Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Mississippi. Or, perhaps, she only lived by the Mississippi River, and was named something else-Sara, or Jenny, or maybe even Clarabelle. To tell the truth, I'm not sure. It's hard to remember now. At any rate, she was called Mississippi by everyone who knew her, and that is the important part.

Mississippi was a tiny, solemn girl, who should have had straight brown hair with long brown bangs behind which would rest clear green or blue eyes, exhibiting intelligence far beyond her tender years. If I were writing this, she would have been slim and pale, and a loner whom no-one understood, perhaps with an imaginary friend, and certainly with a deep love of books. But unfortunately, life has no sense of character, and Mississippi had frizzy strawberry-blond hair and muddy brown eyes. Everyone liked her, and she had a blotchy tan from hours of playing soccer. Mississippi-her unwieldy cognomen had never been shorted to Missy or Miss or Sis, not even by the people normally found diminutives irresistible-rarely read, although she did adore mysteries, and all of her Agatha Christie books were in tatters.

She was twelve when she figured in out for the first time, though it had been going on since she was ten, which should say something about her intelligence. You don't know what I'm talking about right now, I realize this. Give me a minute. It's something that should have been obvious, I can tell you that much. When you see the signs, you'll figure it out right away.

I suppose you're surprised-and perhaps cynically skeptical-about the idea that nobody mocked her for her name. If I'd made this up, I would have mulled over this notion for a while before finally giving it up as ridiculous. After all, school is a vicious jungle, and a handle like 'Mississippi'� would have been just like the scent of blood to the jaguars in a proper story. However, I promised to record this faithfully, and I simply must shrug and say with a writer's despair that Mississippi was never teased for the preposterous name she went by, and leave it at that.

Now that I think about it, I suspect that the disparity is due to her personality. The girl was impossible to laugh at or insult. It would have been like being rude to a rock-the tock wouldn't have cared or noticed, and you'd have just ended up looking foolish. Mississippi did not lend herself to jokes or nicknames, except, maybe, the name by which she was known-I still cannot for the life of me remember if it was her real name or not. The girl was too serious for the amateurish insults that her peers would have created, and she gave adults the unnerving impression that she was not only more mature than they, but more experienced and wiser as well. It is difficult to make fun of somebody who looks like they have already seen and done everything there is to be seen or done. People almost had no choice but to like her. Mississippi was very sweet, and went out of her way to be nice to people. Without being condescending about it, Mississippi did favors for everyone, requesting no reward. This makes her sound insufferable and boring from a literary point of view, so I will quickly add that she also had a slow but wicked temper that, when roused, sent her into fits of towering rage. Luckily, it took a great deal to make her angry, and in fact, before the end came, she had only had these frenzies twice.

That is important.

Before I forget to tell you, her mother died giving birth when Mississippi was only two. The baby didn't make it either. Her father coped reasonably well, and had just begun dating again when Mississippi finally put the pieces together. In most fairy tales-for this is a sort of a fairy tale, if you haven't guessed that part yet- Mississippi's father would either be perfect or pure evil, but was merely ordinary, with a normal mix of kindness and strictness, prone to making mistakes that were rarely bad, but rather just incorrect. The women he dated were also ordinary, some quirky, some bitter, some understandably single, some sweet. You shouldn't care about them much; they're not important.

When not playing endless games of soccer, Mississippi and her friends liked to play hide and go seek. Perhaps they were a little too old for the game, but it was more than the 'duck behind the tree'� version that is usually enjoyed by youngsters. For one thing, they used a huge area for their arena, a large forest patch with huge boulders and large hollow logs. If everyone hid carefully, games could go on for hours. In fact, they often did, because nobody liked to lose.

And so it was that one day in the midst of summer sun and heat, five children-two boys and three girls, including Mississippi-decided to play their favorite game. Mississippi volunteered to be 'It'� first. She didn't mind, and she had more than enough speed to catch runners.
It was a perfect summer day. The birds warbled all around, and flies and dragonflies zoomed through the humid air. The trees cast dappled shade all around them, and thick grass cooled their ankles.

