The Rewindable Clock Read online

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  Text copyright © 2020 by Aaron Starmer. Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Published by Penguin Workshop, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. PENGUIN and PENGUIN WORKSHOP are trademarks of Penguin Books Ltd, and the W colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780593222867 (pbk)

  ISBN 9780593094303 (hc)

  ISBN 9780593094310 (ebook)

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  To Gwenn and Jim—AS

  For my dear Grammy—thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to work hard. I love you to Pluto and back—CLF

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Late

  Chapter Two: Homeroom

  Chapter Three: Oh No

  Chapter Four: Locker 37

  Chapter Five: The Rewindable Clock

  Chapter Six: 8:16

  Chapter Seven: Testing 1, 2, 3

  Chapter Eight: The Problem with Time Travel

  Chapter Nine: Finding Time

  Chapter Ten: Homework Sprint

  Chapter Eleven: Creative Truths

  Chapter Twelve: The Best Route

  Chapter Thirteen: Almost Done

  Chapter Fourteen: Oh No, Part 2

  Chapter Fifteen: The Road to Consequence Town

  Chapter Sixteen: The Butterfly Effect

  Chapter Seventeen: Keisha’s Butterfly

  Chapter Eighteen: Consequence Town

  Chapter Nineteen: The Dungeon

  Chapter Twenty: Fish Sticks

  Chapter Twenty-one: A Plumbing Dilemma

  Chapter Twenty-two: When Am I?

  Chapter Twenty-three: Hunter’s Secret

  Chapter Twenty-four: The Curious Case of Mortimer Schnell

  Chapter Twenty-five: Perhaps, Maybe, Possibly

  Chapter Twenty-six: The Common Good

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Recess

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Art Class Again

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Where’s the Beef?

  Chapter Thirty: A Talking Gummy Bear

  Chapter Thirty-one: Smiles All Around

  Chapter Thirty-two: Heartbreaking Time-Travel Assumptions

  Chapter Thirty-three: The Cafetorium Conundrum

  Chapter Thirty-four: Delivery

  Chapter Thirty-five: What Is Time?

  Chapter Thirty-six: On Time

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Coming Next . . .

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  LATE

  Keisha James was late for the bus.

  How late? One minute late, which was a big, big deal.

  Not that she missed the bus. Oh no, she would never do that. But she usually arrived at the bus stop at 7:05 a.m. Today she arrived at 7:06 a.m. And even though the bus wouldn’t pull up until 7:08 a.m., this was clearly disastrous.

  Why? Because it meant she was sixth in line. If she had arrived one minute earlier, she would’ve been third in line, which is clearly better. You see, Keisha’s bus stop was the last one on the route to Hopewell Elementary. By the time the bus pulled up, seats were always hard to come by. If she was at least third in line, she’d get a decent seat, somewhere in the middle, maybe next to Devon Garcia or Kendall Ali.

  But sixth in line? It meant sitting in—avert your eyes if you’re the sensitive type—a hump seat!

  Oh, the dreaded hump seats, the most vile and wretched of all seats on the bus. Located directly above the back wheels, the hump seats were impossibly uncomfortable because anyone who sat in them couldn’t fully extend their legs or put their backpack on the bus floor. So they had to sit with their backpacks in their laps, pushed against their chests by their bent knees.

  In other words, sixth in line was bad. Very bad. And today it was even worse. Today it meant sitting in the hump seat next to Hunter Barnes.

  No one at Hopewell Elementary wanted to sit in any seat next to Hunter Barnes.

  Sadly for Keisha, it was the only option. No students were sick. The bus was as full as it could be. So she reluctantly accepted her fate, trudging to the back and asking Hunter, “May I please sit here?”

  Hunter’s backpack was in the way, and he grumbled under his breath as he moved it to his lap. “Whatever.”

  This was Hunter being as polite as he could possibly be. Because there’s no other way to put it: Hunter Barnes was a bully.

  Not the kind of bully who would beat kids up. Worse. The kind who would figure out how to make their lives miserable with nothing but words.

  For instance, a kid named Carson Cooper once wore a red shirt to school, and Hunter told him, “People who wear red shirts smell like wet socks filled with dog food and boiled cauliflower. But people who wear blue shirts smell like chocolate chip cookies.”

  Hunter was, of course, wearing a blue shirt when he said this.

  So the next day, Carson was sure to use extra soap in the shower. And he put on his best blue shirt and stood for an hour next to an oven that was baking chocolate chip cookies. Then he set off to school confident in his shirt choice and smell.

  But then Hunter, of course, showed up to school wearing a red shirt.

  “Eww, why are you wearing a blue shirt?” he asked Carson. “Everyone knows people in blue shirts smell like dirty diapers filled with tuna fish sandwiches.”

