G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2023

  Text copyright © 2023 by Ahmir Khalib Thompson

  Illustrations copyright © 2023 by Godwin Akpan

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Questlove, author. | Cosby, S. A., author.

  Title: The rhythm of time / Questlove with S. A. Cosby.

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2023. | Summary: After accidentally traveling back in time and rewriting the future, twelve-year-old best friends Rahim and Kasia must work together to restore their timeline.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2022046721 (print) | LCCN 2022046722 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593354063 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593354087 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Time travel—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | African Americans—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.Q35 Rh 2023 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.Q35 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046721

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046722

  Ebook ISBN 9780593354087

  Cover art © 2023 by Godwin Akpan

  Cover Design by Kelley Brady

  Design by Tony Sahara, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  pid_prh_6.0_143148852_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  About the Authors

  _143148852_

  I dedicate this adventure to nine-year-old Ahmir Khalib Thompson—a curious kid who should follow all of his dreams.

  —Questlove

  To all the kids who dare to dream in color.

  —S. A. Cosby

  THE DAY RAHIM REYNOLDS received the gift that would change his life forever was pretty much like every other day. He went to school. He played chess on a real chessboard with Harris, one of his few friends, during lunch. He helped Mrs. Lewis in the library and picked up two Stephen King novels. During his last class, he wrote three new complete rhymes in his notebook.

  And he tried to avoid Demarcus “Man Man” Richards at all costs.

  Demarcus and his two sidekicks, Lavell and Tron, enjoyed three things: uploading their awful homemade raps on SoundCloud, causing trouble in class, and picking on Rahim. When the last bell rang, Rahim headed out the door with his head down and the hood on his jacket up. Harris was waiting for him on the front steps.

  “You look like a glitch in the new Assassin’s Creed patch,” Harris said. Harris was tall and gangly with thick glasses and a sharp sense of humor. Rahim thought that, in any other school, Harris would be the focus of a bully like Man Man, but for some reason, Rahim took up all of Demarcus’s attention. The cold February wind smacked him in the face as he stopped and gave Harris a light shoulder check.

  “I’ve never played that game,” Rahim said.

  “Yeah, but you’ve heard of it, right? Oh, wait, I forgot,” Harris said.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Just never played it. You know my dad has a grudge against gaming. And social media and computers and—”

  Harris held up his hand. “Geez, you’re making me depressed.”

  Rahim laughed. “I gotta get going.”

  “You don’t wanna wait for my mom? She can give you a ride. It’s cold as a snowman’s butt,” Harris said.

  Rahim laughed again. “I mean, if she don’t—”

  “Where you think you going, chunkbutt?”

  Rahim didn’t bother turning around. He knew it was Man Man. Instead, he took off at a full sprint. He heard one of the teachers yell something at Man Man and his boys, but it got lost in the wind. Rahim ducked around people making their way up the sidewalk. But he could hear Man Man’s heavy footfalls closing in on him. At the last second, he cut across the street. He missed getting hit by a garbage truck by a matter of inches, but that slowed down Man Man and his sidekicks just enough for Rahim to lose them as he slipped down the alley between Mr. Daniels’s corner store and the used bookstore run by Mrs. Rollins. He heard Mrs. Rollins holler something at him from her front stoop, but he was still in fight-or-flight mode and flight was in full control. He cut across another street even as the walk/don’t walk sign was in the middle of changing. He passed Mr. Carlson’s sandwich shop. The scent of fresh cheesesteaks almost made him slow his stride but he was close to home and couldn’t take a chance on Man Man and his cronies catching up with him. He slowed to a trot as he cut through another alleyway and the gray one-eyed cat that lived there hissed at him before scurrying behind an old couch. He emerged from the alley and stepped out onto the street where he lived.

  Rahim had never lived anywhere but Philly, and he had never lived anywhere in Philly except this street. No matter how bad Man Man picked on him or how lost he felt navigating the many social circles that excluded him at school, coming home always made him feel safe. This was his neighborhood. He knew these streets, these sidewalks, these street signs. This was home.

  * * *

  Rahim bounded up the front steps of his house. When he came through the front door, he saw his father sitting in his recliner with a heavy leather-bound book in his hands. Rahim tried closing the door softly, but the wind caught it and slammed it hard against the frame.

  “We walk in this house, Rahim. You never need to run in a place you call home.” Rahim stopped in his tracks.

  “Yes, sir.” He slid off his backpack and hung up his coat.

