23 Minutes

by Vivian Vande Velde

  Still, the woman practically recoils from Zoe. She is well dressed, probably a sales associate from one of the department stores, rushing to somewhere-or-other during her late lunch or her early-afternoon break. No doubt she has had experience with teenagers looking pretty much the way Zoe does. She has probably called store security on them.

  Zoe camouflages her attempt to catch hold of the woman by swinging her arm around—rather dramatically, admittedly—and tapping her own wrist. Kind of a silly gesture, since most people check the time by looking at their cell phones and don’t even own a wristwatch; but it gets the point across. Anyway, this woman is old enough that she probably has to ask her children when she wants to change her ringtones or add a new contact to her phone. She does have a watch, and she glances at it and, never quite stopping, never quite making eye contact with Zoe, says, “Quarter after.”

  “Excuse me,” Zoe repeats, calling to the woman’s back but not racing after her, which would likely cause the woman to drop dead from a heart attack. But such a nice round number sounds as though it comes from glancing at a clock face, not reporting a digital readout. “Is that the exact time? It’s important.”

  The woman is still suspicious, and even glances around as though to make sure Zoe isn’t with a gang, isn’t trying to distract her before accomplices rush in to knock her down and grab her purse.

  Is this woman always so skittish or is there something wrong with the way Zoe looks? Zoe glances down at herself, half expecting to see she’s still spattered with blood, although that is not how things work when she plays back time.

  “One seventeen,” the woman says.

  “Thank you.” Zoe tries to sound genuinely grateful, without showing the dripping sugary sarcasm she really feels.

  1:17. Well, subtract a minute for trying to get a straight answer out of her. It was probably 1:16 when Zoe arrived back here. So 1:16 (actual starting time) + 23 minutes (the fullest extent of playback) means Zoe has until 1:39 in what Zoe thinks of as flux time. Zoe has made up these terms herself, because there has never been anyone to explain these things to her. Of course not. Zoe is a freak, with a freakish talent. She suspects that in previous centuries her ability would have gotten her the reputation of being a witch. Zoe prefers to think of herself as a freak, rather than a witch. A freak who has the ability to play back life—twenty-three minutes at a time. Once she has started a playback, she can stop partway through and return to the same starting time—up to ten repeats if she so chooses—which is why she thinks of this time as being in flux. It isn’t permanently set until the full twenty-three minutes are over. At which point, that particular twenty-three-minute segment of time—she thinks of it as a story line—solidifies? Closes off? In any case, that whole block of time is permanently no longer available to her fiddling. The story moves on …

  But Zoe has no intention of fiddling with this playback. She has one easy goal—although for that her deadline is much shorter than twenty-three minutes. She probably wasted a good five minutes after the shooting, and there had to be six or seven minutes before that when the bank robber was already out of control.

  Ten minutes, Zoe estimates. She has ten minutes to contact the police and warn them about a robbery in progress. Zoe doesn’t especially like police. Being in the system, she has had several encounters with them and feels that the best of them are perhaps good-hearted but ineffectual, and the worst made the career choice to justify being bullies. Still, they’re professionals. To be fair, they’re probably better trained to deal with armed felons than with socially disadvantaged teens. The police should be able to prevent anyone from getting killed. And by anyone, she has in mind customers or even bank staff. She is not such an altruist as to be particularly concerned about a thief who would bring a gun into a bank and be prepared to use it.

  She wipes her hands on her jeans, unable to rid herself of the sensation that they are speckled with the blood of two dead men. Even though she can see they are not.

  Zoe looks around. From what she has heard, there used to be pay phones scattered throughout the city, available for those who needed to contact somebody before cell phones were invented. She supposes there probably still are pay phones somewhere, but she doesn’t have time to search one out.

  She sees a girl who looks about her own age, though Zoe suspects that, without makeup, she herself looks younger than she really is, perhaps closer to junior high than high school. Still, here’s a girl who is probably about fifteen or sixteen, very chic in a short skirt and high heels that would never be good for a quick getaway—for whatever that’s worth—and who is talking on a cell phone.

