Question 1 of 16 · Reading
Vocabulary in context · Curriculum connections: 8.2B
The Clock Without Hands — original fiction
Original classroom material; people, sources and data are fictional.
The town clock had stopped again. From the council steps, Isabel could see people checking their phones under its motionless hands. Her proposal seemed obvious: replace the unreliable mechanism with a digital display. Her grandfather folded the drawing she had brought him, careful not to crease the picture of the old tower. “You have made it work,” he said, “but I’m not sure you have considered what it does.”
Isabel remembered sitting beneath the tower years earlier while he repaired her bicycle bell. He had told her how neighbors once met there to trade news when the town’s roads were muddy and trips were slow. She had listened impatiently, eager to ride again. Now she looked at the stone bench where they had sat. The clock’s timekeeping had failed; its place in those memories had not.
At the public meeting, Isabel’s grandfather supported a dependable new time display. This surprised her. He also asked whether the mechanism could be preserved as an exhibit. Another resident worried that money spent preserving it would delay the replacement. Isabel studied the budget instead of defending the drawing she had already finished. She found that the exhibit would require a separate donation campaign; the town funds could still pay for the time display.
She redrew the plan with the new display and a small space for the old gears, each with an explanation of its role. The council approved the display immediately and allowed volunteers to seek exhibit donations. Later, Isabel and her grandfather sat on the bench. The old hands were still missing, but the drawing between them had room for more than one purpose.