The alarm was not supposed to go off yet. Jake was absolutely certain the alarm was not supposed to go off yet. His eyes flicked to his watch, which moments ago had been flashing six fourty five. Seven. His bargain bin, navy blue wrist watch was now flashing seven o clock with the bright intensity of those neon pink signs advertising girls. The ones he walked past on his way to the bus stop every morning. It wasn’t possible, it shouldn’t be possible, and yet here it was. Glaringly obvious with the inane shrieking of his bedside clock. It was seven.

“You’re going to be late for school!” The voice which rattled up the stairs belonged to his mother. He should have told her. At the age of sixteen he still to this day told his mother everything. Not that he’d admit that if he was asked; it wasn’t cool to love your mom. But this one thing…. He didn’t think she’d believe it. Not because she wouldn’t believe him, of course she would. She’d believe him if he told her the sky was purple. But it was hard for him to imagine her believing him about this, mostly because he didn’t quite believe it himself.

Jake was losing time. Not in the same way that many people lost time these days, especially kids his age; that is to say he wasn’t whittling it away doom scrolling on various apps on his cell phone not noticing the minutes ticking by. Ticking… the word reminded him of yesterday. Yesterday when he’d sat for three straight hours staring at a clock. Not a digital one this time, after all perhaps those were simply subject to some massive data glitch. No, this was a good sturdy grandfather clock. The kind that cost an absurd amount at the local antique shop. The kind that bonged out the top of the hour.

Bong… would his mother think he was on drugs if he told her? It was an unhinged thing to think, drugs were expensive. And yet he was a teenager, if he mentioned losing batches of time most people’s first thought was that he was on drugs. How do you explain to anyone that the clocks are wrong? Not just your clocks…. All the clocks. Because the grandfather clock he’d been watching hadn’t belonged to him; he and his mother could never afford something so fancy as a grandfather clock. The clock had been at the library where he’d told his mother he was working on his English essay. The same essay that was laying half finished in his backpack at this moment while the shrill beep of the alarm was still pounding against the back of his skull.

He closed his eyes, letting the sound wash through him. Fifteen minutes this time… not a great block of time to have missed. You could simply attribute it to dozing off in most instances. There was nothing abnormal after all about being a sleepy high school student. He’d known several of his classmates to “lose” swaths of time in class. Something about hormones and growing just exhausted a human body, it didn’t seem like a great design. But this wasn’t the first bit of time he’d lost. And it wasn’t always lost ahead either. Just last week he’d been sitting in science class eagerly awaiting the bell and it hadn’t come. It hadn’t come because despite knowing for a fact he’d been sitting there for fourty five minutes the clock behind the teachers desk read only five past the hour. At first he’d attributed the strangeness to something called déjà vu. He must have simply imagined that he’d lost the time. But if he was imagining it this often… was he losing his mind?

The sound of clinking glasses could be heard downstairs. His mother, dutifully putting out breakfast. He knew in a moment she’d be pouring frothy orange juice into the spotlessly clean glasses and he’d smell the salty hickory aroma of sizzling bacon; she worked so hard. He couldn’t possibly trouble her with this. But it would be difficult to hear that subtle noise of clinking glass over the shrill alarm. It was then that his eyes shot open. The alarm was no longer sounding. His gaze flicked to his wrist watch once again, the face was scuffed. Seven ten. Time lost day dreaming? Time lost to the simplicity of wondering where the time had gone? And yet there was the alarm. He hadn’t silenced it. These things eventually shut themselves off didn’t they? Was it some kind of internal snooze? He found himself rustling in his desk drawer; the instruction manual had to be there somewhere. It would explain in there.

“You’re going to be late for school!” the voice sounded a bit sing song. Bright and cheery, the way his mother always was when speaking to him. She was less bright when talking to debt collectors on the phone, or when she was pleading for assistance from his father. But she was always bright with him. A sharp sting from the corner of the manual was worth it to lay hands on it. He gently sucked on the paper cut, the tang of copper dancing across his tongue while he flipped through the sand paper pages with his other hand. Even the paper the manual was printed on was cheap; expensive electronics manuals were printed on silky paper. But not his dollar store one. His mother’s voice held none of the irritation of having to remind her teenage son twice of the need to hurry. As he flipped through the pages which revealed no secret snooze function to his four dollar alarm clock he heard the tell tale sound of clinking glasses. The sound that would soon be followed by the enticing smell of bacon. The smell that hadn’t reached his nose yet. The monotonous tone of an alarm clock began beating a rhythm into his ear drums. It was seven o clock.

Katie Peach

@Katiepeach

Katie Peach has not written a story.