  “Excuse me,” Zoe says, falling into step next to her. “I don’t have a phone and I absolutely need to make a call. It’s an emergency. May I please borrow yours?”

  The girl looks up at her as though she has never, ever, in her entire life, had anyone ask for such an outrageous favor. She tells the person at the other end of the call, “Just a sec,” then says to Zoe, “I don’t have, like, an unlimited plan.”

  “OK,” Zoe counters. “But this is, like, literally life-and-death.”

  Without answering, the girl turns abruptly to enter a gift shop.

  Zoe considers following her in, but decides against it. If the girl is frightened of her—or even just annoyed by her—and if she complains to the shopkeeper, there’s no question with which of them the people in the shop will sympathize.

  Instead, she looks around some more. There are a couple of young guys, wearing uniforms from a fast-food place, who are sitting on the edge of one of the huge sidewalk planters. They are talking and texting and laughing, but Zoe dismisses them because there is always such a chance of misunderstanding where guys are concerned. Similarly, she doesn’t give serious consideration to the grandfatherly guy walking the big dog that looks as though it could eat small children for a snack, or to the biker guy who has a Chihuahua at the end of his leash. She spots a woman walking with a girl and a boy, both preteens, and she zeroes in on them.

  “Hello,” she says, “I’m sorry to bother you—but, please, I need help.” Bad choice of words, she reprimands herself, even as they’re coming out of her mouth. What if the woman thinks she’s asking for money? She should have thought this out beforehand. Hurriedly she adds, “Do you have a phone I could please, please, please use? It’s really important. A local call. It won’t take a minute. Please.” She hates groveling but figures her pride is less important than a life.

  The boy, who looks all of about eleven, demands, “Why don’t you have your own phone?” and the mother drapes her arm around his shoulders in what might be a case of oh-isn’t-my-boy-the-most-precious-thing-ever pride, or might be gentle chastisement. Zoe’s own mother, whom she hasn’t seen in almost two years, was never gentle with her chastisements. Meanwhile, the little girl reaches over to clutch her mother’s free hand. Clearly, Zoe makes her nervous. Clearly, this child has had impressed on her the dangers of speaking to strangers.

  Still, Zoe hopes the mother is thinking that should her own children ever be in trouble, some friendly soul would be willing to help them. And, in fact, the woman digs a phone out of her purse and, though somewhat reluctantly, hands it to Zoe.

  Zoe stares at it for a moment before the woman explains, “Press the green button, then the numbers you need.”

  It isn’t that the phone is too complicated to figure out: Zoe has been distracted by noting the time—1:22. Assuming the first woman was right, Zoe has squandered only five minutes. There’s still plenty of time.

  Except at that exact moment, the sky opens up. Zoe, the woman, and the children rush to huddle under the nearest store’s awning. The woman sighs, no doubt already regretting the generous impulse that has left her and her kids standing in the rain with this phone-borrowing stranger.

  Zoe presses the green button, then 911.

  Whether the woman can see which numbers Zoe has pressed or guesses by how few have been pressed, she raises her eyebrows,
looking a bit apprehensive.

  “911,” the dispatcher announces. “What number are you calling from?”

  Why do they always ask that? Zoe wonders. She knows for a fact that the number has shown up on their equipment. She knows this from the time when Rasheena and Delia were arguing, while Mrs. Davies was in the kitchen, and Delia grabbed the phone and hit 911 before one of the other girls was able to get the phone back and hang up. But still, two minutes later, someone from 911 called back to see what the emergency was. And even dispatched a police car, despite the fact that everyone—including Delia—said, “Oops. Never mind. Mistake.” Mrs. Davies had not been amused.

  So now the dispatcher has asked for the number, and Zoe says, “I don’t know. I’m calling from somebody else’s cell phone. Do you need me to find out?”

  “No, that’s all right,” the man on the other end of the line says. “What’s your emergency?”

