Frozen

It was warm when time stopped working. Eudosia remembered that, later. It was warm, and the air smelled like an intoxicating blend of jasmine and melting popsicle. She was laying, as usual, on her back and in her backyard, riffling her fingers across the overgrown grass and enjoying the particular way the sun pulsed behind the shifting leaves. And then time stopped. Everything stopped, all around her. The leaves stopped rustling. The breeze ceased breezing. The black ants froze their eternal march up to their nest and back again.

Eudosia sat up, slowly. This seemed alarming, but she didn't want to leap to conclusions. Sure, time had never stopped before, that she could remember, but she was only eleven. Before last week, she had been reasonably sure that ice cream trucks didn't actually exist, either, and were more of a nostalgic shorthand, like a sockhop or a milkman. But then, sure enough, an ice cream truck had tinkled down her street. And it had been driven by what Eudosia could have sworn was a milkman, funnily enough, with a white paper hat and white button shirt and white pants and creamy, almost frothy, white skin. Eudosia had given him a dime, and he'd given her a tall blue popsicle that tasted like two summers ago, when she'd broken her arm and couldn't go swimming the whole summer break. But she'd thanked him anyway and eaten it, because her mother always told her to be polite.

There was no friendly, reassuring melody to accompany this new oddity, however. There was only the sound of her own heartbeat, speeding up a little bit with every moment that passed. Nothing around her was moving, not a centimeter. She could see an emerald hummingbird hovering above her father's begonias across the yard, its tiny wings outstretched, its needle beak holding a perfectly suspended drop of nectar.

She took a step, to see whether she could, and found she could, so she took several more and stepped herself in through her back door. Her mother was in the kitchen, chopping onions. Or rather, not chopping onions any more, but frozen perfectly still in the absolute center of the onion-chopping process. The blade of her paring knife was paused a quarter of the way through a translucent chunk of white onion.

"Mom." Eudosia tried, more because she felt she technically should try, than out of any real hope that it would make a difference. Her voice fell straight to the ground an inch out of her mouth, as if she was talking directly against a mountain of cotton batting. It was disappointing, but not particularly surprising. Eudosia's mother had never been Eudosia's favorite person, largely because her mother had been the one to insist on her name, and because she was the kind of person to insist that her children be polite about things like broken arms and disappointing frozen treats.

In the living room, Edwina and Eustace, who hadn't gotten off any easier in the name department, were posed like little twin models, like an illustration of how to play with blocks. Eudosia wandered past them, winding between the furniture, admiring how the immobile dust specks caught the light in the ray of sun that snuck in between the curtains. Even the light was still, which seemed impossible. Although Eudosia had heard something about the speed of light in one of her father's movies, so maybe it was moving after all.

She glanced up at the clock above the television. Its hands were poised just at the brink of 5pm. She didn't pause to see if the hands would move. She had a feeling, a funny understanding. Time had stopped for no reason at all, and she felt quite sure that when it felt like it, it would start up again for no better reason than that.

The front yard didn't have the time, either. Her neighbor's dog was peeing on their mailbox at the end of the lawn, a stream of urine that might never end. Eudosia shivered. It seemed to be getting colder, as if all the molecules had forgotten to shiver themselves warm. The hairs on her arms began to stand on end, little soldiers coming to attention, ready to fight whatever she was about to face. But there was nothing to face, just her own front lawn, her own sunny street, her own perfect neverending afternoon. A chill ran down her back, covering her spine in the sensation of marching ants. "There's nothing to be afraid of," she said out loud, barely able to hear herself against the deafening power of nothing.

A note pierced the fuzzy blanket of frozen time. Her heart lept, not in the way it would leap when she saw Jessie Miller at school, but the way it jumped when the tiger at the zoo had come too close to the fence and snarled at her. Lurched, was the word that came to mind. Another note, and another. Tinny and mechanical, like a carousel ride. Her hands stung as blood rushed away from the thinking parts of her and into the parts designed to kick, scratch, run, scream.

An ice cream truck rounded the corner of her street. It was moving towards her. For a split second, Eudosia was relieved-- time must have started again. It was over. But then she saw the suspended arc of yellow piss coming from the neighbor's dog, and noticed the dragonflies suspended above the hydrangea bush, and realized that time had not begun again. Something far stranger, and more worrying, was beginning.

The ice cream truck rolled slowly down the street. The milk-white ice cream man was smiling, completely unconcerned that his dairy-and-non-dairy treats were far from the only thing that were frozen. Eudosia's heart was beating in her chest. Run, the part of her brain that was still mostly monkey was screeching. Run run run!

She stayed perfectly still. I'm frozen in time, she told herself. I'm just like everyone else. I'm frozen.

The ice cream truck crunched up the road and spat out gravel, creeping towards her. She didn't blink, didn't breathe, darkness elbowing in around her like a pushy aunt at a holiday party, demanding a kiss with mothball breath. The white truck began to roll by her line of sight, bright and blinding. The milkman turned and looked right into her eyes as he rolled past, a slow smile spreading across his pale face, revealing perfectly straight, perfectly white, perfectly ordinary teeth that still made Eudosia's stomach drop into her shoes. His eyes stayed locked with hers and she let out a breath, not out of relief, but out of resignation. He knew. He knew, and she couldn't afford to pass out from lack of oxygen.

I have to run, she thought, gauging the distance from her doorstep to the truck. I have to run before--

"Eudosia! There you are!" Her mother's exasperated voice shot her in the back like an arrow. "Stop eyeballing that ice cream truck, young lady, it's almost dinner."

Eudosia stared at her mother, eyes wide, absorbing the reassuring sight of her scowling face. The ice cream truck pulled around the corner and disappeared, the canned music dimming as the neighbor's dog finished urinating and shook his leg. Beside Eudosia's head, the dragonflies whirred, dipping and swirling above the hydrangea.

Her mother blew out a huff, one hand landing on her hip. "Oh, and now I suppose you're going to pout unless I buy you an ice cream?"

"No, that's ok, Mom," Eudosia said, infinitely relieved to hear her voice escape her mouth. "I don't like ice cream anymore."

Eudosia followed her mother into the house and closed the door firmly behind them, blocking out the fading notes of the ice cream truck's song.