'One, two, three,'� Mississippi said, hands cupped over her eyes as she leaned into the tree. Her forehead pressed into the rough grey bark.

'You're counting too fast!'� shouted one of the boys, a new addition to their group. He stepped away from the tree he'd been preparing to climb and confronted her, hands on his hips.

Mississippi felt surprised. 'Oh, I'm sorry. How should I count, then?'� She moved away from the birch, her eyes blinking at the return to sunlight.

The boy emerged from the shade. 'Use your name!'� he said. There was a sneer curling around his mouth.

'Hmm?'� said Mississippi. She looked at him with a confused but friendly expression.

The boy smirked at her, but the look dripped off his face as she stared at him blankly. He scuffed his toe into the dirt and looked away. 'At home, we count seconds by saying 'One, Mississippi, two, Mississippi,''� he mumbled.

'Oh. Really?'� Mississippi turned to her friends at this point, who were all poised between the clearing and the trees. 'Have you ever heard of people doing that?'� she asked them.

They looked uneasy and guilty. 'Yes,'� said one of the girls. 'My mom does that.'�

Mississippi shrugged and smiled. 'Okay. I'll start over.'� Again, she snuggled into the tree with her eyes covered. 'One, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, three, Mississippi . . .'� she counted through to fifty, hearing the rustling that her playmates made as they hid. 'Ready or not, here I come!'�

She strode though the thick grass, her bare feet sticking slightly to the moist dirt. Mississippi loved this forest, but she spared no glance for its beauties today. She liked to win hide and go seek, and contained her gaze to likely hiding spots. She searched in a couple of fallen logs and in a particularly thick patch of weeds before finding the new boy hiding under an over-sized berry bush. Mississippi popped a red berry into her mouth before tagging the boy, who hadn't seen her coming. 'Found you!'� she said with a grin.

The boy blinked at her. 'When did you get here?'�

'A few seconds ago,'� said Mississippi. 'I was too quiet for you to know I was here.'� She chewed her berry.

'But . . . but you only just stopped counting! And you were over by the tree! How'd you get over here so fast?'� The boy slithered out from under the bush and stamped his foot, his shoulders shaking in his upset fear.

She shook her head. 'I don't understand.'� She reached out to calm him.

By the way, if you had been there, you would have noticed that all the bugs were frozen in mid-flight and I bet that you also would have noticed that everything was completely silent and that nothing moved. Mississippi didn't see a thing.

The boy backed away from her hand. 'I'm getting out of here. This is really weird.'� He ran off, his sneakered feet thumping on the damp soil.

Mississippi was confused, but she shook off the odd little boy's actions in a few moments, seeking and finding the rest of her friends. Flush with the fun of the game, the other children failed to realize the time discrepancy, and Mississippi's hold on the time stop faded shortly after finding her last friend. Then they went home, because, inexplicably, it was nearly dinnertime, though they were almost certain that they'd only begun playing twenty minutes before.

You know why.

So, for the next two years, Mississippi remained oblivious, which is really quite ludicrous, in my opinion, and I'd never write such a stupid thing. Only reality could be that ridiculous. I mean, honestly, who doesn't notice over two whole years that they can control time? For those two years, time never flew when she was having fun. The boring moments flashed past, and she always got enough sleep. That's just insane. Mississippi was a nice kid, but rather dumb, you know?

I suppose you're thinking that I should give her some slack, as she was only ten, but children are supposed to see the make in the world. Imagination is the child's most important attribute and tool and weapon. Don't you agree?

She figured it out when she was twelve, as I've mentioned before. The realization wasn't the result of some great event, I regret to say. Nothing in particular prompted her finally waking up and noticing what was happening-what had been happening-no big occurrence let the knowledge crash into her head like a tidal wave. This annoys me, but I must say that it makes sense when Mississippi is involved. She could be a dull child a lot of the time.

