CHAPTER THREE

AHMAD DIDN’T NOTICE IT at first. He was too busy smacking the back of his Switch.

“No, no, no! Please don’t do this to me!”

He tried to tug out the cartridge, but it was good and stuck. Maybe it had been jammed in too tight, or Farah had sent him a bootleg of some sort. His thoughts jittered and jostled against themselves in his head.

“Ahmad?”

It didn’t help that Winnie’s voice had suddenly risen several octaves. Ahmad shook his head, pressing the power button.

“Why . . .”

“Ahmad!” Winnie shook his arm.

“What?” Ahmad snapped, raising his head. “Gimme a minute. And stop shouting in my ear.”

His voice trailed off as his eyes finally took in the world around him. The sun was still shining, and Winnie’s hand on his arm still sent little shocks of disbelief into his brain. So it took him a full minute to realize what was wrong.

For the first time in Ahmad’s life, Central Park was entirely still.

Nothing moved: not the pigeons dotting the pavement or the jogger in the distance, or the tree branches above their heads. Nearby, a mom leaning over a stroller did not lift her head, though her neck was craned at an awkward angle. The ice cream vendor’s mouth was frozen as he shouted a greeting to the unmoving businessman strolling by with a newspaper under his arm. A dog floated in midair with his paws off the ground, lunging for a Frisbee. As Ahmad and Winnie watched in horror, he did not show any signs of plummeting back to the ground.

“What’s going on?” Ahmad breathed.

“It’s like someone hit a pause button,” Winnie whispered back. But her hush was as loud as a shout. There was nothing to compete with: no honking taxis or loud radios. “But why? How could this happen?”

Ahmad opened his mouth to respond. “Ouch, ouch, ouch! That hurts!”

His Switch clattered out of his fingers and onto the pavement. Winnie seized his hand, turning it back and forth. “What happened?”

Ahmad yanked it away, sticking his fingers in his mouth.

“Ith burnth me,” he mumbled. A very small part of his brain was pointing out that Winnie Williamson was concerned about him, but the rest of him was too freaked out to care. In his twelve years on earth, three things remained a constant: his family, his game consoles, and his beautiful city. And suddenly, two out of three were changing the rules without warning.

What was going on?