THE TIMER I’D SET BEGAN to blare as I reached for the oven door. A smile slowly spread across my face.
NINE
I FLIPPED HEAD OVER FEET, landed against the bulkhead, bent my knees, and pushed off toward the center of the cargo bay, crowing as I soared through the air. This was nothing like being in space because in the cargo bay I didn’t have to wear the suit and there was plenty of oxygen to breathe. Here, I could fly.
“Why have we never done this before?” DJ asked, shouting from overhead where he was holding on to the ceiling crossbeams. He dove and pulled his knees to his chest, spinning like a pinwheel.
“This is amazing!” Jenny wasn’t doing tricks. She was content to float in the currents created by the air recyclers.
“Because I only recently discovered that I could shut off the RealGrav plating here without shutting it down throughout the rest of the ship.”
DJ caught the ladder and turned to look at me. “When did you become an expert on the artificial gravity system?”
“Today.”
“You are so weird,” DJ said.
I shrugged like this was old news. “Nice suit, by the way.” I didn’t always tell DJ and Jenny that I was stuck in a loop. Each time the day reset, so did they. Explaining the situation when all I wanted to do was have fun was a waste of time. DJ usually seemed a little annoyed when I spoiled his secret plans, but he never mentioned the date, so neither did I.
“Just trying something new,” he said.
“It suits you.” I winked at him. “Pun intended.”
“It’s too bad about your soufflé,” Jenny said from behind me. “That would’ve made this day absolutely perfect.”
DJ landed on the deck and pushed off toward me. He was red-faced and panting, but he was grinning like a fool, wearing his dimples loud and proud. “Nah. Today’s perfect just the way it is. I don’t think anything could make it better.”
A grin slowly spread across my face. “Well, now, that sounds like a challenge.”
SEVENTEEN
I DRAMATICALLY PULLED THE CLOTH away to reveal the spread I’d prepared. “Popcorn, of course. Individual lemon cakes, pretzel bites and cheese to dip them in, nachos—”
“What is all this?” DJ asked. He and Jenny were standing beside me in the cargo bay that I’d transformed into a movie theater. It had been easy to convince Jenny to give up her plans for the day, but convincing DJ to come along, without letting on that I knew he’d been planning a surprise date in the garden, had been more challenging.
“How on earth did you get the couch in here?” Jenny had targeted the snacks and was moving in for the attack. I loved that about her.
“I thought we could use a movie day,” I said, answering DJ. “As for the couch, I lowered the gravity between the rec room and the cargo bay.”
DJ eyed me suspiciously. He’d been giving me similar looks ever since I’d convinced him to abandon his surprise. “What brought this on?”
“Who cares?” Jenny asked through a mouthful of pretzel bites.
“Exactly,” I said. “Can’t I do something nice for literally the only two people in my life?” I stood with my hands on my hips, smiling at DJ. These past few days had been more fun than I’d had in a long time, even if I was the only one who remembered them.
“I guess,” DJ said, but I wasn’t sure I’d convinced him.
“Well, I hope you like movies starring Jenny Perez, because that’s all we’ve got.”
DJ climbed over the back of the couch to settle in. “Just as long as it’s not a scary movie.”
EIGHTEEN
“I HOPE YOU LIKE MOVIES starring Jenny Perez,” I said, “because that’s all we’ve got. I thought we’d go with a movie from her short-lived phase as an action hero since I know you don’t like horror flicks.”
DJ climbed over the back of the couch to sit. “Just as long as nobody’s dog dies,” he said. “I refuse to watch movies where dogs die.”
NINETEEN
“I HOPE YOU LIKE MOVIES starring Jenny Perez.” Before DJ could open his mouth, I added, “I chose one of her comedies since I know you hate horror films and movies where dogs die.”
DJ climbed over the back of the couch to sit on the opposite side from Jenny. He glanced at me and smiled. “How’d you know that?”
“Because I’m stuck in a time loop and this is the third time we’ve had this conversation.”
