The Worst Timing Ever.

Reagan always knew she could freeze time, but she had never known the trigger of her mysterious ability. It wasn’t as though she could snap her fingers or simply focus her thoughts. There wasn’t a verbal command she could say or a hand motion she could perform that would provoke her powers. 

Despite this, she could occasionally tell when it was happening, because she always felt the same symptoms beforehand. At first, her hands would become clammy. Then, she would become dizzy and disoriented. A few minutes later, she would completely lose her balance. Her heart would start to race faster than any working heart should, and time would begin to slow. 

These were the symptoms Reagan felt on the morning of February 18th. One moment she was sharing her coffee order with an attractive barista, and the next she was lying face down against the cold tiles of the cafe floor. 

“Are you alright?” The barista asked in a worried tone as he kneeled beside her. 

“I’m sorry, I’m okay,” Reagan began to sit up. The barista raised an eyebrow at her. “Just a bit nauseous, that's all.” 

He helped her up and over to an empty seat by a window, not mentioning or reacting to how sweaty her hands were, which Reagan was infinitely grateful for. She grabbed the rims of the round table for support and glanced up at his name tag. 

“Thank you very much, uh, Marcus.” She said, trying to muster a smile. He laughed awkwardly.

“I’m happy to help, but I have to head back over to check out. I’ll send someone over with your coffee soon, alright?” He said, concern leaking into his voice. Reagan will never know if his concern was for her wellbeing, or if he just was trying to avoid cleaning up vomit from the floor. Either way, she was pleased.

I’m surprised he didn’t offer me a barf bag, she thought to herself. “Thank you, again. It's just, there is great customer service here!” She called after him awkwardly. 

As he resumed his barista post, Reagan took a second to take him in. He had blonde hair that was on the greasier side, and although he was quite lanky, he had a sleeve of intimidating tattoos. She felt her heart jump out of its usual staccato beat, and her face flushed. 

He isn’t that cute, she thought as her heart began to beat faster and faster. Her vision started to blur, and she felt a wave of vertigo. Oh no, not this again. 

Her abilities normally kicked in at the most inopportune times, well, inopportune in Reagan’s opinion. The only thing that her abilities did for her was make her sick and make already undesirable moments last longer than necessary. For example, her overnight flight to France, or her father’s funeral. 

Time slowed completely, and Reagan’s sickness settled. Her eyes first fixed on Marcus, the barista, who was mid-yawn, with one of his eyes closed. Reagan revised her previous stance and deemed him unattractive. She rose from her stool, and started walking around. When time froze, Reagan was met with absolute silence, and a strange type of loneliness. A type of hollowness. The entire cafe stood still, the world stopped spinning, and everything halted to Reagan's abilities. 

She strode towards the exit to the cafe and pushed the door open. Reagan tried not to stare at people or touch them while they were frozen because it felt invasive. It also made her sad, so many people surrounded her, but no one was really there.  Nobody she could talk to.

She could almost feel the air molecules hitting her skin as she walked. The bell above her head jingled behind her as she stepped out onto the busy street. Along with not being able to control when time stops, she wasn’t able to restart it either. Reagan normally just had to wait it out and roll with the punches. 

Sometimes Reagan wondered about whether she was the one stopping time. Maybe it is someone else out there, and she’s just the only one immune. Or maybe not the only one. Maybe just one of few. She enjoyed the idea that one day, time would freeze, and someone else would be there too. A companion. 

She laid down on the concrete, right in front of a blue Mercedes that had probably been going at 65 miles per hour before everything stopped. If time unfroze, and the car sped towards her, would she care? It would hurt less than this depressing scene, Reagan thought. 

When time froze, it was frozen anywhere from a minute to a week, where Reagan wandered the world alone. The day of her fathers funeral, the symptoms hit her like a speeding truck during the eulogy, and time halted soon after. She was only nine, so she sat in the crowd for an hour, waiting for people to start talking again. Then Reagan ran to her mother’s seat by the Priest, and started shaking her like crazy. 

“Mom, look at me!” She had cried out repeatedly. When one suffers a loss, they are already emotionally isolated, but Reagan was a child who thought she was being ignored. It felt like weeks before time unfroze, at which point, she still had to sit through another hour of a funeral. Since then, her abilities had been triggered time and time again, yet she still had no clue what provoked them. 

Reagan laid on the cold concrete, staring up at the frozen blue Mercedes. She wondered if she could ever escape the void of these frozen moments. But then, she heard something unusual—a faint rhythm, almost like a heartbeat. It felt as though she were in the center of a stadium where the speakers were all playing the subtle tune; she couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. 

As soon as she stood up to investigate, her heart started to follow the rhythm, as it got faster and faster. Pedestrians began walking again, and she whipped back around to see the blue mercedes hurtling towards her. 

As the metal monster crashed through her, and as she felt her bones fracture, she thought about how ironic her ability was, and how it could have been really useful in that moment. What a cruel power that Reagan will never master.