Time is

Too Slow for those who Wait,

Too Swift for those who Fear,

Too Long for those who Grieve,

Too Short for those who Rejoice;

But for those who Love,

Time is not.

-Henry Van Dyke

Alex could control time.

No, that wasn't quite right.

Time decided to bend the rules for Alex. Not all the time, just when it was in a listening sort of mood or if Alex was being especially loud. And time didn't always follow the same rules, it was wobbly at best and unstable at worst.

Time also never really stopped for Alex, it just stopped around her. Which was infuriating because Alex found she would much rather stop and watch the world, instead of the world stopping to watch her. It was the difference of hitting fast-forward on a DVD and hitting pause. Hitting fast forward meant watching a two hour movie in only a few minutes, hitting pause and then going to do something else meant the movie was going to be there when she got back, all two hours of it.

Alex couldn't stop time for herself, couldn't stop herself from aging, or skip forward to the future where no one knew her name or face or stealing habits. But, she could do a lot of other fun things.

Like stopping traffic.

Driving was one of Alex's favorite past times. Actually, stealing cars was one of Alex's favorite past times, driving them was her second favorite, especially when the car was expensive and fast (preferably painted black).

Driving behind or with people who were texting was Alex's least favorite past time.

Case in point, a large really loud blue Dodge truck three cars in front of her on the highway. For the last five minutes she'd been watching the truck cruise in the far left lane, he was passing and going fast, which was fine, what wasn't fine was the fact that he was swerving in his lane, sometimes hitting the rumble strip, sometimes driving on the white line between his and the middle lane. He was causing traffic to slow down because people were afraid to get to close out of fear of potentially being hit or driven out of their lane.

This annoyed Alex immensely because she was in a stolen Ferrari and wanted to go fast, and also because she hated people who texted while they drove. Alex had many faults, but texting and driving was not one of them.

She watched the blue truck straddle the white line again before jerking back into its own lane and then she smacked her steering wheel with the base of her palm and cursed loudly.

That's when time went wobbly.

It never took Alex long to figure out when time stopped around her, apart from the rather obvious side effect of everything freezing and the sudden lack of noise, the tips of her fingers also always felt fuzzy, like they were on the verge of falling asleep. Sometimes her ears popped too, as though the pressure was changing in the air, but that wasn't as common a side effect.

Alex dropped her hands from the steering wheel of the now frozen Ferrari. The speedometer was stuck on eighty. She popped the door open and swung her legs out from under the steering wheel. Leaving the door open she strolled down the shoulder of the highway, kicking at pebbles and pieces of rubber leftover from shredded tractor trailer tires. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and watched the pieces of rubber bounce a couple of feet before settling on the hot pavement again.

Sometimes time would let Alex could unfreeze larger objects, like cars. Other times the only thing that Alex could move was herself. Sometimes she even accidentally unfroze other people, which was always awkward since she usually had her hand in their pocket or purse. Normally though, the only things she could unfreeze were things she could carry or lift, like keys, cellphones, bags of potato chips, booze, and cash. The heavier the object, the less likely time would bend it for her.

Again, time didn't always follow the same rules, it acted like a moody teenager, much like Alex's own personality. Sometimes it could be affectionate and other times it could be just damned spiteful. Given the frozen Ferrari, it looked like time was only going to let Alex have small things today .

She could work with that.

Alex approached the blue truck and pushed her aviators back onto her head like a headband. The truck was jacked up to the point where the owner had installed a step ladder in order to be able to climb into the driver's seat. She wasn't sure how high a truck could be lifted before being illegal but she was sure this one was flirting with the line. If nothing else it should have been illegal to own a truck that looked like it was an asshole.

The windows of the truck were rolled down and sure enough, the driver of the truck had a cellphone in his right hand while his left hand was relaxed on the top of his steering wheel. So he was really driving with just his wrist, which made things even worse. Alex admitted that she could have assumed wrong and he could have been driving drunk or been a blind ninety year old man, but usually if it was the middle of the afternoon and someone was swerving and being a total idiot on the road it was because they were texting. Also, old people usually didn't drive trucks that looked like assholes or required ladders to get inside.