  Hunter did this sort of thing to almost every kid at Hopewell Elementary. Except, that is, to Keisha.

  Because Keisha was focused. Keisha was fierce. Keisha did not suffer fools. Which means she didn’t tolerate any sort of nonsense, especially from kids like Hunter.

  That morning on the bus, she was ready. If he said anything to insult or tease her, she was armed with a comeback that would absolutely destroy him.

  Obviously, she wasn’t going to use that comeback unless she was provoked. Above all, Keisha believed in honesty and integrity. And even though Hunter didn’t know what Keisha had in store for him, he was smart enough to know that she always came to school prepared. The temptation to tease her was strong, but he resisted. It wasn’t worth the risk of finding out how devastating one of her comebacks could be.

  So the two sat together silently in that godforsaken hump seat, with their knees pushing their backpacks against their chests, and their eyes pointed straight ahead.

  It was a bad way for both of them to start the day.

  Chapter Two

  HOMEROOM

  The day could get worse.

  And the day would get worse.

  But before it got worse, it wasn’t too bad.

  Keisha hurried off the bus and directly to homeroom.

  As always, she was the first person to arrive. Person is the important word here. Beca
use two goldfish were already in the room. They were always in the room.

  Finn and Gill were their names, and they lived in a bowl on a table next to the radiator. They were the classroom mascots, and the kids all loved them. But Keisha was the one responsible for feeding them.

  Why? Because everyone else was lazy. Or at least that’s what Keisha thought. She had nominated herself for the job at the beginning of the school year, when she assumed no one else was responsible enough to do it.

  “I don’t know how you two would survive without me,” she said as she sprinkled their flaky food onto the water. “Maybe someday you’ll thank me.”

  “In the meantime, perhaps my gratitude will be enough,” a voice answered.

  It wasn’t the fish talking. It was Keisha’s homeroom teacher, Mrs. Shen. She was setting her bag on her desk in preparation for another day. In many kids’ minds, Mrs. Shen was Hopewell Elementary’s best teacher. She was certainly one of the friendliest. And she always gave Keisha an enthusiastic greeting.

  “So thank you, Keisha,” Mrs. Shen said. “And a good morning to you.”

  Keisha turned around and replied, “Correction, Mrs. Shen. A great morning. Great.”

  “What makes this morning so great?” Mrs. Shen asked.

  “Potential,” Keisha said. “Every day has the potential to be the best day of my life. And if I work harder than the day before, there’s a good chance it will be.”

  “I like that attitude,” Mrs. Shen said. “Very much.”

  Keisha wasn’t exaggerating. She tried to make every day a better day than the previous one. It didn’t always happen. And sometimes she regretted her decisions.

  Maybe I should’ve talked to Hunter on the bus, she thought as Hunter waltzed into the room. He sat down in a corner in the back, far away from anyone else.

  Bullies only want attention, she thought. What if I gave him good attention? Maybe he wouldn’t be so mean to everyone.

  But the past was in the past, and there was nothing she could do to change it.

  She would have to try harder tomorrow.

  Chapter Three

  OH NO

  Keisha’s first class of the day was music with Mr. Gregson. Mr. Gregson was a quiet guy with a ponytail and thick-rimmed glasses. He played bass guitar in a band called the Screamin’ Beagles.

  Keisha had seen the Screamin’ Beagles perform at a local restaurant once. Sadly, there were no beagles in the lineup, and there was absolutely no screamin’. Unless you count slightly off-key singing as screamin’.

  The Screamin’ Beagles performed mostly covers of songs that were around when Keisha’s parents were kids.

  It was hard to say if they were good at it, because Keisha didn’t listen to that type of music. And it always made her a bit uneasy to see a teacher outside of school.

  She preferred to see her teachers standing at the front of a classroom, telling kids what to do. Teaching, in other words, like Mr. Gregson was doing now.

  “Today we will be practicing for the concert,” Mr. Gregson told the class. “So everyone take their places, and we’ll start learning the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, ‘Time After Time.’”

  “I looove this song,” Bryce Dodd whispered to Keisha as they lined up on the room’s makeshift stage.

  Bryce was a weird, but nice, kid. So Keisha assumed this would be a weird, but nice, song.

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of ‘Time After Time,’” Keisha said.

  Bryce replied, “The Screamin’ Beagles do an amazing version. I was actually listening to their recording of it last night when I was doing my science homework and—”

  Keisha didn’t hear anything else, because the words science homework had nearly knocked her unconscious.

  Oh.

  No.

  She remembered Mrs. Shen assigning science homework.

  She remembered slipping science homework into her homework folder.

  But she did not remember doing her science homework.

  Oh.

  No.

  This was not like Keisha at all. She had never forgotten to do her homework. Ever.

