by Georgia Byng
“We’ll be careful. And Lucy, is that money arriving soon? Sorry to ask, but we’re running up big bills here.”
“Of course, Molly. I’ll see to it right now.” Then she added warmly, “Send my regards to Rocky and take care. Keep in touch. Good-bye.”
Molly put down the phone.
“So what did she say?” asked Rocky.
“I’ll tell you while we’re getting these files mailed to her. But look, we’ve got the rest of the evening and I think we need to relax. Let’s go swimming.”
“Are you sure?”
“Why not? If we’re going to the Academy Awards, we might as well get used to the idea that people might recognize us. And anyway, even if he did see that ad we made, I’m sure Cell is too busy with Oscars stuff to be worried about a couple of hypnotists.”
After a trip to the front desk to organize express post to Briersville, Molly and Rocky moseyed down to the pool. Even though it was almost six, the sun was still oven hot.
There weren’t many other guests outside. Mrs. Trinklebury and Gemma waved to them from a shaded table where they were eating ice cream. Molly and Rocky found sun beds near the pool’s waterfall. Rocky dived into the turquoise water to join Roger while Molly put on a straw hat. She patted her thin, spammy legs. She wanted them to get nice and warm before she had a swim.
She shut her eyes. The heat of the afternoon, the smell of something being barbecued, and the sweet sound of whistling blackbirds nearby made her feel nicely lethargic. The sun shone on her eyelids, and from behind them everything looked orange. She listened to the waterfall splashing into the pool and she began to unwind.
After a minute or so, Molly looked about.
Two businesswomen were sitting at a table under an umbrella, their backs to her. Both had coiffured hair and wore suits—one light blue, the other fuchsia pink. She looked at the pink-suited woman’s hair. It was flecked with white and golden streaks, and a tortoiseshell clip was fixed in the middle of it, catching the sunlight.
The clip twinkled and danced in the sunlight, and the more Molly stared at it, the more the woman’s hair looked like the mane of some beautifully groomed horse. It tumbled down the woman’s back like spun gold.
Then, as she gazed, with the sun beating down on her, Molly detected a hint of the fusion feeling inside her. And, remembering what had happened when she’d stared at the bush dog—no, bush baby—in Briersville and the suitcase at the airport, she wondered if, by gazing at the tortoiseshell hair clip, she would get the cold fusion feeling again. And she did. Molly felt the strange shift from warm to cold.
As the tingling cold started to creep up her spine, a thought struck Molly. Perhaps if she let the feeling come completely, her hypnotic powers would be made stronger. In a moment of boldness, Molly decided to let the cold fusion feeling blossom inside her. So, staring at the tortoiseshell clip as if she wanted to hypnotize it, Molly invited the feeling in.
At first, the feeling was timid, like a trickle, creeping up her body. Then it began to flow up her legs like a stream. And then, in a sudden arctic wave, it crashed through the rest of her body, making her shake. Molly’s veins felt as if they were flowing with ice-cold, sparkling mineral water, and the diamond around her neck felt as cold as a glacier. It was a very weird sensation. Molly didn’t feel entirely comfortable with it, but she held the feeling captive. She stared at the hair clip. She felt as if she’d hypnotized it. Had she?
Molly noticed that everything had gone quiet. Very quiet. Even the pool’s waterfall was silent. Molly wondered why it had been switched off. Still in her bubble of cool, she turned to look.
What she saw made her jump. For the waterfall had indeed stopped falling. But not in the normal way: It was now a solid sheet of water, as if it had been suddenly frozen. Except it was not iced—it was shiny, like wet water. Molly glanced to the left.
Gerry, who had been playing, was still as a statue, and in the most awkward position. He was balanced on one leg while his other foot was in the air, where he had just kicked a ball. His eyes were looking up to where his ball hung, as if from an invisible thread in the sky. To his left, Gemma was giving Mrs. Trinklebury a lick of her ice cream. Mrs. Trinklebury’s tongue was poking out of her mouth like a red worm, half buried in the pink icy goo. Gemma was blowing a gum bubble and Mr. Nockman was saying something approving to her, his words silently frozen in the air. The smoke from the businesswomen’s cigarettes hung like columns of cloud. The whole world was still as a picture, a threedimensional picture.