“What?” DJ said at the same time as Jenny said, “Huh?”
“Just kidding,” I said. “Anyway, don’t get your hopes up about the movie. It’s a romantic comedy in which Jenny Perez plays a cat named Snowball who’s been transferred into the body of a human woman. She then proceeds to fall in love with a man who’s had the consciousness of a dog named Biscuits transferred into him. It’s called Purrfect Ten.”
Jenny clapped her hands. “I love this film!”
“Of course you do.” I lowered the lights and started the show, wriggling into the open seat between DJ and Jenny.
The movie was objectively terrible. Worse than terrible. It was quite possibly the worst movie that had ever been made. If hell had a movie theater, Purrfect Ten would’ve been on the marquee every day. Despite how bad it was, DJ, Jenny, and I spent nearly two hours laughing, though not at the parts we were meant to find funny, and, for a while, life felt nearly normal.
During the scene where Jenny Perez’s character crashed a funeral while wearing a cat costume, DJ scooted closer to me—so close I could feel the heat from his lips as he whispered into my ear, “This was a really great idea, Noa. Thank you.”
When he pulled away and retreated to his side of the couch, I found myself wishing that he hadn’t.
THIRTY-FOUR
I WAS SITTING IN OPS with my feet propped on the console, eating the remnants of my failed soufflé while alarm Klaxons blared in the background and the computer issued dire warnings.
“Warning! Qriosity will self-destruct in one minute. Warning!”
“What’re you doing, Noa? Shut it off!” DJ slammed his fist on the screen. His entire body shook and his face was splotchy and red, but he really did look good in that suit.
“No can do,” I said. “And don’t even think about trying to override it. You need my authorization code, and I’m not giving that up. Honestly, I thought activating the self-destruct would be a lot more difficult.”
“Why?” DJ begged. “Why are you doing this?”
“Warning! Qriosity will self-destruct in thirty seconds. Warning!”
I licked the back of the spoon, trying to get every bit of chocolate. “You know what? I don’t even think I like soufflés.”
“Noa?! Please tell me what’s going on!”
The anguish and betrayal in DJ’s voice hurt my heart, but in less than thirty seconds he wouldn’t remember it. He never remembered. He didn’t remember the movie or learning to swim or when I’d accidentally overloaded the reactor while trying to shut it down. No matter what I did, DJ would forget everything when the day reset and began anew.
“You want to know what’s going on?” I said. “I’m repeating the same day. This day. I’ve been repeating it for… I don’t know. A long time. It was fun at first, but now I’m bored, DJ, and I want it to end. I need it to end. But it never does. It never, ever ends.”
“I don’t understand, Noa. Something’s wrong with you. Let me help you. Please.”
“Maybe next time, DJ.”
FORTY-EIGHT
I WATCHED QRIOSITY DRIFT AWAY. I muted Jenny’s voice in my helmet calling me names and saying I’d lost my mind. I’d disabled the suit’s remote controls so that DJ couldn’t force me to return to the ship.
I should have died out here that first day. Maybe this time my death would stick. Maybe that’s what all of this had been about. The universe was angry that I’d escaped death before, and it was punishing me by freezing me in amber and preventing me from moving forward.
My fingers fumbled at the latches on my helmet, but
I finally worked them open and pulled my helmet free.
The stars were so beautiful with nothing between us. Space wasn’t so scary after all.
FIFTY-THREE
DR. KIM POLK WAS A GRANDMOTHERLY woman who walked with a slight hunch, smelled like peppermint tea, and wore enormous glasses, hanging from a chain around her neck, that made her eyes look huge.
“That’s quite a story, Noa.” Dr. Kim had been taking notes on a fresh yellow legal pad while I’d been talking, but she’d never once broken eye contact with me. I wasn’t sure how she was interpreting what I’d told her—and I had told her everything—because the limitations of the Bell’s Cove recreation in Mind’s Eye made it so that the non-player characters often ignored anything that didn’t fit into the narrative of their reality. I hoped Dr. Kim would be different.
