Aleca Zamm Is Ahead of Her Time

by Ginger Rue

  But as the music throbbed in my ears, I could hardly focus on having any fun. How could Madison know I was a Wonder? There was just no way! Every time I’d stopped time, she’d been frozen stiff just like everybody else.

  I started to worry that maybe Madison hadn’t been frozen. Maybe she’d been faking! Maybe she’d been watching me the whole time, even when I’d done my nobody’s-watching dances!

  No way, I told myself. Nobody could be still that long. And no way would Madison have stayed still while I squirted glue all in her hair! A person would have to be super-committed to being sneaky to fake that.

  Then again, I didn’t know anyone else as sneaky and low-down as Madison. What if she had been faking, just to trick me into thinking she wasn’t a Wonder?

  Think, Aleca! Think! I told myself.

  I retraced all my steps from when I’d stopped time. I thought about the times in the classroom, and then the time in the lunchroom.

  The lunchroom!

  Madison wasn’t in the lunchroom when I stopped time!

  What if that had been her head outside the window? Maybe she hadn’t checked out to go to the dentist at all! Maybe she’d just said she was going to the dentist, but really she’d been hiding out so she could lurk! If anyone would know how to lurk, I was pretty sure it was Madison.

  Or what if she really had gone to the dentist and had been checking back into school, and that was when she saw me through the lunchroom window? Now that I thought about it, she had gotten back right around the time we’d returned to class after lunch.

  Oh no.

  Of all the rotten luck.

  Madison knew my secret!

  What was I going to do?

  Or worse . . . what was she going to do?

  5

  Aunt Zephyr Shows Off

  “Aleca, this is so fun!” Maria said as we continued to skate.

  If I hadn’t been so worried about Madison knowing my secret, I would’ve agreed. The lights were pretty, pulsing in time with the music, and the deejay even started playing my favorite song. I think maybe it was also the deejay’s favorite song, because he was fist-pumping to the beat, with his arms way up in the air and his head bobbing like a chicken’s. One time, one of the big gold chains around his neck whacked him pretty hard in the face, but lucky for him he had on big sunglasses that absorbed most of the whack. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed, then acted like it had never happened and kept on pumping his fists.

  Madison and Jordan skated past us, and Madison made a V  with her fingers and held them to her eyes; then she pointed them at me and mouthed, “I’m watching you!” I felt like I’d swallowed a brick, but I couldn’t let Maria see that I was upset, so I kept right on skating.

  Other kids from our class skated by and would wave or say happy birthday, but of course I couldn’t hear them over the music. Besides, I was on a mission. I had to find Aunt Zephyr. It took a few minutes before I spotted her on the opposite side of the rink from us. And wow! She actually was a really good skater! She was twisting her hips to the music, spinning around, and twirling on one foot. At one point she even bent down all the way to the ground, with her hiney almost to the floor and one leg straight out! I was impressed!

  The bad news was that there was no way I could catch up with her. I’d have to wait to talk to her when she wore herself out.

  Soon the deejay announced it was time for the races. “All right, all right! Who’s got a need for speed? Who’s ready to have a blast going fast? Can I get a what-what?”

  No one gave him a what-what, whatever that actually is, but that didn’t stop the deejay from pretending someone had. “That’s right! That’s what I’m talking about!” he called, followed by a woo-hoo. He started the races with the little kids, ages four to seven.

  I thought I recognized one of the boys who had lined up. “Doesn’t he go to our school?” I asked Maria.

  “Yeah,” Maria nodded. “He’s new. He’s in the third grade.”

  “He looks too small to be in third grade,” I noted.

  “I think he is,” remarked Maria. “He’s like a genius or something. They double-double promoted him.”

  “What’s ‘double-double promoted’?”

  “Well, ‘double promoted’ is when you skip a grade. ‘Double-double promoted’ is when you skip two of them at once.”

  “Like jumping two checkers instead of one?”