  Zoe takes a deep breath. “I saw a man with a gun. Entering Spencerport Savings and Loan on Independence Street.”

  The woman whose phone she’s borrowed throws a protective arm around each of her children, even though Independence Street is two and a half blocks away, and the bank is halfway down the block after turning the corner.

  “No, I’m not in the bank,” Zoe answers when the dispatcher asks. In response to his next question, she tries to remember what the man looked like. “I don’t know. Forty, fifty.” Old people are old; how is she supposed to be able to tell how old? “White guy … no, I couldn’t see his hair. He had a hoodie and a baseball cap … tan raincoat … taller than me,”—which is ridiculous since the dispatcher can’t know how tall she is—“shorter than …”

  She cuts herself off. She was thinking that he was a bit shorter than the guy he ended up killing. She remembers how the thief’s arm was angled up to press against the young man’s throat, pinning him against the wall, the gun against his temple … She once again feels the spatter of the warm blood against her face and chest, and she can’t stop her free hand from reaching up to her hair, to feel for the bits that have lodged themselves there.

  Zoe starts shaking and can’t talk anymore. She cuts off the connection halfway through something-or-other the 911 dispatcher is saying and holds the phone back out to the woman with the kids.

  “Is that true?” the boy demands, sounding like a district attorney cross-examining a hostile witness. Obviously, this child’s mother has let him watch way too much TV. “You came all the way here from Independence Street before you could find anybody to let you borrow their phone?”

  “Sherman, hush,” the mother says, taking the phone. But she once again glances back in the direction of Independence.

  The phone rings. Well, actually, it plays the theme from the Indiana Jones movies. The woman sees the calling number and holds the phone out to Zoe.

  Zoe shakes her head and takes a step away.

  The woman’s face immediately grows red enough that she looks ready to burst. “You better not have used my phone to make a crank call,” she practically spits out.

  “I didn’t,” Zoe protests. “I saw him. He—”

  The boy interrupts. “And he let you leave during the actual robbery? Or did he take the gun out on the street for all the world to see and then walk into the bank?”

  “No,” Zoe says. “I …” But her voice drifts off. How can she possibly answer? Telling people about playback has caused more problems than playback itself.

  The boy continues in his scornful tone: “And he didn’t even wear a mask to hide his face?”

  Zoe pictures it again: How the man shot out the cameras that would have left a record, as though not concerned about the human witnesses. The moment when Zoe had the realization that he was going to kill them all. When she would have played back, except he was holding onto her at the time.

  “No,” Zoe tries to explain. “But he had a hoodie. And his collar up. And …”

  The obnoxious kid is sneering, unwilling to believe the most believable aspect of her story.

  “There was a man with a gun,” Zoe repeats. “In Spencerport Savings and Loan. And I can’t simply dawdle”—dawdle was one of her mother’s words—“around here and chat with you.”

  She turns on her heel and steps back out into the rain, walking rapidly away from them, away—even more so—from Independence Street and the bank that is about to be held up.

  “Hey!” the woman calls after her. “Hey!” The Indiana Jones theme, which had stopped briefly, starts again.

  Zoe begins running, despite the rain-slickness of the sidewalk.

  She turns down Franklin and makes another turn when she gets to Valencia. The woman can’t conceivably be chasing after her. The boy on his own might—probably would, in best cop show tradition—but not the mother. Definitely not the mother with the timid little girl in tow. Zoe just hopes they won’t talk the 911 people out of believing her call.

  She stops to readjust the folder, which is digging into her side, which is when she starts to hear sirens. Good, she thinks. Though surely the police wouldn’t approach a bank robbery with their sirens blaring, alerting the robber, would they? And yet the noise seems to be coming from behind her, in the general vicinity of the bank.

  None of your business, she reminds herself yet again.

  She has to have been in this story line at least seventeen, eighteen minutes by now.

  Twenty-three, and it will be irrevocably lost.