The cold fusion feeling filled Molly completely. All she could hear was the sound of her heart beating and her frightened breath. Molly felt that if she let go, in the same way as she “turned off” her eyes when she hypnotized someone, the cold fusion feeling would go away—at least she hoped it would.
Molly looked for Rocky. He was horizontal in midair, diving into the pool. Petula was lying under a table by the shallow end, playing with a stone. Then Molly saw Roger. He was under the water. Without oxygen, he could be drowning. Trying not to panic, Molly focused her mind, and as if she was taking the bottom away from a tank of water, she instantly drained the ice-cold feeling from her body. It flooded out in a nanosecond. And in that time, without so much as a shudder, the world started again. Rocky dived, Petula barked at him, Roger surfaced, Mrs. Trinklebury licked, and water came crashing into the pool.
The diamond round Molly’s neck still felt cold, but Molly felt hot again and very relieved to be back. Shakily, she got up and dived into the pool as well. Water shot up her nose.
“Rocky, something really weird has just happened,” she spluttered.
“Yes, you’ve just dived in with your T-shirt and hat on,” said Rocky, before doing a handstand under the water.
Molly pulled her hat off her head and frowned at it.
“No, not that. Rocky. Rocky, listen.” She grabbed his arm and pulled. “Something stranger than anything has just happened to me.”
“What?” asked Rocky, floating on his back.
“Well,” Molly faltered, in a scarcely contained whisper, “I think … oh, this is going to sound like I’ve gone crazy …”
“What? Tell me.”
“I think I just … I think I made …” Molly hesitated.
“Made what?”
“I think I just made the world stand still. I think I stopped time!”
Sixteen
“I didn’t notice,” said Rocky.
“Yes, stupid. You were part of the stillness.”
“When? I can’t remember it happening.”
“You’re not listening,” hissed Molly. “You were frozen.”
“What—like minus ten degrees?”
“No, not cold frozen, frozen still. I was cold, though.”
Molly pointed at the pink-suited woman. “I was concentrating on that woman’s hair clip, trying to sort of hypnotize it …”
“Why were you doing that?”
“Because … well, because I actually first got this feeling in Briersville, but I didn’t tell you about it because I thought you’d think I’d broken my promise not to hypnotize anyone. But I wasn’t hypnotizing anybody. I was hypnotizing things…. That’s what makes this cold fusion feeling happen.”
Rocky’s eyebrows wobbled.
“And anyway,” continued Molly, trying to ignore his suspicious look, “I was hypnotizing the hair clip to get the cold fusion feeling, and this time I let the feeling completely come. I went really cold, and when I looked up everything had …” Molly looked at Rocky’s disbelieving face. “Honestly, Rocky, everything had stopped. Time had stopped—except I hadn’t stopped. You had, Rocky. You were halfway through a dive, stuck in the air. I’m not kidding. Then I let the feeling go and everything started again, and you dived into the water.”
Rocky looked worriedly at Molly.
“Did you drink something from the minibar?”
“No!” Molly glared at Rocky. “I’m telling you, this is true.”
Rocky put his hand on her shoulder.
“Molly, I think we’d better get out of the water. I know you think what happened was true, but maybe you got too much sun today. I got that thing from the sun once when I went on that long walk, and I had a fever and everything seemed—”
“Cripes, Rocky, sometimes you drive me crazy. If you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it to you.”
Molly swam to the edge of the pool and pulled herself out. Rocky followed her.
“Sit on this sun bed,” she told him. “And look at your feet.”
Rocky shot her a worried expression but obeyed.
Molly began to stare at the orange life belt that was hooked up on a post. Within a few moments she had summoned up the strange cold feeling again. She drew it up through her body until the life belt pulsed orange in front of her eyes and the rest of the world vanished into a blur. At last, with a cold, sparkling snap, the coldness swamped her. Just as before, everything went quiet. Molly disengaged her eyes from the belt, but a part of her still concentrated on the cold fusion feeling, cupping it in her body and picturing two imaginary stoppers that prevented it from flowing out of her feet. It required tremendous effort.
