"Come on sleepyhead; you need to get up right now or you'll be late for school!" Kelly's mum called out.
     Realising that she'd slept in, Kelly struggled out of bed with a groan and pulled her clothes on. When she got downstairs, she found that she didn't even have time to eat breakfast. To make matters worse, she missed her bus and had to run all the way to school. When she finally got there, there was nobody in the playground because the bell had already rung and everyone was inside!
      "You're late again; that's the second time this week," scolded the teacher, as Kelly rushed into the classroom and took her seat. "Soon I will have to send a letter home to your parents."
     The whole class stared at poor Kelly and she felt herself go red.
     "I'm sorry Mrs Jones," she whispered. "I slept in and missed the school bus."
     "See that it doesn't happen again," replied the teacher, with a frown.

 
    "I'm always in trouble for being late but I don't seem to be able to help it," Kelly sighed, as she sat with her friend Belinda at recess. "Late to school, late to dinner, late to my swimming class... my mum says I was even born late!"
     "I think you need a watch," said Belinda. "If you had one like mine, you'd be on time for everything. Mine has a little alarm on it and I can set it to wake me up, or remind me when it's time to do something. It even has a stop watch on it."
     Belinda's watch was a very expensive sports model that her grandpa had given her for Christmas and Kelly knew that she could never afford one like it. Still, she did have some savings and guessed that she ought to be able to buy a pretty good watch with her money.
     "Perhaps you're right," she said with a smile. "I might even buy one tonight!"
 
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   After school, Kelly went home and opened up her piggy bank. She had been saving for quite a while and lots of coins came tumbling out onto her bedroom floor. She carefully counted them up and discovered that she'd saved twenty dollars.
     "Excellent," she whispered to herself. "I should get a good watch with that much money."
     Kelly gathered up her coins and put them in a little bag, taking them to a watchmaker's shop at a nearby shopping centre. She stared at the rows and rows of watches in a big glass display case, wondering which one she should choose. They were all very nice, but she wanted to try to get herself a sports model that looked a bit like Belinda's.
     "Can I help you?" asked the watchmaker, who was a little old man with a kind, wrinkly face.
     "How much is that one?" asked Kelly, pointing at a watch she liked.
     "One hundred dollars," he said.
     "Oh," said Kelly. "Um... how about that one?"
     "Eighty nine dollars and ninety five cents," was the reply.
     Kelly looked at all the watches and then looked at the watchmaker. "Are any of these watches twenty dollars?" she asked. "That's how much money I can spend."
     The little old man frowned. "I'm sorry dear," he replied. "None of these watches are that cheap."
     Poor Kelly's eyes filled with tears. "I really need a watch and I've only got twenty dollars," she sniffed. "I'm always getting into trouble for being late and I have to do something about it!"
     "What do you mean?" asked the watchmaker.
     So Kelly told him all about her problem.
     "So you've only got twenty dollars and you need a watch that will stop you from being late," said the watchmaker, when she'd finished.
    Kelly nodded.
     "Well," he said slowly, "I think I may have just the thing. A special watch that I keep out the back, for special customers."
     He went to the back of his shop and reappeared a few moments later with a beautiful little sports watch.
     "This is a very unusual model," whispered the watchmaker, showing it to Kelly.
    The watch had a shiny black face, with glowing yellow numbers on it and three buttons on its side.
     "How much is it?" she asked.
     "You can have it for twenty dollars, since that's all you can afford," he replied.
     "I'll take it!" said Kelly happily.
     The watchmaker strapped the watch on to her wrist. "Now you'll never be late again," he smiled, giving her an instruction booklet. "Read this and you will see why."

     When Kelly got home, she went straight to her bedroom.
     "Dinner is almost ready," warned her dad, as she went through the kitchen.
"Don't be late."
     It was her dad's turn to cook and he hated it if she was even a tiny bit late to
the table. Kelly sat on her bed and looked at the watch. The second hand ticked merrily around and the numbers glowed brightly. She opened the instruction booklet and began to read.

 It said:
          Supertime watch. Never be late again!
          Yes- time can be yours!
          Go forward in time and be early for a change.
          Go backwards and re-live those favourite moments
           in the past.
          Stop time and give yourself a holiday.
          It's all in the buttons. Simply press One, Two, or Three,
          to turn the hands of the watch forwards
          or backwards, or stop them altogether.
          The choice is yours.

