Georgie and Hayden tried to contrive the most believable story possible, but one that would also keep Penelope out of the news and the police away from them. They seemed to have no qualms about lying. Penelope could understand why. She had been missing for three weeks. Any adult who showed up at her mother's house with her now would have some serious explaining to do.
But Penelope already knew what to say, because she had considered it so many times before.
"PENELOPE! Oh my god!" Her mother's voice shuddered as she tore out of the house and ran to her daughter. She clutched her so tightly that Penelope could scarcely breathe, and when she pulled away Penelope saw tears in her eyes. She started to feel a little tearful herself.
"What--" Her mother turned to Georgie. They had decided it might be best to leave the tattooed Hayden at home. "Who the hell are you?" Her voice sounded razor-sharp.
Georgie gave a slight, warm smile. "My name is Georgina Clark. I found your daughter wandering around 18th Street this morning."
"What?" Back to Penelope. "What were you doing out there?! That area's dangerous! No, where have you been?!" She seemed to have bought Georgie's story already.
"I...I ran away." Penelope looked at the ground, and she finally felt tears began to fall.
Her mother seemed ready to collapse. "Why?"
"I don't know. I miss dad!" Now she began truly crying in earnest.
"Oh, God. Penelope..." The anger fell away. She took her in her arms again. "I know. I know. But you can't do things like that. You're lucky to be alive right now. I had the police and everyone out looking for you...it's a miracle you were finally picked up by this woman instead of some predator. Thank you," she said to Georgie.
"No problem. I have to be going, actually. But, and, I hope this isn't asking too much too soon, but my eyes aren't too good anymore, and...while we were talking your daughter said she'd like to read to me sometimes. Would that be OK?" This lie was new to Penelope, but she picked it up immediately.
"Please, mom? I feel safe with Georgie. She reminds me of grandma." She dried her face on her mother's shirt, something she had used to do when she was a toddler.
"Ugh, gross!" They both laughed despite everything. "I think that'd be OK. If I can come over and talk with you a little more first. If it weren't for you, I don't know what might have happened."
"Of course. I understand. Well, I'll get out of your hair now. Nice meeting you..."
"Anna."
They shook hands, and Georgie drove away.
It seemed Timothy was spending the night at a friend's house, so Penelope could do exactly what she wanted to do: lie on her own bed, in her own room, and stare at the ceiling. She had promised her mother they would talk tomorrow. She only wanted to be here now, in solitude and peace. She rolled over and grabbed her stuffed sawfish, squeezed it tight against her chest. "I'm home, I'm home, I'm home," she whispered to herself.
Slowly, her mind began to drift to the conversation with Georgie and Hayden.
When the conversation had resumed, the thing that had struck Penelope as a contradiction had finally bounded into her conscious mind. "If seconds and minutes aren't real, how can anything steal them?" Georgie had explained that what the monsters stole was the human perception of time units. To this, Penelope had asked how there could be any real loss of time if they only stole the perception of it, and nobody noticed it was gone.
"It's a little complicated," Georgie had said. "But everything about our existence is very much affected by our thoughts and perceptions. We change the world around us in imperceptible ways, and we barely understand it. This concept, outside of outdated spiritual notions, is at the cutting edge of scientific mysteries. It's the importance we all ascribe to time that fills it with energy for the monsters to steal."
Penelope had tried to look like she understood, but she didn't.
She had understood Hayden much better.
A thousand years ago, Hayden said, there lived a woman in Baghdad named Asima. Penelope only knew Iraq as a poor, dangerous country where the United States had warred some years ago, but according to Hayden, it had once been practically the center of the world. She compared it to ancient Greece at the height of its enlightenment. In this flourishing version of Baghdad, Asima had been the daughter of a wealthy man, able to immerse herself in studies of philosophy, mathematics, literature, and more. One of her favorite things to do was to go outside at night and look at the stars.
One summer night, as she gazed at the night sky, a cloud began to pass over a star. But, in a barely-imperceptible way, the cloud jumped. It didn't move more quickly, as though pushed by the wind; no, it was now covering the star, now beyond it, without actually moving from one place to the next. Furthermore, Asima herself felt as though a tiny piece of her had been lost. Anyone else would probably have dismissed the extremely minor occurrence -- "In fact, everyone does," Hayden had said -- but not Asima. Her incredible attention to detail and curiosity led her to contemplating this strange phenomenon.
Later that night, one of her father's guards claimed to have been attacked by a massive dog. His arm had nearly been severed by the beast, but it was nowhere to be found. Again, Asima's inquisitive, creative mind found cause to link these two events where an ordinary person would have seen no connection.
She began to watch for such minuscule leaps in time -- and she found them.
Hayden had concluded in a rush, "Asima was pretty well respected for a woman back then, but men thought what she said about time leaps was ridiculous. So she talked to some female friends, and managed to get them to watch for the leaps themselves. After a couple of years, they believed her. Together, they formed a secret society to make sure they could study and talk in peace. It eventually spread all over the world, and it still exists today. We're two of its members." Hayden had leaned back and flopped a leg over the arm of her chair. "Pretty cool, huh?"
Lying on her bed now, the melancholy and confusion Penelope felt was briefly overtaken by a crazy question that had been nagging her ever since Hayden had finished talking: Can I join?