Her phone started buzzing on the nightstand, and she heard that stupid ringtone again:
Yeahhh! It’s my birthday, and I ain’t gotta pick up the phone!
She grabbed it and looked at the screen. 9:01 a.m. September 18. One missed call from Dad.
Ugh. My birthday.
The call from Dad was typical. Still, Tree couldn’t shake a weird feeling that was gnawing at her stomach. Where had she heard that ringtone before? And hadn’t her dad left her a voice mail…yesterday? Wait—wasn’t it yesterday? She ran a hand over her face.
Pull it together, Tree.
The guy with the goofy grin was staring at her. She had to get out of his bed. God only knew what had happened there last night, and she wasn’t about to let it happen again. Just in case that’s where this was headed, it was time to move, and now.
She threw off the covers and stood up, reaching over to grab her pants off the dresser as he took a step forward to show her where they were.
“Oh…right,” he mumbled as she pulled them on. “I folded your pants for you last night. You know, I wasn’t sure if that material…gets wrinkled.”
As she whipped off his T-shirt, he turned around. “Ahh—” he said, like he’d been caught. Tree didn’t give a shit. She just wanted to get out of here, but he was still trying to exchange pleasantries.
“Don’t know if you remember my name or not. You know you were…pretty wasted last night, but uh…I’m—”
“Carter.”
Tree froze as the word came out of her mouth. He turned around, surprised. The goofy grin was back.
“You remembered!”
She stared at him for a second, her brain trying to put the pieces together. Had they met? Why did he seem…familiar? After a second, she reached down to pull on her heels.
“Oof. Tylenol.”
“What?”
“My head is killing me,” she explained. “Do you have any Tylenol?”
“Oh! Uh…yes.” Tree watched as he turned toward the drawer, then back to the dresser, as if he were trying to put his finger on where it was. He started to rummage around on the dresser. “Um…”
Her eyes narrowed. “It’s over there.” She pointed to the desk by the door.
“Right!” He hurried over to the desk and started digging around.
She sighed as she pulled down the zipper on the ankle of her pants. “It’s over there, under your clothes.”
“Right!” he said again, reaching under his stuff and pulling out the dopp kit. He retrieved the bottle and brought it over to her.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Oh, and…” He reached over to grab a bottle of water, but she ignored it as she unscrewed the pill bottle’s lid. “It’s like you’ve been here before.”
There was a joke in his voice, but Tree froze when he said it and looked up at him. It felt like that to her, too, but she had no idea where she was. The expression on her face must’ve given her away, because he stopped smiling and took a long look at her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She frowned and looked around the room, really taking it in. Her eye was drawn to the back of his door. Under the mini basketball hoop, there was a hodgepodge of stickers—music stores, comic book shops, a puffy hot dog with a googly eye. In the center was a bright blue bumper sticker that read TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
She couldn’t take her eyes off it. Something about it made the butterflies in her stomach turn into Ping-Pong balls.
Carter was saying her name, asking again if she were okay. But she stared at the door as if she knew that something was about to happen.
Then it did.
She heard someone yell, “Dude!” just outside and saw the knob turning. A guy with bleached-blond hair burst through the door asking Carter a question. “You hit that fine vagine or wha—?”
He froze at the sight of her, and now her heart was racing again. She put the open bottle of Tylenol down on the dresser, grabbed her bag, and headed out the door as Carter stuttered apologies.
“I’m…I’m sorry…”
As she walked down the hall, she heard Carter’s voice once more: “Nice one, dickhead.”
Tree’s head was killing her. She made a beeline for the lobby of the dorm, and as she pushed through the front door, she decided she had to stop overdoing it at parties. This whole thing was too weird.
What the hell happened last night?
As she walked toward the quad, she passed a guy who gave her a very judgy look. He was an art student, for sure, but she felt like she’d seen him someplace besides hanging around in front of the art building. She rubbed her eyes and kept going.
A girl pushed a clipboard in front of her and asked her to stop global warming. Tree had a fuzzy memory of seeing that bad hair somewhere else, but she couldn’t place it.
She held up a hand and hurried on by. “Sorry,” she said. “No, thanks.”
Hurrying on, she saw a couple studying on the lawn. They got drenched as the sprinklers came on, scrambling to save their textbooks. Any other day, she’d have probably laughed, but today, it just seemed odd.
