There are eleven seconds every afternoon when Gray Harbor Middle School holds its breath. The hallways stop humming, the second hands on every clock forget what they were supposed to be doing, and even the sneezy class gerbil in Room 12 pauses mid-sneeze like a furry statue. Kai Romero calls it the Hush. He didn't name it out loud, of course. You don't tell people you can walk around in frozen time and pick paperclips off the floor without anyone noticing. You don't tell your best friend Naomi Patel, who notices everything, that sometimes you set her fallen science notes back on her desk before they hit the ground. You definitely don't tell Mr. Alvarez, who wears bow ties with tiny lightbulbs on them, because he'd start a spreadsheet. So Kai wrote it in his notebook instead-tiny, careful letters between math problems and doodles of skateboard tricks he couldn't land yet. Hush = 11 sec. Happens: mostly 3:33 p.m. Side effects: goosebumps. Rules: Do Not Get Caught. On the day of the Invention Expo, the school smelled like hot glue and oranges. Paper banners sagged between the rafters of the gym, and half the eighth grade was carrying cardboard contraptions that hummed or blinked or flapped. Someone had spilled glitter near the bleachers, and it shone like a pocket-sized galaxy under the fluorescent lights. Naomi found Kai by the water fountains, her hair pulled back with a pencil, her hands shaking a little around a jar of something blue and wobbly. "I need your eyes," she said, in the same serious way she asked for a ruler or world peace. "They're attached," Kai said, though he leaned in anyway. The jar made a soft blup when she tilted it. "Electro-gel," she whispered. "It powers LEDs without wires. If I win, I'm going to be insufferable. Prepare yourself." Kai grinned. He was excited for her. He was also excited for 3:33, because the Hush was reliable like that, and because watching the gymful of projects freeze all at once would be like walking into a museum where the sculptures were made of people and snacks and swirling confetti. He didn't use the Hush for anything big. He moved spilled juice boxes away from skateboards. He stuck fallen name tags back on the right shirts. Once, he lifted a bee gently out of a girl's hair and set it on a windowsill, and when the world started again, the girl just blinked the way people do when they can't remember why they felt scared. He told himself that small good things counted. By 3:27, a crowd had gathered at the gym doors. Mr. Alvarez shouted over the chatter, "No running! Science advances on careful feet!" He had a way of making people laugh and obey at the same time. Kai checked the big clock above the scoreboard-3:31-and felt his skin start to fizz the way it always did when the Hush was near, like he had brushed against a sweater full of static. "Wish me luck," Naomi said, straightening the sign in front of her display. "And if I faint, catch me." "I'll catch your gel," Kai said, and Naomi rolled her eyes, which was how he knew she wasn't truly worried. 3:32 The gym turned into a sea of bright colours and louder voices. Kai tucked his notebook into his backpack and tried to look like a person with exactly zero secrets. He watched a seventh grader flip a switch and send a paper crane flapping its wings. He watched Principal Herrera practice her happy-but-not-playing-favorites face. 3:33. The second hand on the gym clock clicked forward like any other day. It reached the 6. The hand trembled. The air went tight, a soft pop in Kai's ears, and then-stillness. Everything stopped. Glitter hovered in the air. Mr. Alvarez's bow tie was caught mid-bounce. A drop of orange soda hung between a straw and a kid's open mouth, perfectly round, perfectly ridiculous. The paper crane froze with its paper wings lifted like it was listening hard. Kai exhaled, and his breath came out warm in a world that had stopped breathing. His sneakers squeaked softly on the gym floor, the only sound in a place that usually echoed. He took a step towards Naomi's table, where a bubble in the electro-gel had caught a fluorescent light and was shining like a tiny moon. He would look, then maybe straighten a crooked poster and gently set a stray battery back on someone's display. Just little things. He slid between a pair of frozen seventh graders, careful not to brush against their held-in-place elbows. It was the glitter that made him see it. On the floor near the bleachers, the spilled glitter lay like a spilled night sky. In the Hush, not a speck should move. But as Kai watched, a line appeared in the sparkles-dim little prints pressed into silver dust, one after another, fresh. Invisible feet were walking through the glitter. Kai's mouth went dry. He looked around the frozen gym, heart thudding so loud the eleven seconds seemed to echo with it. He wasn't supposed to be the only one in the Hush. That was the first rule he hadn't written down because he had never needed to. The world stopped, and he moved. That was how it was. That was how it had always been since the day