A Friend WHEN THE MESSAGE LANDED IN MY EMAIL, from a fake account, I ignored it. It was spam. Or a joke. Or one of those random things that happen on the Internet—and if you fell into that time suck, then you deserved to get robbed. So I deleted it and went back to AP World History. But two weeks later, as I sat in the orchestra room, my hand clutched the neck of my violin like I might strangle it. I wondered if I really had run out of time—or become very bad at managing it. I’d been late for tonight’s special practice. I let the violin strings bite into my fingers, preferring pain to shame. I blinked, trying to figure out when the room had cleared. I blinked again as if waking from a dream and breathed in the stale, silent air. I looked from my own hands, still clutching the violin, to the ones on the clock. 6:38. The fire of lost time started in my toes, raced up my legs and straight to my heart. I jumped. My music stand crashed into the director’s podium, but I didn’t bother to right it.
