by Lydia Sharp
This night was supposed to be all about Lucy, and somehow I ended up under a stairwell, kissing Jenna. What? Is happening?
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, stepping back even farther, out from under the stairs. Out in the open. “I’m really, really sorry. I misunderstood—”
She’s on me in a flash, with her signature smack. My head whips to the side and I see stars. Then I’m staring at the floor tile, my hands braced against my thighs, waiting for my brain to settle back into its rightful place in my skull so I can see straight. Jenna’s heels clack fiercely away from me, and her shout echoes down the hall. “I am so done with men!”
A few years of wonderful silence pass, and the coffee is doing nothing. Maybe I’ll just take a nap right here …
“JJ?”
My head snaps upward, and my gaze lands on a galaxy in the shape of my best friend. “Lucy. Hey. Nothing. What are you doing?”
Yeah, that doesn’t sound guilty.
“Looking for you. Our song is playing.”
Then why is she frowning?
“What happened with Jenna?” she says, not stepping any closer. Keeping her distance. “She just stormed past me and—What’s that on your face?”
“What’s what on my face?” More guilt. It’s becoming a theme.
Her eyes narrow. “Your cheek’s all red. So is your mouth. Is that … lipstick?”
I wipe my mouth and my hand comes away a guilty shade of red. Fire-engine red. The same red as Jenna’s lipstick. “It’s not what you think.”
Just keep digging that hole, JJ, it’s almost big enough to jump into now.
She crosses her arms, arching a brow. “What exactly do you think I think?”
“That I was kissing Jenna.”
“Were you?”
“Lucy, I can explain—”
“That’s a yes.” She looks like she might puke, wrapping her arms around her middle. “But you don’t have to explain. You can kiss whoever you want. That’s not my business.”
Except it is, because she wants to be the one I’m kissing. She just doesn’t know that I know that.
“You’re my best friend,” I say, hoping to make this right. “Everything I do is your business.” I step toward her and she takes a step back. “It always has been. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that was the exact wrong thing to say. She’s been keeping her feelings for me secret for years. Sixteen different emotions cross her face in the span of a second, like she can’t decide which one to hold on to.
“No, we don’t keep secrets,” she says. “You’re right. But you told me it wasn’t like that with you and Jenna. I’m just surprised. I …”
She’s not just surprised. She’s crushed. And she’s heading for the exit. I’m losing her.
How did I end up in this place with her again, with her leaving me?
Lucy is my moon, always in flux but entirely predictable, my steadfast and dependable companion. She keeps me from self-destructing. She keeps my chaos from spiraling out of control—usually. And for the third time in four nights since this prom loop started, she’s reached her apogee. The point of orbit when the moon is farthest from the earth. When she’s farthest from me. I knew this might happen again tonight and did all I could to prevent it. I tried. I even planned. And still I messed up.
Will I ever get her back? Will we ever be close again, as anything?
I can’t lose her. Not now. Not ever.
“Lucy, wait!” I trot to catch up with her, and she walks faster, practically running. Now I’m feeling like I might puke. Lucy has never run from me in her life. I’ve done it again. I’ve wrecked her plan for tonight, so she’s decided we’re better off apart. I don’t have to hear her say it this time to know.
She barrels through the door at the end of the hall, and I come to a skidding halt.
A groundhog snuck in from outside before the door closed. I’m not sure if this one is a blessing or a curse. Tonight needs to end, definitely. But what if the next repeat is worse?
I stare the thing down. “Why do you keep doing this to me—”
It sends me flailing and cursing into a cold black void.
I arrive in my bedroom in an absolute rage. How do I end this!
The mirror is my first victim. Crack! My reflection distorts behind broken glass, the punch leaving my knuckles throbbing and bloody. Right on cue, those blue sparks coming off Marty appear in my side vision, and I lose my mind.
