Transition in time

‘Next, please!’ The woman with heavy make-up behind the cafeteria’s cashier sighed when Joy hastily started searching for her student ID. ‘‘Darling, why don’t you have an implant…and if you love old-fashioned - have that card ready- I haven’t got all day!’’ Her manicured nails tapped against the screen in front of her. Joy quickly handed over her card. The beep told her that money had been taken off her student account for lunch. That till lady was just one more reason to skip school lunches. But Mum wanted her to have something hot and healthy. Joy looked at her burgers and fries.

At first she could not see a remote table. Today it was more packed than usual. There was the group of the ‘cool guys’. She knew that one of them was from Ghana, one from Botswana and one from New York. They were talking about Saturday’s match.

The next table was taken by a few Asian girls but they mostly kept to themselves. She seemed to fit in nowhere. She was too tall, too white, not English enough and not exotic enough. Her eyes were unnaturally green, her hair long and brown. She had nothing in common with all these laughing and chatting teenagers. She didn’t do small-talk and dreaded having to talk about what had brought her here. When asked directly she just told them the basics. They didn’t need to know any more. After the first few weeks they had stopped asking her questions and left her alone. Perfect.

Joy finally spotted one of the single tables set apart from the rest of all kids. Sitting there she would have her back to the corner. This was exactly the table she had been waiting for. Perhaps the architect had felt pity for the outsiders who wanted to keep their distance.

‘Hey, you!’

Joy looked up into a grinning freckled face. The eyes belonging to it were blue and mischievous. The boy’s ears stuck out and were framed by unkempt dirty blonde hair. Joy had seen enough. She turned all her attention to the rest of her food. But he moved in closer. ‘‘You, I know you can hear me!’

Joy shot him a look that she thought would freeze an army to the spot. The guy was about her age and unfazed.

Instead of his blazer he wore a black leather jacket over his white school uniform shirt. Joy realised she had seen him in her Geography class. She sighed. He was casually standing next to her now, one hand on his hip. His shirt wasn’t tucked in but hung loosely over his trousers that could have done with some ironing. She could not decide whether his shoes were merely dirty or just old. She looked up at him. His grin reminded her very much of the Cheshire cat in “Alice in Wonderland”.

‘I have noticed you don’t like to talk to people but it’s like this, you see, I kinda need something from you…I’ll keep it short and then you can enjoy the rest of your food in deadly silence, deal?’

It was time to leave. But when she got up he grabbed the chair of the table behind him and shoved it next to her, blocking her. Then he reached over and put one hand on her shoulder, gently pushing her down on her chair. This caught Joy unawares and so she sat. At least he then let go off her but when he sat he had really stalled her. ‘I am James, by the way. This’ll just take a sec’, he sneered. She frowned and then looked at him in disbelief. No, she would not take this. Nobody talked to her like that. What could he want from her anyway? She was just about to throw some nasty remark in his face when suddenly his grin froze. They both sat there motionless, their eyes locked together. Joy’s body was paralysed, she could not move a single muscle. The surge of panic within her gave way to a sudden chill starting on top of her head and running down her back into her toes. Then, as abruptly as the sensation had come, it was gone and she felt she could move again. Confused she looked at the motionless boy who had introduced himself as James.

‘Hey, are you okay?’ she asked him but there was no reaction. He had not altered his pose an inch. His eyes were open as wide as his mouth. It looked as if his movement had been captured in time. Joy stood up and looked at the students around them. Everyone had come to a standstill. The ones that had been talking to others had stopped in the middle of their sentences, their faces grotesquely distorted. Others were leaning in towards their friends, holding out spoons or knives. Joy slowly turned around. It was all of them; the staff behind the counter handing out food, the students queuing for the cashier – wait, the woman at the cashier was missing. The girl whose turn it had obviously been to pay was still holding her wrist with the ID-implant towards the till but there was nobody sitting there. Joy frowned and let her eyes wander around the cafeteria. Everyone except her was paralysed. It was only now she realised that there was also no sound. It was like a thick layer of snow had covered it all, muffling everything. Joy had never experienced such a complete silence and it made her shudder.

She turned towards James, her hand slowly reaching out for to him. His gaze now seemed ghostly, his eyes staring into nothingness. Her finger tips reached his black jacket. It felt like leather but the shoulder beneath it was unusually hard. James didn’t react at all. In fact, he didn’t seem to be breathing. Her hand touched his throat. It was like that of a sculpture. Her own pulse was racing now. What had happened? She wanted to scream but her throat was too tight and no sound came out of it. She put her arms around herself to feel the warmth of her own body and the movement of her chest going up and down. She held on for a few moments and then let go to take a couple of deep breaths. She needed to know if the rest of the world had also come to a standstill.

Joy carefully moved past James and walked through the cafeteria, avoiding touching anyone. When she came past the middle of the cashier queue she stopped. One of the girls had obviously just been pushed by another girl behind her. Joy found it hard to believe what she saw. The girl had let go off the tray which had come to a standstill in front of her. The things on the tray had moved to the front and the green pea soup had spilt out of the bowl into the air but it was just as immobilised in the moment as everything else around. The former liquid had the shape of a bent spear.

Joy turned towards the exit of the cafeteria and was just about to walk through the open sliding doors when she realised that they were moving towards her. At the same moment the noise around her hit her with full force. She could hear how a tray fell to the floor and how a bowl shattered into pieces. There was shrieking, laughter and about a hundred different voices all talking at once. When she turned around everyone was moving again. Joy felt dizzy. Perhaps all of this was getting too much for her and she was going loopy now. She decided she needed some fresh air. But what had happened to the blond guy? And what did he want? Her eyes searched for the table in the corner. The last thing she saw before she left the cafeteria was James in his leather jacket looking at the empty chair next to him in complete bewilderment.