“It’s true,” I said. “Every word of it.”
“Then it sounds to me as if you need a physics professor rather than a psychologist.” Dr. Kim’s laugh accentuated the lines around her eyes and mouth.
I didn’t laugh because I didn’t find anything about my situation funny. I wished I had been able to laugh. I wished I’d been able to find the humor in what I was going through. It might have made my experiences slightly less painful. “What do I do?”
“I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that.”
“Great.” I threw up my hands. “This has been a super waste of time.”
I stood, but Dr. Kim waved me back down. “My son Louis is grown with children of his own now, but when he was younger and sprouting an inch a day, it seemed, I used to wish I could freeze him the way he was, prevent him from aging one single day more. But I would have been an awful mother if I’d kept Louis from changing. We become who we are by accepting the past for what it is, letting go of it, and moving forward.” She took off her glasses and let them hang against her chest. She fixed her eyes on me and said, “You need to move forward, Noa.”
“How?” Tears threatened to well up in my eyes. I could feel the pressure building. Feel the frustration of the countless days I’d spent trapped in one unending loop growing dense inside me, threatening to collapse under its own weight like that stupid soufflé I couldn’t get right. “I’ve tried everything.”
“Have you?”
“Yes!” My voice cracked. “I’ve scoured Qriosity searching for the reason I’m stuck in this looping day. I’ve run every emergency simulation in the database at least ten times. I’ve blown up the ship; I’ve blown up myself; I even blew up the shuttle trying to learn to fly it. During one loop, I stayed awake so long that I began to hallucinate that I was being chased by a monster that had already eaten DJ and Jenny. I ended that loop screaming, trying to dig through the floor. No matter what I do, I eventually fall asleep or die, and the day starts over again.”
Dr. Kim put her glasses back on and scanned the notes she’d written on her legal pad. She tapped a line near the top with her finger. “Tell me about the first day you remember.”
That first day seemed so long ago. For everyone else, it was still just one day, but for me, weeks had passed. Maybe months. “I already told you. I talked to Jenny; I went to the garden, where DJ was waiting with his picnic; I left and went to my quarters, where I fell asleep.”
“Have you considered remaining in the garden?”
“With DJ and his surprise date?”
Dr. Kim let out a breezy laugh. “It’s a date, Noa, not a death sentence.”
I rolled my eyes. “Going on a date isn’t going to help me escape this day. I’m beginning to think nothing will.”
Dr. Kim watched me for a few moments. She wasn’t even real, yet the intensity of her gaze was unnerving. She was definitely different from the other characters I’d interacted with in Bell’s Cove. Finally, she said, “You keep insisting that you have tried everything, but you haven’t.”
“Still, I don’t—”
“What could it hurt to try?” Dr. Kim asked. “If it goes badly, the day will end, he will forget, and so will I.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to think of a reason why Dr. Kim’s suggestion was ridiculous. “What if I—”
“Noa,” she said in a firm but kind voice. “How can you expect to move forward if you never stop running away?”
FIFTY-FOUR
THE TIMER BEGAN TO BLARE, but I canceled it and set it for another five minutes.
“Smells good in there,” Jenny called from the table where she was playing with the familiar puzzle. I peeked my head around the corner while I waited for the timer to go off again.
“Soufflés never work for me,” I said. “But I’m hoping this will be the one.”
Jenny shrugged, her attention on the game.
“What is the point of that?” I asked.
“To get all the lights to turn the same color?” Jenny glanced at me and crinkled her nose. “I only found it this morning and I’m already bored. I’m terrible at these puzzles.” She held it out to me. “Wanna try?”
“Can’t,” I said. “As soon as my soufflé’s done, I’ve got to meet DJ in the garden.”
A smile crept across Jenny’s face. “Oh really?” she asked, trying to sound innocent. “Whatever for?”
“It’s a date,” I said. “He thinks that I think I’m helping him clean the air recyclers, but it’s a picnic by the pond.”