She looked to her right. Everything was still. Mrs. Trinklebury was holding up her knitting, inspecting it for holes. Gerry was bombing into the pool, splashes frozen like great watery petals. Roger was like a statue. The pool manager was handing drinks to the two suited ladies.
Rocky was staring at his feet. Molly clicked her fingers in front of his eyes, but he didn’t blink. She put her ear to his mouth—he wasn’t even breathing. She looked about her. It was difficult to believe that no one was watching her—that she was the only person moving. The only person breathing. It was terrifying. What if everything got stuck like this? But Molly knew she must do something to prove to Rocky that time had just stopped. Taking a deep breath, she slowly stood up. With enormous concentration, so as not to dispel the fusion feeling, Molly began to walk toward the poolside toy basket. Her body tingled. Each step was scary. Holding the world still was an incredible strain. She picked out an inflatable frog, a duck rubber ring, and a whale-shaped raft. She brought them back to Rocky and put the duck on his head like a crown, the raft under his feet, and the frog on his lap. And to make extra sure he believed her, she picked three yellow flowers from a pot and put one between his toes, one between his fingers, and the last in his mouth.
For a moment she sat still trying to understand what was happening to her. She looked beyond the pool. Was the whole of Los Angeles still? Was the whole world still? The idea was too crazy to contemplate. Yet Molly felt it was so. And then, like an animal sensing approaching rain, she sensed something else. For a moment, Molly was sure she felt movement somewhere—somewhere out there. Then she couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Her heart was beating too fast and she was too scared. She desperately wanted everything to move again, now.
She switched off her concentration and unplugged the fusion feeling. Simultaneously, Rocky jumped in surprise and threw the pool toys off him. He spat out the flower.
“Aaaarrrgggh!” he shouted. He turned to Molly in amazement.
“How? How did you do that? How long was I still for? How did you do it, Molly? Did you find another book?”
Molly went to bed that night feeling exhausted and nervous. The prospect of gate-crashing the Oscars the next day was frightening, and she was very concerned that she and Rocky would be caught. But even more disturbing was the new hypnotic skill she’d discovered. Nowhere in Dr. Logan’s hypnotism book had stopping the world been mentioned. Having no wise words on the subject, Molly felt she was sailing in completely uncharted waters. She didn’t know whether stopping the world was a good thing or a bad thing. She didn’t know whether it was dangerous. It was certainly spooky. She heard a tap at her door and Rocky came in.
“I’m tired but I don’t feel sleepy,” he said, sitting on the end of her bed.
“Same here,” said Molly.
“I checked the TV to see whether the time is right everywhere in America and in the rest of the world. It is. You’ve bitten off a lot to chew with this stoppingtime stuff,” he went on worriedly. “I’m glad it’s you who can do it and not anyone else. I mean, imagine what you could do. You could get away with murder.”
“Oh, don’t,” said Molly, shivering and pulling Petula up onto the bed.
“I don’t mean real murder, I just mean you could play all sorts of tricks on people. If you were a criminal, you could easily do burglaries or kidnap someone. Stop the world. Do the kidnap. As far as everyone was concerned, the person would just suddenly disappear. Or if you wanted your football team to win, you could freeze the world during a penalty and you could reposition the ball so that it went into the goal.”
Molly buried her nose in Petula’s fur. The idea that she, one small person on the planet, had made the whole world stop made her feel dizzy and terrified. She felt it was a power too big for her.
“I’m going to call Lucy in the morning and ask her if she knows about this,” she said. “I’ll try not to think any more about it now. We must get some sleep, Rocky. We’re going to need loads of energy tomorrow.”
Rocky nodded and switched off the light.
“Sweet dreams, Marshmallow,” he said as he shut the door.
“You mean, ‘Good luck with your nightmares,’” said Molly, and she pulled her blanket up over her head.