     "This is amazing," Kelly whispered.
     A watch couldn't change time, could it? She decided to test it out. Her dad had said dinner was almost ready. Looking at the watch, she saw it was six o'clock. She pressed the first button, and turned the hands back to half past five.
     "Dad, how long until dinner?" she asked, going down to the kitchen.
     "Not for a while," he replied.
     Kelly pressed the third button on her watch. The hands froze... and so did time. Her dad became a statue, a pan on the stove stopped bubbling, and her little brother stopped running around outside, in the back garden. The watch worked! She pressed the button again, and everything returned to normal.
     "I can't believe it," she said to herself. "When the watchmaker said that this watch was special, he wasn't kidding!"
 
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     The next day, Kelly used her watch to make sure that she wasn't late for school. She was already waiting at the bus stop when her bus arrived and she was the first to line up at morning assembly. Even the Principal noticed, and gave her a smile.
     That morning, the class had a spelling test. Kelly hadn't had time to study for it, so she quickly stopped the hands of her watch and froze time, while she sneaked up to the teacher's desk to get the answers. When she had them, she started time again and copied them out. She got a perfect score and everyone was amazed.
     "Well done, Kelly," smiled Mrs Jones. "You must have studied hard to get such a good score."
     Kelly felt a little bit guilty but she just nodded and smiled back at the teacher.
     I probably would have got a perfect score if I'd had time to study, she told herself. I'll be sure to learn the words myself for the next test.

      At lunch time, Kelly stopped time again and gave herself an extra half hour to eat. It was strange to see everyone frozen like statues as she wandered around the schoolground. In the staff room, the teachers had been eating their lunch. One had a sandwich jammed in his mouth, where he'd been taking a bite out of it. He looked really funny. Outside, a basketball hung in the air above the basketball ring. Kelly took it and hid it in some bushes. When she started her watch again, she nearly fell over with laughter.
     "Where's my basketball?" wondered the boy who had thrown it. "It's disappeared!"
     "You lost it," complained his friend.
     "No I didn't!" he shouted.
     They spent the rest of lunch time arguing about what had happened to it.
     "You've been very good today and you haven't been late for anything," said Mrs Jones, at the end of the school day. "I'm very proud of you."
     And it's all because of my new watch, thought Kelly happily.
 
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Kelly's little brother Daniel was waiting for her, when she got home from
school.
     "Will you play with me?" he asked.
     "No way," she snapped, rudely hurrying past him. "I've got better things to do with my time than hang around with a dork like you!"
     Kelly wanted to turn her watch back a few days, so she could see an episode of her favourite television show again. When she got inside, she decided to have a shower first. There was plenty of time to do whatever she wanted. She took her watch off and put it on her bed. Then she went into the bathroom.

     While Kelly was having a shower, Daniel sneaked into her bedroom. He was angry at his big sister for being so mean. Why wouldn't she play with him? Why did she have to call him a dork? He decided to bounce on her bed and mess it up, just to annoy her. Then he spied her new watch.
     "Wow," he said, picking it up. "I'm going to borrow this."
     He quickly put it into his pocket and ran out of the room...

     When Kelly came back into her bedroom, she saw straight away that Daniel had been there. He had left muddy footprints on the carpet and they led straight to her bed.
     "Oh, no!" she groaned, when she saw her watch was missing.
     Kelly ran downstairs to the living room, but her brother was nowhere to be seen.
     "Where's Daniel?" she asked her mum.
     "I thought he was with you," her mum replied. "Maybe he's outside in the garden."
     Just as Kelly stepped out of the back door to look for him, the world froze. Although everything else had stopped, she found that she was still able to move about.
     Maybe I'm not affected because I've worn the watch, she thought.
     "Daniel," she called. "Where are you?"
     "I'm here," he answered, coming up behind her.
     "Quick- give me the watch," she said.
     Daniel shook his head. "I can't. I pressed a button on it and the hands stopped. I thought I'd broken it, so I threw it away."
     Kelly began to feel very scared. What if they couldn't find the watch and start its hands turning again? Would time be stopped forever?
   "Where did you throw the watch?" she asked, trying to keep calm.
     Daniel began to cry. "I was in my bedroom," he blubbered. "I threw it out the window and into the
bushes, so you wouldn't find out I'd broken it. I'm sorry; I didn't know it was magic."
     Kelly wanted to be angry with her little brother, but he was upset and she couldn't help feeling sorry for him. After all, he wasn't very old, and she knew she'd been really mean to him when she got home from school. "Never mind," she sighed, giving him a hug. "We'll find it and put things back
to normal. Just don't touch my stuff in future."
     Daniel wiped his eyes and nodded.
     Together, they ran around to the front of the house. Kelly looked at a car out on the street. It had stopped where it was, the driver staring straight ahead. One of their neighbours was waving at the car and her hand was frozen in the air.
     "This is too creepy," she said. "If I can find the watch and return things to normal, I'm going to take it straight back to the watchmaker. He should have warned me that something like this could happen."