  “I guess so,” replied Maria. “His name is Ford Kimble. There was an article in the paper about how smart he is. He speaks a bunch of languages, and I think they said he helped invent something with some professors.”

  “Wow,” I responded. “I wish I was that smart.”

  “Me too,” sighed Maria. “I guess some people are just special and some of us are just regular.”

  I felt kind of guilty then because I knew I wasn’t regular, but I also knew I couldn’t tell Maria that. I felt bad keeping a secret from her, but Aunt Zephyr had made me promise not to tell anyone about being a Wonder.

  The deejay was ready to start the race. “When I give the signal, remember that second place is first loser!”

  He sounded the horn, and the little ones were off . . . sort of. All the little kids had some trouble on their skates because little kids just aren’t that good at skating. But none of them had as much trouble as Ford Kimble. Even the four-year-olds looked like Olympic athletes compared to him. He moved his legs a few times and then quickly fell right on his bottom. He got up once, then fell back down, and then the race was over. I guess you could say he came in last place, but only if you count him as placing at all.

  “Qué lástima,” Maria said. “I feel bad for him. Don’t you feel embarrassed for him, Aleca?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Good thing he’s so smart.”

  But Ford didn’t seem to be embarrassed. He just scooted off the rink when the race was over.

  “Do you see my aunt anywhere?” I asked Maria.

  “Come on!” Maria said. “Our age group is next.”

  Talking to Aunt Zephyr would have to wait. Again.

  Maybe if I’d been able to focus, I could’ve won the race, but at least I beat Madison and Jordan, which was all that mattered. And maybe now I could go find Aunt Zephyr and tell her about Madison.

  But before I got the chance, the deejay announced that it was time for the sixteen-and-older race. “Oh, come on, mamma-mias and daddi-os,” said the deejay. “Get out here and show the little cats and kits how it’s done! Represent, my old-school faction!”

  A dad or two went out onto the rink floor, but the rest of the grown-ups shook their heads and laughed.

  “No more takers?” the deejay said. “All right, then. . . .”

  “I’m coming!” a woman’s voice shouted from a dark corner. “Hold on!”

  Three guesses who it was.

  6

  Spry or Not, Old Bones Are Still Old Bones

  Aunt Zephyr made her way onto the rink floor while most of the people cheered and clapped. My mother, though, did not clap. She walked out onto the rink (she wasn’t wearing skates) and whispered something to Aunt Zephyr and tried to sort of pull her off the rink floor. But Aunt Zephyr wasn’t having it. She shooed my mom away, and Mom went back to the carpeted area with a concerned look on her face.

  “I think your mom is scared your aunt will hurt herself,” Maria concluded.

  “I think so too,” I remarked. “But I’m sure she’ll be fine. She did okay out there before.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Maria said.

  “Maria,” I said. “When your grandma broke her hip, how bad did it hurt? Like, on a scale from one to ten?”

  “I think, like, an eight,” Maria answered.

  “Oh,” I said. I hoped Aunt Zephyr knew what she was doing.

  The deejay gave the signal, and they were off. A teenage boy was in the lead, but Aunt Zephyr was gaining on him. She was skating really hard and really fast. I had to hand it to her. She was spry.
>
  What came next happened so fast that I couldn’t be sure if it was on purpose or an accident, but the boy’s right foot went in front of Aunt Zephyr’s left foot, and before I knew it, the crowd of people let out a big gasp . . . because Aunt Zephyr was about to go flying through the air!

  I didn’t have time to think it through. All I knew was that when Aunt Zephyr fell, she would fall hard. And the other skaters would roll right over her and smoosh her. And even though she was a Wonder and was also spry, her bones were still old like Maria’s grandmother’s bones.

  So I zoomed as fast as I could onto the rink and got almost right under Aunt Zephyr before she fell.

  Then I closed my eyes, slid down so that I’d make a soft landing spot for Aunt Zephyr, and whispered, “Aleca Zamm!”

  7

  Applying Science to the Madison Problem

  Time stopped. But Aunt Zephyr—falling on top of me suddenly and fully like a hundred-and-twenty-pound ocean wave—did not.

