No Time Like Now by Naz Kutub

Author:Naz Kutub
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I have a question about this Holly person. What befuddles me is how she’d been given everything in life and still was unsatisfied. She got to go to school at home and hardly had to leave her house. She got taken care of by her mom and she had a friend—you. That would be everything, wouldn’t it?” Time asks.

We’re back in the cemetery, but in the parking lot this time, leaning against my Mini. I just had to get out of the Chronosphere after that whole ordeal. Some fresh oxygen, plus all the green around me was pretty much needed.

It’s still amazing how, as bright as the sun blazes away on this August afternoon, I don’t feel a degree of heat on my skin. “There’s more to life than just staying at home and doing nothing. I mean, there’s life, and there’s living. You’re granted a life, but what you do with it is the living part.”

Oops. This is the moment I realize I’m obviously talking out of my ass, considering the nothingness that my life has become since my dad died. Because I’m pretty much running on an empty tank of cares, without any way to fill it back up.

How unlucky of Jack and Holly to have a friend like me. It’s almost as if my time molecules are contagious, and I’m not just handing out life but spreading death as well.

“Holly wanted more,” I say. “She wanted to see the world. She wanted to be out there. She wanted to be her own person, not under the charge of her mom until the day either one of them dies. When Holly’s dad left, her mom started to overcompensate. She was extra attentive, extra protective. And that turned into being extra controlling.”

“You’re sounding more and more worked up. Are you thinking too hard? Is that what’s happening?” Time asks.

I shake my head. Thinking doesn’t hurt. It’s the realizing that does.

Time paces the length of the car, then all around it, before hopping onto the trunk and lounging on it with a squeak of their orange overalls. “And yet, the three of you have found problems of your own. You, especially. You reek of utter discontent.”

“That’s not fair. And besides, you don’t know my life.”

“But we do. We know everything in your timeline. We know everything about your mom. We know everything about your dad. We know your mother barely talks to you. About anything at all. Especially him.”

It somehow stings even more to hear someone else say what’s true. “Yeah, well. That doesn’t mean you know me at all. That’s just the basics.”

“Incorrect. Time knows all,” they say with a casual flourish and a bowing of the head.

“So you know what it’s like, then? To be me, a human?”

“We sure do because—” Time’s tongue seems to have frozen. As frozen as everything is around us.

Aha. I’ve successfully stumped them. Yay, Hazeem. A thousand million billion gazillion points for this one victory against the being that controls one major part of everyone’s existence.

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