottom of his beard, and began to cut away six thousand years of hair.

37.

"I asked you here because I want to change the rules."

Victor poured Jed a gla.s.s of ice water. They sat across a long table. Victor was reluctantly using the wheelchair now (his walking had grown too unsteady), and the office furniture had been rearranged for clear maneuvering.