And familiar.
Oddly familiar.
She heard a car alarm going off and somehow knew it was coming from a red SUV even before she looked over and saw it. A group of pledges was singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer” on a patch of grass nearby. One had a sign that read TWENTY-SIXTH STRAIGHT HOUR, and their frat brother yelled at them to keep going. Tree felt a strange certainty that they must be on the verge of passing out from exhaustion.
Then one of them did, right onto the grass.
Tree watched him go down and slowed her walk. Why does this day feel so weird? she wondered. Probably just too much booze. And whatever else had happened.
Shaking it off, Tree decided she wouldn’t give in to the anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Her head hurt from squinting in the sun with no shades, so she made straight for the covered walkway by the bell tower. Tim, this guy who’d been blowing up her phone lately, stepped out from behind one of the pillars. She stopped short.
He had a tight body, good hair, and a great jawline to boot. Even if their one and only date had been terrible, he was also kind. When he blocked her way and asked why she hadn’t returned any of his texts, she just stood there for a second, blinking at him.
“Tim,” she finally said. “What day is it?”
He frowned and glanced down at his watch, like maybe this was a trick question and he just wanted to double-check.
“Uh…Monday the eighteenth,” he told her.
She squinted at him. “You’re sure?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
Nice one, Tree. For the love of Christ. Who walks around asking people what day it is?
“I…um…” Tree searched in vain for a plausible explanation for her crazy question, but after a second she gave up.
He took you to Subway on your first date, she reminded herself. She didn’t owe him an explanation. That was for damn sure.
“I gotta go,” she said and kept on walking.
“Call me?” he yelled.
She didn’t turn around.
Quickening her pace toward the Kappa house, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was majorly up. What was it, though? It was like someone had shuffled all the memory cards in her head. She recognized her life, but it wasn’t in the right order—like her brain had been shrouded in a fog that came from someplace other than a bottle of Cabo Wabo tequila.
Tree ran up the stairs to the porch, barely noticing Emily, who was sitting in the sun and listening to music on puffy white headphones. It felt like she was being chased, she decided—like in that fucked-up dream from the night before—only she didn’t know what she was running from.
She burst
through the front door of the house, rattling the ancient lead glass in every pane. As she darted up the staircase, she heard a voice that stopped her cold.
“Oh. My. God. You sneaky little bee-yotch.”
I knew this was going to happen, Tree thought. I knew it. She was gripped by the sudden fear that maybe she had permanently damaged her brain at last night’s party. Am I still drunk?
“Who was it?” Danielle demanded.
Tree turned around slowly and opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. There was Danielle, glistening from whatever yoga class she’d just done in a bright yellow sports bra. Exactly the way I pictured her, thought Tree. Whatever the look was on her face, it must’ve alarmed Danielle, because her friend’s tone suddenly turned serious.
“Sisters don’t keep secrets.”
After a second, Tree laughed. This was crazy. “I’m totally having déjà vu right now.”
“Oh.” Danielle crossed her arms like that was nothing. “I have it all the time. It’s supposed to mean someone’s, like, thinking about you while they’re masturbating,” she said matter-of-factly. “I have it at least five times a day.”
Tree shook her head and pressed her fingers into the bridge of her nose. It felt like her brain was starting to liquefy inside her skull and perhaps she could stop it.
“Seriously,” she said, trying to play it off. “I’ve been having it all day. It’s so weird.”
Danielle raised an eyebrow, and her tone changed to Big Sister. “Maybe you should switch to water next time, hon.”
Tree sighed and slowly turned to head upstairs. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“What are sisters for? Oh! And don’t forget…” Danielle waited until Tree paused halfway up the staircase. “House meeting at lunch.”
A chill ran up Tree’s spine. Didn’t we just have a house meeting…yesterday?
Before she could ask, Danielle waved a hand at her.
“Hellooooooo,” she said, clearly exasperated. “It’s been on the board since, like, last Thursday, Tree.”
“Yeah…I remember,” Tree said with a nod, but she suddenly wasn’t sure if she did. Was she remembering something that had never happened? How had it all seemed so real in her dream? She tried to cover her confusion with a smile at Danielle and hurried up to her room.
Lori was ready for her shift at the hospital and writing in her journal at the vanity. Tree barely noticed her sitting there until she spoke.