That day, she unconsciously stopped time again, needing to finish a piece of homework, and a glance away from her paper in search of inspiration caused her gaze to collide with a motionless cat, jumping down from the next door neighbor's window ledge. Its legs and tail were splayed out, its paws inches from the ground.

Mississippi saw that, and she knew. Easy as that. She finished her homework in record time, guessing that she'd been cheating for years in this manner without knowing, knowledge that sat in her stomach in a cold, sticky lump. Somehow she knew what to do, willing things back to normal as she finished. Then she went to school, because it was time to go.

And that was that.

So, as people tend to do, Mississippi worked out a set of rules for her ability, and tried hard not to break them except for very important reasons, though sometimes things became more important than they really were. Mississippi was only supposed to use it for emergencies, and only for short periods of time, as much meaning as that phrase when time bending is involved.

Now I'm sure you want to know what huge disaster occurred as a consequence of all her time-fiddling. I'm sure you're expecting that something dire is going to happen, because after all, time is very important. It's not something that a child should shift and mold as if it were Play-Doh.

You must be impatient at this point, wondering when I'm going to tell you what Mississippi must have done to deserve my little story. Why else-I can see this question in your eyes-would I give you all these character details about someone who would have been a very boring person if it hadn't been for her unique ability to use time as a cat's cradle string? I know you are expecting something horrible to occur.
Here, I am happy to report, I can amply satisfy you.

In a little bit. Be patient; good things come to those who wait!

Do you remember that I told you that she had two rages before the end? Of course you do, it wasn't that long ago. Anyways, one of those was because of a nasty remark a girl at school made concerning Mississippi's best friend. That incident would show, in a story, that Mississippi was a very loyal person, but here I'm just reporting. As it were.

The second tantrum or rant or berserk rage or whatever you want to call it is the more important one. To be honest, I'm not quite sure what caused it. Some reports point to a vicious dad girlfriend who had momentarily caused her father to lose his mind and be nasty to his daughter. I've always thought that this was a stupid explanation, so I think we can easily discard it. I mean, there was plenty of this over the years, and none of them phased Mississippi even a little.

And the next hypothesis is even sillier. I wouldn't mention it, but I'm sure you'd get huffy if I didn't, so I'll just say that it says that it's meant to be part of an argument over the affections of a boy, which . . . no.

My personal belief is that it was something secret, something that maybe nobody else knows, mixed in with her simply being in a terrible mood one day. She was human, after all.

At any rate, Mississippi had a horrible fit of anger, and afterwards, she felt so guilty that she put herself in timeout to calm down from the strong and perhaps unwarranted emotions.

One, Mississippi.

God help them.

Two, Mississippi.

And she fell asleep for a very long time indeed, and the world slept with her.

Three, Mississippi.

We found out later that while she'd been a girl of extraordinary ability, she hadn't been a goddess. Her control of time was limited to Earth alone.

Four, Mississippi.

So the universe rolled on . . . one year for every second that the Earth was frozen in time, its revolution halted and its people in mid-step.

Five, Mississippi, six, Mississippi.

All things grow, and all things end, and all things die. And so they changed in the space around the Earth.

Seven, Mississippi, eight, Mississippi.

The sun rose the morning she finally woke up. It was huge and red and ill.

Nine, Mississippi.

That evening they had the most beautiful sunset.

Ten, Mississippi.

And then everything else set as well.

Ready or not, here I come.

And so you see, don't you, why I told you the story of Mississippi? She was, perhaps, boring and certainly not the smartest girl in the world. Mississippi was sweet, though, and she really did try to use her power wisely.

What frustrates me is that it's all so inexplicable! We still don't know how it happened. Time was never meant to be under the control of a little girl. Was it?

Oh well.

Poor Mississippi.

Olly olly oxen free.

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