“Hi, I’m Abe. Are you, um are you waiting for anyone?”

Julia looked up from her book. A raw, gangling kid was peering at her anxiously from behind
horn-rimmed glasses. Quirky, corkscrewing red hair stuck out comically around his ears. His
freckled face was gawky, with square horsey teeth and startled-looking light blue eyes.

She sighed.

“Um, actually I am waiting for someone. Sorry, he’ll be here any minute.” She dove back into
her book.

“Sure thing,” he mumbled as he walked away blushing.

“Hi, I’m Abe. Do you, ah, mind if I sit here for a moment?”

Julia looked up from her book. A raw, gangling kid was peering at her nervously from behind
horn-rimmed glasses. Quirky, corkscrewing red hair stuck out comically around his ears. His
freckled face was gawky, with square horsey teeth and startled-looking light blue eyes.

She sighed.

“I guess not.” She stuck her nose firmly back into her book and gulped at her latte, trying to
finish quickly and get out. Definitely not her type.

“The Sound and the Fury. Wow, I always wanted to read Steinbeck. Is it good?”

Julia looked up, annoyed, at the figure blocking her light. A raw, gangling kid was peering at her
nervously from behind horn-rimmed glasses. Quirky, corkscrewing red hair stuck out comically
around his ears. His freckled face was gawky, with square horsey teeth and startled-looking
light blue eyes. She sighed and looked up for the barest possible moment.

“It’s Faulkner,” she said frostily, then pointedly turned, moving her book out of his shadow.

“The Sound and the Fury. Wow, I’ve always loved Faulkner. Are you enjoying it?”

Julia looked up. A raw, gangling kid was peering at her nervously from behind horn-rimmed
glasses. Quirky, corkscrewing red hair stuck out comically around his ears. His freckled face
was gawky, with square horsey teeth and startled-looking light blue eyes. He was standing
slightly to the side of her, and although he was tall he barely looked old enough to be out of high
school.

“I’m reading this for my American literature course,” she said shortly. “I need to finish it for my
exam tomorrow.” She scowled and got back to untangling the dense, tedious knots of words.
Smartass little showoff.

“Ugh, The Sound and the Fury. You must be smarter than I am -- I could barely get through
that book.”

Julia looked up. A raw, gangling kid was peering at her nervously from behind horn-rimmed
glasses. Quirky, corkscrewing red hair stuck out comically around his ears. His freckled face
was gawky, with square horsey teeth and startled-looking light blue eyes. He was young, but
there was a certain friendly innocence in his face.

“Well, it’s not too bad, but I’ll be glad when I’m done it.”

The boy smiled. “My name’s Abe, by the way. Do you mind if I sit down? Maybe I could buy
you a coffee.” He looked down at her half-full cup and blushed. “Umm another coffee.”

Julie sighed. Great, straight from the introduction, cut to the chase. “Sorry, I really need to be
going soon. It was nice meeting you.” She picked up her books, scooped up the coffee, and
headed off. No need to get hit on and fail her English final.

The boy smiled. “My name’s Abe, by the way. Do you mind if I sit down? Maybe you’d let me
buy you a slice of their superfudge cake. I hear it makes Faulkner a lot easier to swallow.”

Julia glanced up at him suspiciously. He was pretty quick on the moves for such a young kid.
“No thanks,” she said curtly. “I’m on a diet.”

The boy smiled. “My name’s Abe, by the way. Do you mind if I sit down? Maybe you’d like to
share some frozen yogurt with me. I hear that their fat-free chocolate is really good.”

Julia bridled as she looked up. What the hell kind of crack was that to make to someone you’d
just met? Why not just say, “Hey, I know a good doctor who does liposuction?”

“Thank you,” she said coldly, “but I’m really not hungry at the moment.” She scowled back into the book and pretended to read, waiting for the kid to go away.

The boy smiled. “My name’s Abe, by the way. Did you um did you ever no, wait a
minute--”

The boy smiled. “Hi. My name’s Abe.”

She looked up a little warily -- but he seemed nice enough. “I’m Julia.” She paused, then
continued. “You know, I hope you don’t think this is rude, but you look kind of young to be
reading Faulkner.”

The boy blushed. “I’m not that young. I’m seventeen.”

Julia tucked her book hastily away. “Oh, goodness, look at the time-“

The boy blushed. “I’m not that young. I’m twenty-one.”

Julia raised an eyebrow, then sighed and picked up her books. She didn’t have time to sit there
playing games with random teenagers.

The boy blushed. “I’m not that young. I’m nineteen.”

Julia smiled. “I guess it’s kind of hard looking younger than you are, isn’t it? Do you get that a
lot?”

He smiled. “More than you might think.”

She’d been pretty nice in the end, but it was nerve-wracking getting there. It could be so hard to
remember every little step -- and every little misstep. Girls seemed awfully suspicious to him.
There were so many things that you could say to them, and so few of them that actually worked.

Okay, so he really was only seventeen. And Julia was a junior in college, so she must be twenty
or twenty one. But it was hard to learn when people wouldn’t give you the time. Sure, it would
have been nice to have ended up necking or something, but mostly he’d just wanted to get to
know her. He had, finally, but in the end he’d been exhausted. By the time she’d finally let him
buy her that second latte, he’d really wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep. His head
was aching with blurry visions of Julia wound and rewound until he could hardly keep track of
the present.

People really didn’t realize how much work this kind of power could be, Abe decided.
“Superpowers,” people called them. They weren’t the ones trying to keep track of reality on the
fourteenth rewind.