I grab the closest thing that can serve as a smashing tool—a giant horsemanship trophy I won last summer. With it raised high above my head, ready to come down on Marty like the Hulk on … anything, I let out a guttural roar of frustration and lower the trophy back to the shelf, remembering just in time that I can’t destroy him no matter how at fault he is for putting me in this mess.
Instead, I have to fix him. He doesn’t deserve to be fixed. He doesn’t deserve anything but a burning dumpster. But I can’t imagine what else could logically be causing this vicious cycle. What if fixing Marty is the only way to stop this night from repeating again?
And my best chance at fixing him is with Lucy. I pull my phone out of my pocket and check the text messages.
Lucy: Where are you?
Me: Leaving soon
Yes. I am leaving very, very soon. Right after I make this phone call to have a tow pick up Melody. I swipe my phone without thinking, going back to my call log to find the number I called for the tow truck. But that’s pointless. In this version of tonight, I haven’t called them yet. So it shouldn’t be there.
But it is. My phone is showing I called the tow … twenty-odd minutes from now.
The glitches are back. Does that mean they got my call already, or is it just a glitch on my phone display? I’m not taking a chance at being wrong. Double-checking and erring on the side of being overprepared—Lucy would be proud. Scratch that, she wouldn’t even recognize me like this. I tap the number and call AAA. Tell them to pick up a cream-colored Volkswagen Beetle with a black convertible top that hasn’t even broken down yet. Act like I’m at the scene, describing every detail, because it’s all still vivid in my memory.
“Knock, knock,” Mom says on the other side of my door. “Are you decent?”
Instead of answering, I pocket my phone, grab Marty, open the door, and move past her.
“Wait, where’s your tie—”
“Mom, I’m sorry, I really have to go. Now. Lucy’s waiting.”
And she’ll have forgotten everything. Again. But I haven’t. I know what she plans to tell me tonight. How do I make sure that happens and stop the loop? On night three we stepped into a place I never imagined we’d ever be together—and now I can’t imagine us not. How do we get there and stay there?
“JJ, wait—” Mom calls after me. “Why are you taking your science project to prom?” She gasps, then, “What happened to your mirror!”
I’m already down the stairs, headed to the door. “I promise to follow the rules! I won’t stay out all night! I’ll get pictures!” Am I forgetting anything?
Yes. Keys. Get it together, JJ. If things go right, this is my last chance for real.
I spin to go back upstairs and Mom tosses my car keys down to me. She folds her arms across her chest, giving me one of her hard, skeptical looks. If I don’t get out of here, I’ll cave under that stare. It’s crushed the truth out of me before.
“Thanks, love you, bye!”
Shayla’s exiting the kitchen when I reach the bottom of the stairs again. Her whole face brightens and my guilt intensifies, souring my stomach. “Look at you all fancy!” she says.
An ache spreads across my chest. It feels like I haven’t seen her or my parents in forever, like I’m missing things I should be part of. This is my family, and, yeah, we don’t always get along, but we’ve always been close. Now they’re distant. I see them for a few minutes and then leave, because I’m perpetually running late when this night start
s. I have no control over when it stops and starts, just what happens in between.
“I promise I’ll save you a dance, Shay.” And I’m out the door before she can argue.
With Marty secured in the trunk of my car, I sit in the driver’s seat, buckle my seat belt, and put the key in the ignition, looking out the windshield at the long driveway ahead … but the road in the distance shouldn’t be this blurry. My contacts must be glitching again, because the night just started and my eyes are dry and burning and itchy like I’ve had them in for hours. I pinch-swipe them off and flick them out the window, fish my spare pair of glasses from the glove box and put them on. When I pull my hands away from my face, they’re smudged in black, like they were after I pushed Melody’s car into the woods.
As I reach into the cubby between the seats and get the hand sanitizer Lucy keeps in there, my mind levels up from problem-solving mode to crisis-prevention mode.
