Stuck in Time | #OpenNovellaContest2020 | Round Two

6.

I stared at the message on my phone screen from Iris:

How's your day going

I hated how she always left grammatical punctuations, but I long stopped arguing about it with her. She didn't care as long as she made sense. When she didn't and I pointed that to her... well, let's just not go there.

I glanced at my lunch tray at the table in the meeting room, where all the staff were asked to gather by Principal Reynolds. The man himself wasn't in, yet, though, so we sat there waiting. A few other teachers came in late and I supposed it was because they had their food.

I picked up my phone and started typing back a response:

Horrible.

Wished I was not in at all and maybe taken another day off.

Or a whole week

Until this mess is stopped talking of...

You know?

I then locked the phone and set it aside, bringing my tray before me to start eating the fried rice before it cooled off completely.

As I ate, people gathered around to me at the meeting table to sit down, some with their lunches like me. But, I like they were all trying hard not to look anywhere in my direction.

"Lonely, huh?"

I jumped almost a mile in the air, my spoon skipping out of my fingers and landing on my tray with a loud tinkle. Thankfully, nobody seemed to notice, so I turned around to see who it was who spoke so close to my ear.

Maureen Oswald, my other childhood best friend, stood there with a grin on her face. I sighed with relief.

"Well, yes, kind of," I replied to her question as she took a seat to my left. "I mean, I'm glad to be ignored – Principal Reynolds must've told them off or something – but, still, I don't like the way they keep glancing at me when they think I'm not noticing them."

She nodded sympathetically. "Curse of being in the middle of a murder mystery," she quipped. "Hey, speaking of which... there's a rumour around that you killed that man." I groaned as she went on to add: "Any reason why you lied to the police about when you found the body?"

"My magic," I barely whispered.

She leaned forward. "What?"

I closed the gap to repeat, "My magic."

"Oh," she breathed. "I see now. I'm sorry. I suppose it happened sometime when you weren't at home – er, I mean, time-travelled."

I nodded. "Yea. I can't explain that to the police. There was nothing wrong when I came back home, so it didn't happen then. But now..."

"You should tell Jefferson."

I gaped at her. "What?!" I whispered fiercely.

"What's the harm that'd come out of it? He's the police, anyway, you'll need to tell him. At most, he won't believe you."

"Or worse, toss me in the psychiatric ward with a warrant for the murder."

"Well, he and you are quite close. I'm surprised you didn't tell him about your special ability yet."

"Special, my foot. It's been failing me for the past two days."

"What, really? Since the murder?"