  She hopes the one guy—the one who, in this particular twenty-three-minute interval, she has not met, so who has not been kind to her—she hopes he has managed to not get himself killed this time. And she tries to avoid picturing all that blood on the wall behind where he’d been standing. That blood. And hair …

  None of your damn business, she mentally yells at herself.

  Leave well enough alone.

  Ooh, that’s one of Mrs. Davies’s sayings.

  Perhaps because of that, she does the opposite thing: She starts running back down Valencia. Past Franklin, past North Main, past Academy. Independence is the next cross street, and she sees police cars have it blocked off.

  Gawkers are pressed against the barricade, but Zoe pushes through the crowd. Police cars are all over the area. Ambulances, and even a fire truck, are at the ready farther back. At the ready for what, exactly? Police in full protective gear are crouched behind any cover they can get, holding an impressive array of impressive weapons. There’s glass on the street, the front window from the bank shattered from the inside out. There’s also a body—no, two—on the street, and one on the sidewalk.

  Once again, she wipes the shadow of blood from her hands.

  “What happened?” Zoe’s nearly breathless from her run, and her words come out barely a whisper.

  “Hostage situation in the bank,” someone tells her. There’s always someone eager to share bad news. “Lots of shots fired. Including through the window, out into the street, as the police were arriving.”

  The man points to the body on the sidewalk, outlined in a pool of blood. “Lady,” he says, “pushing a stroller.”

  Oh no oh no oh no.

  Zoe finally notices the stroller, tipped on its side. At least the toddler strapped inside is kicking his legs, the only encouraging sign at this scene.

  “That guy,” the witness continues, pointing, “was only a passerby trying to help. Other one’s police.”

  His voice is drowned out by the whup-whup-whup of a helicopter overhead.

  What’s going on inside the bank? With the gunman shooting out into the street, surely that’s an indication the bank guard, at least, is dead. So … three for sure dead on the street. Almost certainly at least one dead inside. And probably others. The guy with the jacket? No telling.

  What have I done? Zoe thinks. This is even worse than before. She should have known. Only rarely has she had good luck with going back and trying to change what has happened—and then it’s usually been only with small one-variable things, lik
e knowing to untuck the hem of her skirt from her waistband before leaving the restroom instead of after walking into a courtroom full of people for her shelter hearing, the day she was removed from her parents’ home.

  The witness beside her is trying to draw something-or-other to her attention, even though the noise of the helicopter prevents her from hearing his words. Her gaze strays to his cell phone—he has been recording the goings-on, but she can see the time displayed on the screen. Just a few seconds short of 1:39. The twenty-three minutes is almost—if not already—over.

  But if it isn’t …

  She can’t leave things like this. She has to try.

  Yeah, she thinks. If I keep this up, maybe I can start a nuclear holocaust.

  But she hugs herself and says, “Playback.”

  And apparently the twenty-three minutes were not quite over, because Zoe finds herself back in front of the hat and purse boutique.

  CHAPTER 5

  TIME RESETS TO 1:16.

  It is not yet raining.

  The robber is not yet inside the bank.

  Nobody is dead.

  Zoe wipes the memory of blood off her palms onto the thighs of her jeans.

  OK, so obviously calling the police somehow caused the situation to escalate totally out of control. Being there was bad, calling the police was worse. Should she not do anything? She thinks again of the customer who stepped in to rescue her. In the absence of a name, she’s beginning to think of him as The Boy Scout. And not entirely in a complimentary way. But the thing is: He had no particular reason to protect her. She suspects he’s the kind of person with not enough sense to keep himself from getting killed all over again in a situation like this. For Zoe, simply not seeing it happen is not a solution.

  Once again she tucks her folder into her waistband and begins to run toward Independence Street. In the original story line, she was meandering, nowhere to go, no set time to be anyplace, knowing she would be facing detention when she got back to the group home; so she’d been pausing to look in shop windows to admire all the things other people could have—or even just hope to have. That took her six minutes. She now knows this from the fact that she was looking at the cell phone clock this last time just as the rain started.