Jenny’s smile deflated slightly. “It’s supposed to be a surprise,” she said. “He’s been planning it for days, so don’t you dare ruin it.”
“Why do you think I’m making the soufflé?”
* * *
I stopped by my quarters to change before going to the garden because there was no way I was going to show up to our surprise date wearing ratty jeans and a T-shirt with a hole in the armpit while DJ was wearing a suit. I didn’t have a suit that fit, but I found nice pants and a collared shirt that weren’t wrinkled. Balancing the soufflé dish in the crook of my elbow without burning myself while I opened the door to the oxygen garden was tricky, but I managed without dropping anything, which was kind of a minor miracle.
I stood on the path and took a deep breath. “This is ridiculous,” I said to myself. “Why am I doing this? Because a computer program told me to? She’s not a real therapist.” But I couldn’t deny that Dr. Kim was right. This was the one thing I hadn’t tried. Not that I expected it to change the outcome.
“Noa?” DJ’s voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, but that was just a trick of the dome. I knew exactly where he was.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Hurry up,” he called back. “I’ve got something to show you.”
I took the long way to the pond, dragging my feet even while I was anxious to reach DJ and get this over with. And then there he was. DJ, standing at the edge of the water by a picnic blanket laid out on the grass, wearing that tan suit with his hair brushed back. I’d seen him in that suit a dozen times, but this was the first time I really saw him. The slightly green cast to his skin, the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He was terrified. He was as scared as I was. Maybe more.
“What’s that?”
I held up the dish. “A chocolate soufflé.” The top had risen to form a perfect rounded dome. “I’ve never had one come out before. I thought it would go well with dinner.”
DJ’s mouth fell open, but no words escaped.
“I know this is a date, DJ.”
“Jenny told you, didn’t she?”
I shook my head. “Call it a feeling.” I set the soufflé down beside the containers that held the rest of the food DJ had prepared. “You look nice.”
DJ blushed furiously and plucked at the suit. “It’s too small. And too big.” He cleared his throat. “We should eat. Are you hungry? I’m hungry. There’s spaghetti and garlic bread and salad. It’s nothing like you would’ve made, but I managed to do this without setting the galley on fire.”
“It looks great, DJ,” I said. “Really.”
DJ served dinner a
nd we sat on the blanket to eat. Both of us seemed intent on keeping our mouths stuffed with food so that we didn’t have to speak. The garden was filled with the sounds of the drone bees buzzing and the splashing of the small waterfall at the other end of the pond.
“I thought you might like the sunset,” DJ said when he’d finished eating. He’d gotten a dribble of marinara sauce on his jacket, but I didn’t bother to tell him. It was kind of cute.
“It’s beautiful. How’d you do it?”
DJ shrugged. “It was easy, actually. I can change it to night, too. Or make it so that it keeps time with the same twenty-four-hour cycle that Qriosity’s running. I think it’s always daytime to maximize the amount of light the plants receive.”
“Makes sense.” I leaned back and stared up at the smudges of color smeared across the dome. “I like it this way.”
“Me too.”
I caught DJ watching me. “What?”
“Tell me how you knew I was planning this,” he said. “Did you see me cooking? I tried to do it while you were asleep—”
“It’s not important right now.”
“Oh.” DJ picked at a blade of grass, pulling it up and tying it into a knot. “I wasn’t sure you’d be happy with me for doing this. I was scared you’d run away.”
Thankfully, I’d also finished eating or I might’ve choked. “Run away?” I forced a laugh. “Why would I do that?”
DJ cocked his head to the side and fixed me with a knowing frown. “I’m just going to take it as a good omen that you’re still here and that you brought dessert.”
“Speaking of dessert.” I dished up the soufflé, which was still moist and warm inside. The chocolate was rich and decadent, and I didn’t think I’d be able to eat much, as full as I was after dinner, but I ate every spoonful.
“Will you think badly of me if I lick my plate?” DJ asked.
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