Another glitch. Another carry-over. So far they’ve been minor things that don’t affect much, but what if one of the bigger things carries over one of these times? What if I still lose Lucy? Or someone else? This has to stop tonight. And for some reason, I’m the only one who knows it’s happening; I have to be the one who fixes this.
But I can’t do it alone. So my first step in ending this time loop is somehow convincing Miss Logical Lucy that it even exists.
Sure. No problem.
My phone chimes with a new text, and I nearly jump out of my skin. Everything has me on edge. The text is from Chaz, a picture of me and Lucy on the dance floor at prom. But that hasn’t happened yet, we’re not even there—
It’s a glitch. But this one is exactly what I need. I rub sanitizer all over my hands until they’re clean, hissing when the alcohol hits my bloody knuckles, put the car in drive, and pray I’m headed in the right direction this time. A direction that won’t cross paths with Melody.
Probably not ever again. I shouldn’t feel such a sense of loss at that thought, like she was someone vital in my life. Meeting her was just a weird turn of fate. Or not even fate, really. According to Melody, everything happens for a reason. Maybe not everything, Mel. She was only a coincidence. She was never part of the plan.
“There’s been a change of plans,” I tell Lucy after picking her up. We’re sitting in my car in her driveway as she buckles her seat belt, wearing that dress that still stops my heart a little every time I see her in it. And now that I know everything behind her plan for tonight, I appreciate the dress even more.
Her jaw goes slack and she stares at me, no doubt trying to guess what I screwed up and what she’ll have to do to readjust so her plan can still move forward with success. And for a moment I just stare right back, stare at her big brown eyes and those pillow-soft lips covered in dark red lipstick that I now crave the taste of.
God, I want to kiss her again. But to her, tonight, it’s like it never happened. We are nothing other than friends. Which was all fine and good until she shifted the gears in my head, driving all my thoughts of her into a new direction, with just one conversation followed by just one kiss. One really amazing—
I bite my lip and hold in a groan. Focus. We have to stop this loop or we’ll be stuck here wiping the slate clean between us for literal ever. And who knows what else bad might happen with these glitches? I have no control over that whatsoever. But there are some things I can still have an effect on, like what we do next.
“What kind of change?” Lucy says.
“We need to fix Marty. I’ve got him in the trunk. So here’s what I’m thinking: I figure we can go to prom for a little bit, you know, just enough to show up so people aren’t wondering where we are, then we sneak off to the science lab and troubleshoot this thing.”
“I … uhm … okay, hold on.” She swallows. Closes her eyes. Blows out a steadying breath. Opens her eyes and speaks very slowly. “You want to ditch prom to play with our failed science project. Am I understanding this correctly?”
“Yes. Not play with it, though, we need to fix it. Tonight.”
“Why tonight? It’s prom. You’ve been looking forward to this for years. I’ve been looking forward to it, too.” Her gaze softens and she looks down for a second, just a flicker of a moment. When she looks up at me again, her eyes are hard. “The project’s been graded already. There’s nothing left for us to do but trash it. I’m surprised you didn’t already.”
I shake my head. “This isn’t about our grade. This is about all of us being stuck in a time loop that Marty created.”
“What? Are you talking about?”
“Lucy”—deep breath—“I’ve been living the same night over and over again. This night, our prom night. Before the end of every night, it resets back to right before I leave my house to pick you up, and I’m the only one who remembers anything. This is the fifth time now and it has to stop. I have to make it stop before something irreversible happens.”
“A time loop …” Her teeth catch her bottom lip, and I can tell there’s a battle waging in her mind. One side is saying I’m possibly high on something, even though she’s never known me to indulge in anything like that, while the other side is saying: But what if he’s telling the truth?
“That’s impossible,” she concludes. “You’re just delirious, or something. Did you sleep last night? You look really tired. Maybe you shouldn’t be driving—”
“I’m not delirious.” And yeah, I’m tired, I haven’t slept in days, but, “I’m not making this up. I’m not imagining things. I can tell you everything that’s going to happen tonight before it happens.” As soon as I’ve said it, I scramble to think of something. “I knew you were going to wear that dress, put your hair up like that, half-up and half-down, and wear dark red lipstick that matches your nails.”