"Kids these days," Alex tsked even though she was only seventeen herself. She climbed up the steps and hung onto the door frame with one hand. The man driving was young, maybe nineteen. Blond curls peeked out around his ears underneath his camo hat, his sleeveless shirt sported a construction company's logo, and his jeans were dusted with dirt. Alex noticed that there was a hard hat and a reflective vest in the passenger seat.

The guy was staring at his phone and it was always uncanny to see people unmoving, no rise of their chest, no breath, not even the smallest twitch of their skin. It was like seeing corpses everywhere she looked, whatever made people human disappeared when time went wobbly. The only consolation was that their skin was still warm and soft when she touched it, evidence there was life still inside. All she had to do was remind herself that they weren't really frozen or dying of suffocation, Alex was just living outside of their reality, living in the time span it took them to blink, a DVD on pause.

"You know, people who text and drive make up twenty-seven percent of all fatal accidents." She reached through the open window and pulled the cell phone from his hand. His fingers remained bent, reminding Alex of a Lego Man or a Barbie. "Be the solution, not the problem." She grabbed his now empty right hand and moved it to the steering wheel and meticulously wrapped his fingers around it.This was always unsettling too, moving people like they were dolls with wires in their limbs, as though they were nothing more than props. "Keep both hands on the steering wheel at all times," she advised, using her best airline hostess voice. Even though he couldn't hear her, it was always satisfying to tell people what was on her mind without consequence. She could yell at people and say whatever she was thinking and they'd never know it, the problem was that she was beginning to do that whether time was stopped or not.

Habits are hard to break.

Now that the man had both hands on the steering wheel Alex tilted his head so he was looking straight ahead. Satisfied with her work he nodded once. "Also, I realize you think this truck makes you look tough or manly or whatever, but most girls just think guys with big trucks are making up for their small dicks." She lifted her pinky at him and wiggled it. "So you might want to reconsider your ride if you're looking to get laid." She blew him an exaggerated kiss and jumped down to the pavement.

She turned toward the hillside where the woods divided the highway and threw the cell phone as far as she could. She laughed when she thought about him using the 'find my phone' app later and realizing where his phone had ended up. He'd be confused for a long time, in fact he'd be confused the moment time stopped being wobbly because in what would be a blink of an eye he'd be holding his phone and the next both his hands would be on the wheel.

She pulled her sunglasses back down over her eyes and walked toward her stolen Ferrari. It was a classic red one, not her preferable color as she thought red was overused with sports cars. But, she hadn't driven a Ferrari before so the temptation had been too great to resist when she saw its owner handing the keys over to a Valet at the hotel.

Halfway back to her car her fingers stopped tingling.

"Oh—!" Alex had just enough time to jump off the shoulder and onto the grass before time jump started itself without her permission. The sound of the highway was nearly deafening as it clapped back to life like a screaming toddler. Alex watched with horror as the now empty Ferrari with it's still open driver side door zoomed past her without anyone at its reins.

For a moment nothing happened.

Then everything happened at once.

The large blue truck three cars in front of the Ferrari braked hard, probably out of confusion by his lack of cell phone, causing a chain reaction of braking from the other drivers in the left lane to avoid hitting the person in front of them.

All except the empty Ferrari.

Alex had just enough time to yell, "Shit!" before the Ferrari rammed into a grey Honda Civic in all of its eighty mile an hour glory. Metal screamed into metal, glass shattered, tires squealed against pavement. Metal screamed into more metal. Horns were slammed on. More tires vomited and blackened the pavement, sending the burning smell of rubber into Alex's nose.

It was complete chaos.

Out of self preservation Alex ran up the hillside toward the trees as more cars became victims of the crash while others swerved onto the shoulder to avoid hitting or being hit. She watched as the traffic rolled to a stop, already causing a quarter of a mile back up, watched as people climbed out of cars, cellphones to ears. Watched as people shouted and cried, angered by their fear or just plain afraid.

All of this because of a texting driver and annoyed girl that time sometimes listened to.

Time was unstable at worst.