  She raised her hand.

  “Yes, Keisha?” Mr. Gregson said.

  “May I please be excused?”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because I honestly might faint. Right here, right now, face-first into the bongos.”

  It wasn’t a lie. And Mr. Gregson could tell by the queasy look in Keisha’s eyes. He handed her a hall pass and said, “Go.”

  Keisha went. Only she didn’t go to the bathroom or the nurse’s office.

  She went to Locker 37.

  Chapter Four

  LOCKER 37

  Now let’s get a few things out of the way.

  Hopewell Elementary was an elementary school, obviously.

  It had teachers who taught students from kindergarten to fourth grade, as most elementary schools do.

  On its second floor, there was a faulty drinking fountain that dribbled water, so kids had to put their mouths on the nozzle, which was super gross.

  In the kitchen of its cafetorium sat something called a convection oven, which was basically like a regular oven, only it “convected” food. Or something like that. The only thing you really need to know about it is that it cooked food quickly. It was a very exciting type of oven, at least to people who care about ovens.

  Oh yeah, and Hopewell Elementary was home to Locker 37.

  You know about Locker 37, don’t you?

  The greatest locker that ever was or ever shall be?

  Quite possibly the most amazing, incredible, jaw-droppingly magnificent collection of atoms in the known universe?

  Ring any bells?

  Don’t worry. Even if you don’t know about Locker 37, Keisha did.

  On the first day of fourth grade, Keisha’s classmate Carson Cooper found a note written by the previous fourth-grade class. It was all about Locker 37. One part of the note said:

  If you or another fourth-grader has a problem (any problem!), open Locker 37 and the locker will provide a solution. It won’t always be the solution you want, or expect, but it is guaranteed to work.

  Word got around that Locker 37 had been casting its magic for years. But only for fourth-graders. Once a kid moved on to fifth grade, they forgot about it. And younger kids weren’t allowed to know about it.

  Which was fine by Keisha. She didn’t want anyone else to figure out what she was up to. All she wanted to do was open Locker 37, pull out some finished homework, and go on with her day.

  But things are never that simple, are they?

  Chapter Five

  THE REWINDABLE CLOCK

  Inside the glorious glowing belly of Locker 37, Keisha found . . . a clock.

  Not a phone with the time on the screen, or even a watch. There was no digital display or wristband on it. It was a genuine old-school clock. Which means it was a small round device with gears on the inside, a glass face on the outside, and twelve numbers and three rotating hands beneath the glass. If you knew how to read it, you could tell the time of day.

  Keisha did know how to read it, but she’d never seen such a small clock before. It fit in the palm of her hand.

  “This is not what I wanted, you, you, you . . . locker!” she hollered.

  “It never is,” a voice replied.

  Keisha turned to find Carson Cooper behind her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I was sorta hoping to use Locker 37,” Carson said. “But I guess you beat me to it.”

  Carson moved his left elbow across his chest and turned away.

  “Another stain?” Keisha asked.

  Carson sighed and nodded. When it came to getting stains on clothes, Carson was a seasoned pro. He had once even managed to ge
t both a wasabi and a Vegemite stain on the toe of his sock. It was an impressive feat on its own, but even more impressive when you consider that Carson didn’t know what those things were.

  Keisha held up the clock and told him, “Not sure if this will help you, but it sure isn’t helping me. I already know what time it is.”

  “What do you need help with?” Carson asked.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “It’s embarrassing?”

  “Extremely.”

  That might seem like an exaggeration. But for Keisha, it wasn’t. She was the best student in fourth grade. All the other students were in awe of her commitment to excellence. So forgetting to do her homework was beyond embarrassing. She might as well have been running through the gym in nothing but her underwear.

  “I once ran through the gym in nothing but my underwear,” Carson told Keisha. “I survived it. Whatever you’re facing can’t be as bad as that.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Keisha said as she ran her fingers over the surface of the clock.

  It was smooth and didn’t have any buttons on it. There was a knob on the top, however. And when she flipped it over, she found a message etched in the back:

  TO WIND THE CLOCK,

  PULL THE KNOB AND TURN

  Carson could’ve told her that Locker 37 didn’t give out the most detailed instructions, because he knew more about Locker 37 than anyone else in the fourth grade. After all, he was the first one in their class to use it. When he used the locker, he found an eraser inside that would erase . . . well, anything. But all that was written on the eraser was Rub Three Times.

  “Lemme guess,” Carson said. “That clock stops time.”

  “Who knows?” Keisha said. “Let’s see.”

  She did what the words said. She pulled the knob out from the clock about a quarter of an inch.

  There was a click!

  The second hand stopped moving.

  She tried to turn the knob clockwise to wind it. But it didn’t budge.