“Telling me you knew what I would look like as you’re looking at me isn’t convincing.”
All right, then … “I can’t see your toes now, but I know they’re painted the same color as your fingers.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. I always match my fingers and toes. You’ve seen that.”
Okay. I didn’t want to make this stressful for her by bringing up certain things, but she’s leaving me no choice. “You picked out that galaxy dress for me.”
Her lip twibbles, but she doesn’t relent. “Not hard to guess that, either, Mr. Astronomy. You’re my partner tonight. You’ll be with me for hours. I wanted to wear something I knew you would like looking at.”
Anything she wore I would’ve liked looking at, because she’s the one wearing it. And now? With that kiss still fresh in my mind? She could wear a garbage bag and I’d break out in a sweat.
At my silence, she shakes her head, likely assuming she’s won the argument. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. You and me, of all people. You’re suggesting something that isn’t at all possible. Completely illogical. Beyond the realms of natural law.”
Great, now I’ve got her putting up defenses. I need her on my side—we’re a team. Me and her against the universe. Time for my last resort.
“Yes. I agree with all of that.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and open to Chaz’s text that came through early. The photo of us is still there and it’s time-stamped a couple of hours from now, on today’s date. I flash it toward Lucy, and her eyes widen. “Completely illogical,” I say. “But there it is. This is from night three, a couple of nights ago for me now, when we danced at prom.”
She takes my phone slowly, staring at it like she’s afraid it might explode. “Did we …”
My stomach drops. If she asks about what we did on the bluffs—
“I mean, didn’t we dance the other nights, too?” she corrects.
“No,” I say, my shoulder dropping. Relieved she didn’t ask what I thought she was going to, but also, if she’s asking about the other nights, then she’s starting to buy into this possibility.
Her gaze pops up from the phone to me. “Why not?”
“Oh. There were … is
sues. The first two nights were kinda bad. So was last night. Really bad. The third night wasn’t, though, the night that pic was taken. It was actually mostly good, almost perfect.” I try a smile, but she’s not interested.
“Really?” she accuses. “Because it looks like you have a black eye.”
“I do. Did. But that was nothing compared to the other stuff.” I take the phone from her and slide it into my pocket.
“Why, what happened?” she says quietly, like she’s afraid to hear the answer. If I know Lucy, her mind is already trying to sort it out, hypothesizing all the possibilities. The worst one, I doubt she’d ever guess. So I won’t tell her that I messed up so badly she had an anxiety attack in public and had to be taken away in an ambulance. And, oh, by the way, I wasn’t there with her all night, and she got so steaming mad about the whole thing she ended our friendship. What good would that do either of us? Zero.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “It’s all in the nonexistent past. And I know what to do now so the bad stuff won’t repeat. I’ve already prevented one disaster tonight, before I even picked you up.” That’s assuming Melody is okay. I took care of it, though, right? Just because I didn’t actually see her or the tow this time and I wasn’t the one to drop her off at her prom doesn’t mean something bad happened. She’s fine without me. We were never supposed to meet.
“What disaster?” Lucy says.
“It doesn’t matter,” I repeat, then put the car in reverse and back down Lucy’s driveway. “All I want to do is stop this thing, stop living this same night over and over, but I need your help. So will you help me?”
We sit in tense silence as I drive down the deserted country road.
“JJ,” Lucy says calmly. Too calm? “You’re going the wrong way.”
“What, no I’m not. This is how we always go to school from your house. I could drive this route with my eyes closed.”
She sighs. “We have to pick up Jenna, remember?”
No, I didn’t remember. I forgot to tell Jenna to get a ride from Autumn, too, so now I have to pick her up. Probably for the best, anyway, so she won’t get mad at me. So I won’t have to pull her aside to apologize. So we’ll never kiss.