Then there was the problem of the watch.\u00a0 It had been given to her on her sixteenth birthday, one week before she had left.\u00a0 It was a modern watch, designed to look like an antique, with a brushed gold band and stylized Roman numerals on an ivory face.\u00a0 The problem was not that it had stopped, but rather that it had simply ceased telling the time.\u00a0 She knew it was working, because she could hear it when she held it up to her ear, a steady, reassuring tick-tick-tick, like a tiny metal heartbeat.\u00a0 It would have been more reassuring if the hands were moving.\u00a0 Sometimes she thought they had, but when she checked again, she saw that the time had not changed.\u00a0 It was always 11:59.\u00a0 She had, for some time now, been making a list of all the things she would willingly give up if it would only tick over to twelve o’clock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Then there was the problem of the watch.\u00a0 It had been given to her on her sixteenth birthday, one week before she had left.\u00a0 It was a modern watch, designed to look like an antique, with a brushed gold band … Continue reading