“Let me tell you about what I’ve been doing as I was gone,” I muttered just loud enough for Max to hear. I smiled, relishing this feeling of power. “I’ve been preparing. Training, if you will, to have revenge. Oh, it sounds so idiotically cliché when I say it like that, doesn’t it?”

I let him think a little, then creased my eyebrows and snapped my fingers. The grass around us rippled, the blue sky cracked with pressure that came from the laws of the world unraveling. It was exhilarating.

Max had his eyes trained on me, and yet they were unseeing. He was as helplessly still as his surroundings. I grinned at the corner of my mouth, turned, and started walking away.

Which was when his counterattack came.

Immediately, the bubble of stopped time around us shrunk in to just a cocoon, imploding in on itself until it completely wrapped itself around me. My fingers were unresponsive; I couldn’t move.

Max frowned and said, “Tyler, you’re not evil. It’s too different.”

And he punched me in the stomach.