Standstill

Chapter 2 - Accustoming

We have been sitting in the canteen for the past 20 mins and Alex still looks confused about the coffee incident . I decide to ignore his curiosity and ask him to give me some explanation about what happened to cause such a huge fight .

His face starts to turn red ,but he tries to act as if he is calm and cool. He says,
"You dont have to worry , my dear sister , I'm totally fine ", placing his hand on my shoulder . I jerk his hand off my shoulder and give him the death stare. Alex always has been a protective brother. He was the only reason that no one ever dared to bully me throughout these years. But lately he had changed drastically.

The guy, who used to always participate in football matches,karate competitions and once was the most popular kid in his school, had turned into a silent ,passive guy. The reason?A car crash .

Around 2 years ago when Alex had just started driving after getting the license , our family got into a huge accident and only both of us had survived.Alex always felt that it was his mistake , but the actual cause of the accident was brake failure.

I came out of trance when Anne joined us on the table .She had this look on her face and I knew exactly what it was , she had some interesting info which she was dying to tell us.

"You know what??!!", she started as soon as she sat down , " the coffee incident has become huge. Everyone is debating whether dylen threw the cup or not".
That takes me back to everything that happened.
It's good that everyone stopped recording as soon as I pulled Alex away, or else this would have become weird .

Anne snapping her fingers in front of my face brings me back to reality. "What are you thinking so deeply about??", she askes, with a concerned face."Nothing, absolutely nothing.", I say with a straight face.

Trying to change the topic ,I turn to Alex , and ask ," YOU tell me what happened ...why were you two fighting like animals? Huh?", in a tone which felt more like an ultimatum. "Well..." he said ,scratching his head,"he said he liked you and was going to ask you out ".
Anne and I stare at each other wide eyed. "Whatt??", I scream, almost choking on water that I just sipped out of the bottle . "Yea, but I'm sure he wasn't serious, that's what made me snap", he says while patting my back, trying to help ,while i'm still choking on water.

Once I was back to normal , I pulled his cheeks and hugged him. "You know I wouldn't fall for his stupid pranks right? You still beat him up ...that's so sweet", I say while smiling ear to ear.
"Anything for you ", he says while pulling my cheeks real hard. I hadn't seen this protective , irritating side of Alex in a long time, and I loved it .

Once the bell rang , we got up to go to our respective classes . While walking in the hallway , I just think of giving this whole -time stopping thing a 2nd try. Probably it was some weird natural phenomenon and had nothing to do with me having any kinda powers or it's the total opposite and I have turned into some kinda marvel character.Lets see.... So I stood in the hallway till I only had a minute to reach the class I was supposed to attend.

When its time I close my eyes and just say the line - Stop the time - in my mind , and as soon as I open my eyes , everyone and everything is frozen , except me .
That's when the reality hit me . They say that time never stops for anyone , but here i am just being able to stop time whenever I want .

Is this the calm before the storm ??

Anyways, I push through the crowd of frozen people , reach my class ( on time by the way) and say - Resume the time - in my mind and everything goes back to normal and no one noticed. I was absolutely excited and started imagining all kinda things that I could do with my new superpowers.

But the excitement was short lived. A group of students were discussing something and I overheard them. Apparently some kid had continued recording even after the fight had stopped and the video went viral.

They were acting suspicious and were whispering among themselves when I approached them . I asked them to forward the video to me.(extremely awkward conversation.)

When I got the video, I knew that this probably would spark some unwanted rumours about me or Alex .

In the video ,Dylen threw his coffee at us . At first ,the coffee cup was coming straight at us and within the next second the cup was in front of Dylen's face , drenching him in hot coffee.

OMG !! Let's see what's going to happen now (I murmur to myself trying to hide my expressions from other students who were watching me .) ,its not that I will be kicked out of school or be taken away by scientists as lab rat for their research right ?....

I wave off all the incredible possibilities my creative brain is suggesting about my future and try to concentrate as the math teacher enters the class and starts discussing a new topic ...

God knows what's instored in my near future...