“Ugh, that smell—what is it?” said Erith, trying to pull the collar of her suit over her nose, but it was too tight.
“Who cares—just finish it already!” said Russ from across the table.
“Buthow?” Levana sat down, hands still in the air like she expected to need to grab the pot again at a second’s notice. We all held our breaths as we watched the steaming tea. “It’s not doing anything. It’s not?—”
The table began to vibrate.
My heart near stopped, skipped a minute altogether.Finally, finally, finally, ove?—
The tea in the cupspilledin the air, stopped over the rim for a beat as if it wanted us all to see it, thenfellall the way up toward the canopy.
Levana’s scream pierced the air as she looked at her own hands, shaking,vibrating,and then Erith and Mimi screamed, too, when we saw her face.
Wrinkles on her skin. Gray on her hair. The hands on her Life Clock were spinning so fast they’d turned to a blur.
“Stop it! Somebody stop it! Somebody?—”
The table stopped shaking.
The teapot ticked once, then began to steam again. The tea had filled back to420 minutes.
Levana looked like an old woman.
10
Enjoy the tea party,the Cheshire had said. I almost heard his voice repeating in my mind over and over as I eyed the teapot.
It wasn’t it.
Pouring sixty minutes out of the teapot wasn’t it. Levana’s Life Clock had started with sixty minutes, she said, and it was now down to thirty-one.
Almost thirty minutes gone, together with her youth. She’d aged so fast.
“Evenwedon’t age so suddenly if we sleep eight hours straight,” Mimi muttered from my side of the table, and that earned her a look from everyone.
Not me.
“Okay, okay, sorry,” she said with her hands out in surrender.
I thought I was going to throw up.
Not because Levana was old and she was still crying, but because I was itching to reach for that teapot, todo something,but I knew I was going to age just the same if I tried to pour the hour out.
That was notthe answer at all, and so my eyes wandered to the spoons and forks and knives hanging on trees around us, and the napkins that flapped their edges like birds did their wings as they rushed by.
No Cheshire grin anywhere.
“The sugar.”
We all turned to Russ.
“Look—the sugar is on that box with the teapot. The note near it saideat me,didn’t it?” Anika raised that same piece of paper to show him—yes, it did.“The tea has to have sugar in it.”
“Do it, do it, do it, do it…” Reggie chanted from next to Levana, whose shoulders were still shaking as she cried and looked at her wrinkled hands.
Time’s Teeth, Reggie looked even worse than before. Like he was genuinely going to be sick.
Russ leaned in and grabbed the bowl, his hands visibly shaking. He didn’t grow old as he analyzed the outside of the bowl—no markings—and then tilted it so the sugar moved and he could see theinside.