  Splat!

  “Ouch!” I yelled. Her right skate came down hard on my left shin, and her forehead knocked my mouth. I put my hand on my teeth to make sure they were all still there.

  “What are you doing?” Aunt Zephyr barked as soon as she was able to move.

  “I was saving you from breaking your hip!” I chided.

  “I was most certainly not going to break my hip!” she complained. But then she groaned and rubbed her elbow and her side. “Well, maybe an elbow,” she confessed. “Or a femur. Are you all right?”

  “I guess so,” I muttered. “Probably just bruised.”

  “One can get over a bruise,” Aunt Zephyr proclaimed. “One may not get over having her ability exposed to a skating rink full of onlookers. You shouldn’t have done this.”

  She had a point.

  Wow, did she ever have a point! Where was Madison? She was probably taking a video of the whole thing. Now I’d be exposed as a Wonder and get in all sorts of trouble.

  Once I was able to get Aunt Zephyr off me, I got up and looked around.

  The flashing lights had stopped flashing. The popcorn in the popcorn popper hung in midpop. The people watching the race stood perfectly still with their mouths open, some with their hands covering them. My mom had her head buried in my dad’s shoulder, too scared to look.

  And then I spotted Madison.

  She was pretending to not even be watching. If I hadn’t known any better, I would’ve thought that Madison and Jordan were frozen on their phones, stopped in the middle of playing games.

  “You really think I’m going to fall for that?” I shouted in Madison’s direction. But she didn’t move.

  “What on earth are you going on about?” asked Aunt Zephyr. “You might as well focus on the situation here.” She gestured to the boy just behind where she’d fallen. He was suspended in midair, a shocked look on his face. When I looked at him, I knew I’d done the right thing, even if it meant that Madison would tell everyone about me. Because if I hadn’t stopped time, the boy would have landed right on top of Aunt Zephyr. And probably the girl behind him would have rolled right over both of them and fallen too. And then the ones behind her would have followed, just like dominoes.

  “You would have been smooshed,” I stated. “Look. His skates aren’t even touching the ground. He was about to fall on top of you. And he weighs twice what you do!”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Aunt Zephyr acknowledged. “Foolish hubris.”

  “Who’s Hubris?” I asked. I wondered if that was the boy’s name.

  “ ‘Hubris’ means ‘pride,’ ” Aunt Zephyr answered. “It is the great downfall of heroes. They become overconfident and think they can do anything. It was pure hubris on my part to think I could out-roller-skate a bunch of teenyboppers. Learn from my mistake, Aleca. Don’t let hubris get the best of you.”

  “Umm, yeah, speaking of hubris . . . ,” I began. I told her my theory about Madison. If Madison was onto my time stopping, it was my own fault. I had hubrised that up pretty bad, thinking I could get away with it even after Aunt Zephyr had told me to stop. “So you see, it must be Madison who was outside the lunchroom window,” I explained.

  “Preposterous!” Aunt Zephyr declared. “She was frozen in time on the other occasions, and you saw it with your own eyes. You can’t really believe that the girl would have the wherewithal to stand perfectly still while you doused her hair in glue!”

  “I’m telling you, she’s a sneak! I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

  “Aleca, sometimes we can get so worried about something that we lose all sense of reason. That’s what you’ve done. You’ve become irrational. But if you won’t listen to reason, then I suppose we will have to solve this scientifically,” Aunt Zephyr said. “Come on. I’ll prove to you that Madison is not a Wonder.”

  We rolled over to Madison and Jordan. “Cut the act, Madison,” I said. “I know you’re faking.”

  Madison stayed motionless. I tried again. “Madison, I know you’re not really frozen in time.”

  “That’s not the scientific approach,” Aunt Zephyr said. “We have to provoke an involuntary reaction.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we do something that she can’t help but respond to,” Aunt Zephyr explained. She snapped her fingers. “Remember yesterday when we were talking about how hard it is to stifle a sneeze? You wouldn’t happen to have any black pepper on you, would you?”