  “The door,” his dad said. Rahim rolled his eyes. He went back outside, came in again, and shut the door so softly it barely made a sound when it met the frame. Rahim pulled his copy of The Tommyknockers out of his book bag.

  “How was your day?” his dad asked.

  “It was okay.”

  “It was more than okay, since you don’t seem to have any homework. That can be the only reason you are about to start that drivel instead of doing your assignments.”

  “But you’re reading,” Rahim said.

  “My assignment is my reading. I’m giving my class a test on the reign of Haile Selassie tomorrow. So I’m reacquainting myself with some of the more interesting aspects of his life.”

  Rahim sighed. “I need to go next door and borrow Kasia’s laptop. I do have to write a one-page report for social studies,” he said.

  Dad cleared his throat. “We have a complete set of reference materials here, Rahim. There is no need for you to turn your brain to mush searching every single thing online.”

  “Dad, don’t your students use the internet?” he asked.

  “Yes, and you should see how lost they are when the Wi-Fi goes down and they can’t reach their online oracle. I don’t want you to find yourself in a college class one day with that same deer-in-the-headlights look on your face.”

  “We are the only people I know who don’t have their own computer. You don’t even like using the one the college gave you,” Rahim said.

  “You have to know how to crawl before you can walk, son. The internet makes it too easy for you. It’s like giving you a pilot’s license when you don’t even know how to ride a bicycle.”

  Rahim’s dad hadn’t raised his head fr
om his book once, but Rahim knew his dad knew he was rolling his eyes again. He was just observant like that. A slim man with dark brown skin and an unruly Afro that he refused to cut or comb, he had been a tenured history professor longer than Rahim had been alive.

  “Omar, let that boy go next door. The internet might give him the information, but it ain’t gonna write the paper for him.” Rahim’s mother was coming downstairs from her studio, where she gave violin and cello lessons to kids from all the surrounding neighborhoods. His mom always looked regal to Rahim, even when she was just helping Dad make dinner. Long, thick loc’d braids ran down her back like a waterfall.

  “I’m just trying to teach him to not depend on technological contrivances.”

  “I know you are, honey, but the world is constantly changing. It doesn’t hurt to keep up, dear.”

  “I wish it wasn’t,” Dad grumbled.

  “Can I go next door?” Rahim asked. His parents could go on like this for hours. His older sister, Yasmine, said it was the opposite of an argument. She called it a loveument.

  “Yes,” his mother said, “but just get what you need for your assignment. Don’t let Kasia talk you into being her guinea pig again. Took you two weeks to get your eyes back to normal after her X-ray glasses experiment. Carry your book bag upstairs before you go.”

  Rahim grabbed his backpack and headed upstairs. As he passed his sister’s room, he heard her vocal exercises. His sister could hit notes that could break glass. Yasmine was like a perfect combination of Mom and Dad. She loved music like their mom, and she loved history like their dad. Rahim figured that was why she wanted to sing opera. Best of both worlds.

  Before he got to his room, Yasmine opened her door and leaned into the hallway.

  “Hey, bighead. You know my choir concert is this weekend, right?” Yasmine asked. She took a sip from a teacup. Rahim could smell the strong aromas coming from the cup from three feet away. Yasmine never drank sodas, never ate spicy foods, and never ever yelled. She was always trying to take care of her voice.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You coming, right?” Yasmine asked.

  “Well, I don’t have anything else to do,” Rahim said. Yasmine rolled her eyes.

  “It’s my first time singing lead. So it’s kind of a big deal,” Yasmine said.

  “I’m just teasing, you know I’m going to be there. I’ll even clap really loud when you hit a high note,” Rahim said.

  “Please just clap . . . in a regular way. Don’t embarrass me,” Yasmine said. She smiled at Rahim, shook her head, and closed her door.

  Rahim dropped off his book bag and then slipped down the stairs and out the back door to Kasia’s house. He knocked on the door three times before her mom opened it with a flourish.

  “Rahim! Do you know that means ‘merciful’? Mercy, mercy me!” Kasia’s mom asked. She said this every time he came over. It was her favorite joke. She must have thought it was Rahim’s too.

  “Yes, Mrs. Collins.” Unlike his parents, Kasia’s parental units embraced every aspect of technology. Their house was nearly fully automated through virtual assistant technology. The home-security system was connected to each of their cell phones. They could order groceries from a touchscreen on their fridge. (Kasia had hacked it so she could order pizza without her parents—both vegans—knowing it.) If there was a new piece of tech that was supposed to make life easier, either the Collins family would buy it or Kasia would build it.