last fall when he had looked up at the clock in Social Studies, blinked, and realized everyone else had become paintings. Little glitter prints led away across the floor, under a sagging banner that said INVENTION EXPO in letters cut out of recycled cereal boxes. They turned left at the snack table, passed through the edge of a tablecloth, and headed for the door that led to the old stairs behind the gym-the ones that twisted up to the clock tower. No one was supposed to go up there. There was even a sign with a red hand and NO STUDENTS in all caps. Also, a rumor said there were pigeons the size of Labradors. Kai did not believe in giant pigeons. He did believe in rules, mostly. But he believed less in letting invisible somebody-or-other walk away into the Hush and come back with... what? Something from the tower? Something from the stillness itself? He stepped over the glitter prints and followed. The gym door to the stairwell was heavy. In the Hush, things weighed the same and light felt heavier because the weight of sound and movement was gone. He grabbed the handle, felt the cold metal under his fingers, and pulled. It opened with a sigh that made no sound. The stairwell smelled like dust and pennies. Light slid through the high, skinny window in a perfect slice. Kai took the stairs two at a time, listening to the hush within the Hush-his own heartbeat, his own breath, the scrape of his sneaker against concrete. The little prints continued in faint flour-like smudges where glitter had shaken loose, then vanished where the stairs grew clean. At the first landing, he paused. A thin thread of sound snuck through the stillness, so quiet it hardly dared exist. Not sound, exactly-more like a vibration under his skin, a soft electric hum he had felt only a handful of times before, like touching the back of an old television. The Hush wasn't silent after all, he realised. It had layers. He kept climbing. Halfway up, a pigeon sat on the windowsill and surprised him into a tiny yelp that would be embarrassing later if there was a later. It was a normal-sized pigeon, gray and curious, frozen with its head turned sideways. Its eye looked like a bead of black glass. At the top of the stairs, the door to the old clock room stood just slightly open. That was wrong. Mr. Alvarez always checked the lock when they used the gym. Principal Herrera was serious about rules and rickety stairs. But the door was open, a narrow wedge of not-quite darkness, and from inside came the softest flicker of blue-white light, the kind that makes your eyes go squinty all on their own. Kai pressed his hand flat against the peeling paint and pushed. The door protested with a motion-only shudder. Inside, the clock room was jammed with gears and shadows, a forest of brass teeth and wooden beams. Dust hung like sleepy stars. Against the far wall, the back of the clock face glowed pale where the afternoon sun tried to push through. And in front of it stood a person. Not a grown-up. Not a teacher. A kid in a black hoodie with the hood up, hands lifted like they were holding invisible strings. The strings were real, though-sort of. They looked like drawn lines of light, thin as fishing line, trailing from the kid's fingers to the clock's innards. Where they touched, the big gear with the long arm-the one that made the minute hand move-shivered. The kid's sneakers, white with silver lightning bolts along the sides, were dusted with glitter. Kai knew those sneakers. Not who they belonged to, exactly-but he'd seen that shiny bolt zip down the sixth-grade hallway, and across the blacktop during recess, and disappear into the crowd after the late bus. He had never seen them in the Hush. The kid's head tilted. Even with the hood up, Kai felt the prickle of being seen, like sun on the back of his neck. The blue-white light tightened, the strings grew brighter, and the minute gear twitched against time like a fish on a line. Kai stepped into the room, his feet careful on old boards. "Hey," he said, because he couldn't think of anything else, because sometimes hello is a magic word that makes everything normal. The kid's shoulders stiffened. The hidden face turned, the hood's shadow peeling back just enough for a sliver of cheek, a flash of astonished eyes. The strings trembled and went bright as lightning. "You can move," the kid whispered, voice carrying in the not-sound of the Hush like a pebble dropped in a still lake. It was half a question, half a relief. Kai nodded. "You too." Below them, the gym clock's second hand quivered toward the 7. The hum under Kai's skin grew urgent. Eleven seconds were almost never enough for anything. From somewhere deep in the gears, a new sound found them-real sound this time, thin and sharp, the first crack of the Hush breaking. The light-strings tightened until the air around them rang. The minute gear jerked. The kid flinched and lifted a hand towards Kai, palm out, fingers splayed, and the air between them shivered like heat above a road. The clock's glow brightened in a sudden, blinding flare-