  I made a face.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” she said.

  Then I got an idea. “Hey! What if I smack her really hard in the face? She couldn’t help but respond to that! Especially if you let me do it as hard as I want!”

  “I’m surprised at you, Aleca,” Aunt Zephyr replied. “Violence is for small minds.” She studied Madison for a moment, thinking. “You and she were friends once, right? Close friends?”

  “Yes,” I said. It made me sad to think about it, actually.

  “That’s it!” Aunt Zephyr said. “Where is she ticklish?”

  It was so obvious, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it. Madison was extremely ticklish. One time when Maria and I had a sleepover at Madison’s house, we tickled her, and she screamed so loud that it set off the burglar alarm!

  “Her sides,” I said. “Right here.” I poked Madison’s sides. She didn’t budge.

  “Are you sure you’re doing it right?” asked Aunt Zephyr.

  “Positive,” I said. I tried a few more times with my best effort. Nothing. “Wow, Aunt Zephyr. You were right. There’s no way Madison knows I’m a Wonder. She could never take this much tickling without moving.”

  “At least we’ve ruled her out,” Aunt Zephyr replied. “At some point we’ll still need to figure out who saw you from the lunchroom window, but for now let’s get back to the matter at hand.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Now what do we do?”

  “Well, first I need to do this.” She rolled back over to where she’d fallen, turned to the boy who’d tripped her, whacked him on the back of his head, and demanded, “Show some respect for your elders, you weasel of a whippersnapper!”

  “I thought you said violence was for small minds,” I said.

  “That was not violence,” she answered. “That was justice.”

  I didn’t really see the difference, but it didn’t seem like a good time to ask for an explanation. Aunt Zephyr turned back to the other skaters. “Now we’ll have to carefully reposition these folks so that when you start time again, they won’t fall over us.”

  “Us?” I asked.

  “Yes, us,” she replied. “You’ll have to lie back down on the floor underneath me. Then everyone will simply think that you rushed to catch me when I fell. When time starts again, no one will know that we moved the skaters around like balls on a billiards table. They’ll just think it was a lucky accident that no one else was hurt.”

  “Where do we move them?” I asked.

  “Let’s see,” mumbled Aunt Z
ephyr. “This will involve some precise geometric placement.”

  “Oh,” I replied. I supposed that meant I wouldn’t be much help.

  “Hmmm,” Aunt Zephyr started. “I must be sure to calculate the trajectory of each skater just so. I don’t want to arouse suspicion by moving them too much, but I must move them enough to avert an accident.” Aunt Zephyr closed one eye and stuck out her thumb, moving her arm back and forth in front of the boy who would have fallen over her.

  And that was when we heard the noise coming from the deejay booth.

  8

  Big Wonders Come in Small Packages

  “What was that?” I demanded.

  “Who’s there?” asked Aunt Zephyr, spinning around and looking wild-eyed.

  “Transducers and amplifiers,” a small voice mumbled.

  We couldn’t see anyone, but the voice was definitely coming from the deejay booth’s general area. It couldn’t have been the deejay, though. This was a boy’s voice, and much less jazzy than the deejay’s. Less jazzy and more youngish.

  “Come here and show yourself!” I shouted. I yelled it like I had some kind of authority, which I didn’t. Whoever this was, apparently he wasn’t affected by my Wonder-ness. And if he wasn’t affected by it, that meant he was probably a Wonder too. Or something else. Maybe something more powerful than a Wonder. So there was the possibility that he could wallop Aunt Zephyr and me with an ability of his own. I was pretty nervous, and I could tell that Aunt Zephyr was too. She was quiet, and Aunt Zephyr was never quiet, even when she was sleeping.

  We heard some clanking around in the deejay booth and then saw the door open. Out came a boy. A small boy.

  A small boy named Ford Kimble.

  “Would you like to know how a sound system works?” Ford offered as he walked toward us.