  “One day you’re going to get that joke and laugh yourself silly. Kasia’s upstairs. Did you want to stay for dinner? Her dad is making vegetarian chili and . . . we’ve got rutabaga pie for dessert!” Rahim wasn’t sure what a rutabaga was, but it didn’t sound like any dessert he wanted.

  “No, ma’am. I just need to use Kasia’s computer.”

  “All right, but let me know if you change your mind. The crust on the pie is homemade. No premade stuff here. Oh, and tell your parents we’re just about to harvest our bok choy and beets. So there will be a sale on winter veggies at the co-op,” Mrs. Collins said.

  “I will. What is bok choy?” Rahim asked.

  “It’s like an Asian cabbage. You’ll love it. It’s one of our biggest sellers. It actually tastes better than brussels sprouts,” Mrs. Collins said.

  Rahim didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to tell Mrs. Collins he didn’t like brussels sprouts, so he probably wasn’t going to like bok choy. Kasia’s parents were really into veganism. They ran a company that converted unused lots into green spaces for the city. They sold a lot of the vegetables from these green spaces at a co-op in the neighborhood. The rest they donated to food banks. Yasmine like to say they were Black hipsters, whatever that was. Rahim thought they just really liked vegetables.

  Rahim climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor. Kasia’s parents had knocked down most of the walls upstairs to give Kasia space for her experiments. Kasia’s room took up most of the second floor except for her parents’ bedroom, which was toward the rear of the house. Kasia said her parents wanted her to have room to create. Rahim thought she was lucky. He barely had space to turn around in his room.

  She had two huge computer monitors mounted on the wall. There was a table full of electrical equipment. Another held her chemistry equipment. Her ceiling was a map of the night sky that she and her dad had wired up themselves. When Rahim reached the top step, he saw Kasia sitting at her desk, working on her drone.

  Last year she’d asked her parents for a drone, but the one she got wasn’t up to her standards, so she built her own. She named him Iago.

  Rahim thought Iago was named after the parrot in Aladdin, but Kasia said it was from a play, Othello, by William Shakespeare. Rahim had looked it up at the library. He’d tried to read it, but it was like it was written in another language. From what he could decipher, the ending was really sad and Iago was the bad guy.

  When Rahim told her he read it, Kasia had said, “It’s not sad. It’s tragic. There’s a difference. And Iago is not just the bad guy. He’s the bad guy. He’s the ultimate villain. And basically, he wins. It’s a classic for a reason.”

  “If you say so,” Rahim had said.

  Kasia spun around on her work stool to face him. There was tape on the bridge of her glasses, but they weren’t broken. Kasia called it an affectation.

  “You did what I told you?”

  Rahim laughed. “Yeah. I pretended I was gonna skip my homework and read my book, and my dad insisted I get right to work.”

  “I told you. Grab the headphones. I’ll pull up the beat,” Kasia said. Rahim got a pair of headphones off the table. Kasia tapped a couple of keys, and suddenly a musical computer program popped up on the bigger monitor on the wall. She reached under her desk for a wireless mic and tossed it to Rahim. She put on some headphones of her own and pointed at him. “I’m dropping the beat. Don’t hesitate. Go for it!”

  Rahim nodded and closed his eyes.

  He thought about the rhyme he worked on in algebra class while Mr. Dudley solved for x. That’s a good title, he’d thought.

  This one’s called Solve for X

  I’m a problem for the weak-minded

  You looking for the answer? You won’t find it

  I’m more complex than E = mc2

  You don’t want none, son, go home so

  You can be safe and scared

  You ain’t got the skills

  You lack the education

  The lyrical formation

  You need an entire nation

  To solve this equation.

  Rahim stopped and caught his breath.

  “Was that all freestyle?” Kasia asked.

  “Yeah . . . no, kinda,” Rahim said.

  “Either way, it was fire,” Kasia said. “Do you know what E = mc2 actually means?”

  “Nah. But I read about it in a sci-fi book once.”

  Kasia shook her head and sighed. “Short version: It means matter can’t be created or destroyed. Hey, you should use that in your next song. Anyway, I’ll mix it and post it tonight. You should really make a profile and post it yourself.”

  “So Man Man can be even madder at me? I don’t think so,” Rahim said. He poked Iago. “You give him any new upgrades?” Rahim asked. The little drone was more like a pet than a robot.