Free The Time Fetch by Amy Herrick Page A

start. It had come from somewhere in the back of the lunchroom. She knew the boys were staring at her, but she was too distracted to blush. She turned around quickly and searched the crowd, but, again, whoever she was looking for wasn’t there.
    Science was their last class of the day.
    Edward decided that the safest thing to do would be to go into Advanced Level Chill Mode. He felt this was what was needed in order to protect his health and sanity. It was a little bit drastic and carried its own dangers, but there had been far too much excitement today. In this mode he made a conscious effort to bring all his bodily functions to a near halt. It was similar to what was done to people when they were going to travel through space for extended periods of time. In order for Advanced Level Chill Mode to work in school, you needed to find a seat at the back of the classroom where the teacher wouldn’t notice that your body was no longer inhabited by a conscious human being. The danger was that you would be called upon and would, naturally, fail to hear a thing. Some teachers got all cranky when this happened.
    He found a nice seat in the back corner by Mr. Ross’s treasure table. He scrunched himself down and proceeded to slow his various support systems: first respiration and heartbeat, then sensory awareness. As he drifted off, he heard Mr. Ross blabbering on about the Paleolithic Era and ice ages. He had just reached a pleasant state of semi-consciousness when a loud bang brought him rudely back to reality.
    His eyes flew open.
    Mr. Ross was glaring at the class. He picked up the big geology textbook and dropped it on the table again.
    “Wake up, people! You think that was so long ago, two hundred thousand years? Two hundred thousand years is only a second, a tiny tick, in the grander scale of things.”
    There was an uneasy shifting in seats.
    “Okay! You people are way too comfortable for your own good! Hypothetical situation: Sudden time warp—we’ve been thrown back in time, say, around two hundred thousand years. We’re nearing the winter solstice just as we are now. You are young hunter-gatherers. The days, you have noticed, are shorter and shorter, the nights longer and longer. The situation does not look good. It’s cold. Nothing’s growing. One of your tribe left the shelter the other night to relieve himself and never returned. Probably eaten by some wild beast . . .”
    Mr. Ross seemed to be waiting for someone to say something. But there was only silence. He went on.
    “You know nothing at all about the laws of nature and the movements of the planets, but you know enough to know that if something doesn’t change soon, you will all be goners. What would you do?”
    He waited again, expectantly, but still, there was no answer.
    “C’mon, c’mon somebody. What do you think? What would you do?” Mr. Ross turned on Delilah.
    “Delilah?”
    She gave a bored shrug. “Pray?”
    Everybody laughed.
    Mr. Ross looked serious. “But she’s right, you know. This was almost certainly one of the fears that made humans begin to look for the gods.”
    Edward noticed that several of the more marshmallow-brained glanced around nervously as if expecting some dude carrying a lightening bolt to jump out from under a chair.
    Mr. Ross directed their gazes to the sky. “The sun will set even earlier today than yesterday. Tomorrow it will set even earlier. Dark will come on fast. What if the sun just vanishes? What then?”
    Still no answer. Mr. Ross pointed to someone.
    “We’d freeze to death?”
    “Okay. Good. What else?” Mr. Ross pointed to Danton.
    “Uh . . . since we wouldn’t be able to grow anything, there’ll be nothing to eat?”
    “Yes.” Mr. Ross nodded. “ Solstice. Does anybody know what the word means?”
    Edward knew. His aunt was very serious about celebrating the solstices, but he felt no need to share this embarrassing fact.
    Mr. Ross, however, apparently read his mind. “Edward?”
    Edward