Seventeen
The day of the Academy Awards rose sunny with cloudless skies. Petula woke before everyone else. She checked the small stash of stones that she’d hidden behind the TV set, chose an egg-shaped one to suck, and slipped out of the bungalow grounds via a hedge tunnel. From the steps above the swimming pool, she could see the giant painted poodle jumping over the sign for Bella’s Poodle Salon and Dog Hotel. She could smell some sort of tasty meat breakfast that the guests there were being fed. Petula looked down at her paws. Her claws most definitely needed a clip. And her skin had felt itchy ever since the plane journey. The doggy-shampoo-smelling place reminded Petula of a comfortable washing house she’d visited in another big city. Knowing that a good grooming would really revive her, she turned toward the hotel’s driveway.
Crossing the four lanes of road to Bella’s was quite difficult, and Petula found herself standing on the central partition for five minutes as she waited for a lull in the traffic. But soon she was walking up to the blue metal gate of the dog salon, which she pushed open with her paw. Down some steps was a door. This swung open as an athletic man came out of the shop with a Pekingese under his arm. The Pekingese smelled of lilies and had four pink ribbons in his hair. Petula trotted smartly past them. She was looking forward to this.
Inside the shop, everything was for dogs. There were racks of collars and leashes, hanging like tempting jewelery. There were beautiful fur cushions for dogs to relax on, fine feeding bowls, displays of specialty dog foods, snacks, chew bones, and edible dog cigars. There were piles of luxury dog toys and bottles of dog fragrances, dog coats in every size, and even dog shoes for those days when dirty paws weren’t wanted. A woman with frizzy blond hair and huge hooped earrings was sitting behind a counter, adding up a bill. Behind her was the salon, where a big furry chow chow was standing in a special glass box that was blow-drying his coat. As Petula crossed the shop floor, her long nails made a distinct clicking sound.
Bella, the salon owner, looked up, expecting to see that one of her dog clients had escaped from the spa room next door. Instead, she saw Petula approaching her, wagging her tail. Petula put her front paws on the woman’s lap.
“Why, aren’t you the most adorable li’l thingummybobbit! Where’s your owner, cutie pie? Oh, my, aren’t your claws long!”
Of course, Petula said nothing. She gave Bella one of her most winning looks, her head tilted charmingly to one side. Bella looked at the door and then down at the velvety black pug.
“Why aren’t you wearing a collar, honey?” Bella got up and
peered outside. The pug dog seemed to be ownerless. Petula barked. Bella smiled and patted her. She could always tell when dogs wanted a grooming. She looked at the chow chow enjoying his blow-dry and consulted her watch.
“Okay, my darlin’. You’re a precious li’l thing, you are! Come with me. Let’s give you the treatment!”
This was how Petula found herself getting the full pampering that she felt she deserved. First Bella took her to the wet room and washed her in rosemary shampoo. Then Petula was massaged, rinsed, dried, clipped, polished, and groomed until she felt like a dog from the Land of Perfection. Lastly she was taken to the salon’s spa room to relax.
Here she socialized with the dogs who had been booked into the dog hotel. There was a giant, silky Afghan hound who was very interested in what Petula had had for yesterday’s supper, a French bulldog with bat ears and no manners, who sniffed at her bottom with no invitation at all, a silvery-coated Samoyed, the chow chow, a sausage dachshund, and a Chinese crested dog.
The small, hairless, gray-and-pink Chinese crested dog interested Petula the most. She’d never met one before. He really had no hair, except for a tufty bit on the top of his head, and his ears were enormous and pointed. Petula liked his looks, and he certainly smelled nice—of parsley and clever thoughts. Petula lay down on a pink divan with him and made friends. For an hour, the two dogs communicated as dogs do, sending thoughts and memories to each other telepathically. The Chinese crested dog was staying at the dog hotel, as his owners were having an Oscars party with fireworks and lots of people in the house.
Bella returned and took Petula back to the shop, where she picked out a collar encrusted with fake diamonds, which she fastened around her neck.
The bell above the door rang, announcing another customer, and sensing that Molly needed her, Petula took this opportunity to slip out of the salon.
Back at the Château Marmont, Petula found Molly still asleep. She was tangled tightly in the sheets, whimpering unhappily. Petula jumped onto the bed and snuggled close to comfort her.
