Just a Matter of Time
To: Sadie.Lin@email.com
From: TimeThief@email.com
Subject: You’re running out of time
If time is money, then someone is robbing you blind.
A Friend
When the message landed in my inbox, 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