Abe grazed along the refrigerator shelves, absently assembling cheese, pickles, apples, celery.
Cheese and pickle sandwich was calling him. He stood at the counter stacking the ingredients
into a roll and mused over his predicament. It was a power all right. He’d proved that to himself
when he’d gone to Atlantic City for the weekend and played the slot machines. One quarter was
plenty when you could re-play it until you spun the jackpot. In fact, he’d very nearly gotten
himself into very deep water with some unpleasant-looking men in suits about the time he
realized that to their perceptions, he’d just walked in and won three jackpots in a row. He’d
been able to skip back far enough to avoid them, but it hadn’t been easy and it had left him
sweating. Besides, the money felt dirty. He knew deep in his heart, down there somewhere in
his grandmother genes, that he’d stolen their money. They weren’t nice men, probably, but that
didn’t make it right to take their money.

But what else could he do? He leaned against the refrigerator, chewing reflectively. He really
wanted to do something good with it. Deep inside, in a shy kind of way, he wanted to be one of
them. One of the good guys in capes and tights and shiny white teeth. He just couldn’t figure out
how.

Bubbah liked to prod him about making something out of himself -- especially now, with his
parents gone. Abe sighed dejectedly. There was something he hadn’t been able to skip back.
God knows he’d tried, but it was just too late, too far by the time he found out. That hadn’t
been easy for him. Bubbah had tried her best to comfort the boy, but even a grandmother can
only do so much. He hadn’t dared to tell her about his powers, then. He’d wanted to. He’d
wanted to tell them all, especially his parents. But it had all happened so fast. He shook his head,
trying to let the irony bite into him instead of the grief. How about that, he thought. Me, of all
people, not having enough time. But that was the way it was. There was always time to do it
over, but never time to do it right. It sounded like something his mother used to say, and she was
probably right about it.

Abe finished his sandwich, washing it down with gulps of cold milk. He wiped the lip of the
carton and put it back into the fridge, wondering what he would tell Bubbah. She knew that
something strange was going on. Seventeen-year-old boys don’t just live alone on the upper
east side. She was worried. He could feel it. She probably thought he was getting the money
from drugs or the trust fund or who knows what. It would have been a lot easier to move in with
her. But he just didn’t want to leave this house. It wasn’t the space; he still lived upstairs, in the
sunny loft they’d fixed up together. It was just that late in the afternoon, when he came back
from school, it smelled like home. It smelled like his parents, and cooking food, and his dad’s
pipe smoke. When he went past their room he could still see their bathrobes hung on the door,
and if he left the television on he could spend whole hours in an illusion that he cherished.

He spent a lot of time practicing, stretching himself as far as he could. He would set the digital
alarm clock down in front of him and stare at the numbers, clocking himself back as he skipped.
Sixteen minutes was his record now, up from ten minutes a year ago and just five minutes the
night of that night. He was growing stronger, but not nearly as fast as time was outpacing him.
He’d hoped when he started that some day he’d be able to do the big skip -- all the way back to that night. He still clung to it as a faint hope, but more from necessity than true belief. He could feel, back of his mind, that it wouldn’t be a good idea to face up to it right now. He didn’t know for sure what else he had to work for.

“Halt, evil-doer! Or feel the wrath of The Mighty Tempus!”

The mugger turned slowly around. Standing at the mouth of the alley was a gangly form in
sky-blue tights. On closer inspection, they might have been some sort of pajamas or long
underwear. On the figure’s chest was a crude shape outlined in something suspiciously like black
laundry marker. It looked like two triangles joined at their tips with their bases parallel above
and below. It might, to a very imaginative viewer, have possibly looked something like an
hourglass. The figure’s eyes (and probably its vision) were obscured by a band of sky-blue
material that also served to hold back a mop of determinedly corkscrewed red hair.

The mugger backed slowly away as his victim scurried, sobbing, for the streetlight. He hadn’t
asked for this. All he wanted was a quick job and a hard hit, not some costumed lunatic
prancing around the alleys. He kept backing warily, looking for an exit. It wasn’t safe to mess
with crazy people.

Abe hesitated. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do when the bad guys didn’t run or
fight. He had a hazy idea that he ought to make some sort of citizen’s arrest, but he really didn’t
want to get much closer to the knife the mugger was brandishing. He still seemed to be backing
away, although it was hard to tell. He reached up to adjust the mask and was abruptly enfolded
in an enthusiastic marshmallow.

“Ooooh you lovely man you saaaved me!” The sobbing, grandmotherly form collapsed abruptly
in his arms, staggering him against the alley wall as she clung to her savior. Embarrassed, Abe
struggled to help the woman back to her feet, further encumbered and discomfited by the
perfumed and immense expanse of her bosom squashing him against the wall. He was barely
able to keep his mask on at all, and by the time he had his rescued damsel on her feet it was
twisted around until he could only see out of one eye. Soon she was hailing passersby to call the
police, and by the time Abe could see out of both eyes the alleyway was empty.

It suddenly occurred to him that he was standing in his pajamas in the middle of a gathering
crowd. They all seemed enthusiastic right now, but soon the police would come and ask a lot of
questions. He winced. He could just imagine what his Bubbah would say if his name appeared in
the papers in connection with this neighborhood and this time of night. He began gently
attempting to disentangle himself from his admiring ward.

“I, um think he might be getting away down there you know, if you would, um, let go of
my arm there ”

It took fifteen tries.

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