The Watch with a Twenty-Fifth Hour

Two days before her exams began, Leontine found the watch in a tiny second-hand shop that smelled of oil and dust. It was old and silver, and its face had twenty-five numbers instead of twelve. The watchmaker wrapped it in brown paper and said only one thing: "Every hour it gives, it takes from somewhere." Leontine laughed. With six exams in four weeks, she would have paid for an extra hour with anything.

That night at midnight, the hands didn't move on to one o'clock. They slid to the number twenty-five, and the whole house went silent. The kitchen tap stopped dripping. Outside, a moth hung in the air beside the streetlight without moving its wings. For one full hour, everything stood still except Leontine, so she sat down and studied.

It happened every night. By the end of the month, she worked out, she would have studied for thirty extra hours. Her marks went up, and her teachers were impressed. If her exams kept going this well, she would get into the university she wanted. She only half noticed that her older sister, Clio, who shared her room, was having a terrible month. Clio missed her bus three times. Her alarm clock kept ringing an hour late, however carefully she set it. She arrived at her own birthday dinner when everyone was already eating dessert. "I don't understand it," she said. "I'm always exactly one hour behind."

Leontine stopped with her fork in the air. Exactly one hour. That night, when the hands slid to twenty-five, she didn't open her books. She looked across at Clio's side of the room. Her sister was frozen like everything else, and so was the moth outside. Only one thing was moving: the old alarm clock on Clio's bedside table, glowing in the dark. Its hands were turning backwards, minute by minute, giving Leontine her hour.

Leontine took off the watch. In the morning she would take it back to the shop. She only had one exam left, and she would just have to manage it in the normal number of hours, like everyone else. Before going back to bed, she went down to the kitchen for a glass of water. On the fridge hung the family calendar, and in Clio's small, neat writing, there was the same red word on every day of the month: late.