     There were a whole lot of thick prickle bushes beneath Daniel's bedroom window, and Kelly had to crawl underneath them to find her watch. As she searched for it, she thought about how wrong she had been to take the basketball from those kids at school, and to cheat on the spelling test. Somehow, the watch had made her into a different person.
A person who wasn't very nice at all.
     "Are you sure you threw it in here?" she asked.
     "Yep," said Daniel.
     "Well it's not here now," said Kelly, scrambling out of the bushes and pulling some prickles out of her hair.
     "Look up there!" yelled Daniel.
     A big magpie was sitting frozen in a tree in their front garden, and on a branch next to him, was the watch.
     "He must have picked the watch up because it's shiny," wailed Kelly. "How are we ever going to get it back?"
     Daniel suddenly thought of a way to help. Running inside to his bedroom, he hunted through his cupboard for two of his favourite things. His fishing net and his super dooper slingshot.
     Hurrying back outside, he handed Kelly the net.  "Stand under the tree and get ready to catch the watch," he said.
     Kelly wasn't used to taking orders from her little brother, but as she didn't have a better idea, she did as he said. Although he was only five, Daniel was an expert with his slingshot. He was so expert that he wasn't allowed to use it any more, because he'd hit the mailman right on his butt with a stone one morning, and then broken their neighbour's front window. Now he was going to use the slingshot for something good.
     Daniel found a little stone of the just right size and carefully took aim at the watch, hoping it wouldn't break when he hit it. He pulled back the elastic band and fired. The stone sailed through the air and hit the watch right on one of its buttons. As it fell, time started again.
     "You did it!" Kelly cheered, as she caught the watch in the fishing net.
     Suddenly, their mum came out of the house and spotted Daniel with his slingshot.
     "Give that to me young man," she shouted. "You know you are banned from using it!"
     "It's mine Mum," said Kelly quickly. " It's for a school project on different weapons from the past. I was just showing it to Daniel."
     Kelly's mum frowned at her. "Put it away right now," she said. "I don't want Daniel breaking any more windows or hitting anyone else with stones."
     Daniel handed the slingshot over to Kelly.
     "Thanks alot!" he smiled, after their mum went back inside. "That was close."
     "Thank you for getting my magic watch back," Kelly replied. "I'm going to return it to the watchmaker's right away. I'd rather be late all the time. Now it's our secret, right?"
     Daniel nodded.
     "You're pretty smart for a little brother," grinned Kelly.
     "You're pretty smart for a big sister," Daniel grinned back.

     The watchmaker's shop was just about to close when Kelly arrived, and she pushed open the door and rushed inside.
     "I want to return this," she said, giving the watch to the little old man. "It's a special watch all right and it did stop me from being late, but you didn't tell me how dangerous it could be."
     The watchmaker gave her a knowing smile and stuck the watch in his pocket.
     "Here's your twenty dollars," he said, giving her all her coins back. "I kept them, just in case you changed your mind."
     Just as Kelly was leaving the shop, the watchmaker called out to her.
     "Did you learn something?"
     She stopped and thought about the things she had done.
     "I sure did," she replied. "Thank you."
     With that, she ran home to play with Daniel for a while, before it was time for dinner.

                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
      The next day, Kelly got up early and was first to assembly again.
     "Where's your new watch?" asked Belinda.
     "I took it back," said Kelly. "I don't need a watch to be on time for school; I just need to be more organised. I got my brother Daniel to wake me up when his alarm clock went off."
     "My rotten little brother would make me late on purpose," said Belinda.
     "Well, perhaps he's not as nice as mine," Kelly laughed. "Daniel is the best brother in the world!"

                                                                        
                                                                 THE END
 

Copyright 2009: Heather Hammonds.
This story may be downloaded and used by individuals or classes for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review, or as permitted under Part VB of the Copyright Act.
No part of this story may be otherwise reproduced without permission from the author. Enquiries should be directed to the author's e-mail address.

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