“She finally rolls in.”
Jarred out of her thoughts, Tree looked over at her roommate. This feeling was getting stronger, not disappearing. She wanted to try to explain it to Lori, but all she could muster was, “That’s so weird…”
Lori eyed her for a moment, then closed her journal.
“You okay? You were kind of a mess last night.”
A frown passed over Tree’s smiling face. Doing both felt strange. So did everything else. She was on the verge of spilling it all to Lori when she looked at the clock on her bedside table: 9:20 a.m.
“Oh, shit!” She immediately pulled off her heels. “I’m so late for class.”
Tree tossed on a sweatshirt over her shiny tank from last night, reached under a stack of mail to grab her book, then tossed it into her bag.
“Did you really think you could keep it a secret from me?” Lori asked her.
She turned around and saw her roommate holding a cupcake with a single candle burning in the center. Lori handed it to Tree.
“Don’t you want to know how I found out?” she asked.
“Driver’s license?”
“Clever girl.” Lori smiled. “That picture, though—”
Tree interrupted her. “I gotta go.”
Without waiting, she put the cupcake down on her nightstand and started to leave.
“But you didn’t even blow out the candle!” Lori protested.
Tree closed the door behind her with some extra umph. If that didn’t take care of the candle, Lori could blow it out herself.
8
Under typical circumstances, watching Dr. Butler’s ass while he wrote physics equations on a whiteboard could make Tree feel better about anything.
These, it seemed to her, were not typical circumstances. After class was over, she didn’t wait around to flirt like she usually did, and she could feel Gregory’s eyes following her out the door. By the time she sat down at the house meeting on the dining patio, he’d already sent her three texts and left a voice mail.
Tree, on the other hand, was too concerned that she might be taking leave of her senses to give a shit.
As Danielle parsed the options for the charity drive, Tree sat sipping on her fruity zero-calorie sparkling water and mulling over the day’s events. Were they this particular day’s events? Why did everything seem so familiar? Like that voice…
“Get your school spirit on before the big game. Ten percent off with your student ID.”
She turned to find Keith Lumbly sweating it out behind the merch table. Her eyes fell on the masks for sale. Those wide plastic eyes seemed to bore a hole right through her soul. She tried to think about something else—anything else—but scenes from last night’s dream kept flashing into her memory. The longer she stared, the more paralyzed she felt.
“What’s wrong, Tree?”
Danielle’s question cut through her stupor of fear, and Tree was finally able to take her eyes off those damn masks.
“Um…I’m just…a little tired, I guess,” she said.
“No, dumbass.” Danielle rolled her eyes. “What’s wrong with that?”
Danielle pointed at the lunch tray Becky had just plunked down on the table next to Tree.
“So not Kappa cuisine,” she said with the air of a French aristocrat telling peasants to eat cake. “And is that chocolate milk I see?”
“I missed breakfast,” Becky said quietly.
Danielle sighed. “We all miss breakfast, Becky.”
Becky jumped up in a mushroom cloud of humiliation, picked up her tray, and turned to leave in a hurry.
It hit Tree in a flash. “Becky, look out!”
Tree was already moving when she said it, but it was too late. She felt the impact of Becky’s collision with Carter behind her, and even though she ducked, Tree was still drenched with chocolate milk.
As Danielle sent peals of laughter across the quad, Carter scrambled to grab napkins from the dispenser on the table.
“I’m sorry!” he said. “I’m so sorry, Tree.”
Danielle stopped laughing immediately. “You two know each other?”
Carter said, “Yes,” just as Tree said, “No,” and she slowly turned to look him in the eye. Something passed between them, some little understanding, and she could see that Carter had been able to translate her look of abject terror.
“We had a class together last year,” he said. “That’s…all.” He was still dabbing at her with napkins. Tree took them from him to finish herself.
“Sorry again,” he said, and he started back toward his dorm.
“Hey!” Tree jumped up to stop Carter, pulling him a few feet away from Danielle’s prying eyes. Carter looked at Tree like she’d lost her mind until he glanced down and saw her open hand in front of him.
“My bracelet?” she whispered.
“Oh. Yeah.”
Carter reached into his pocket, pulled out Tree’s gold bracelet, and dropped it into her hand. He could barely look her in the eye, but Tree saw him steel himself against the embarrassment. He gave her a grim smile.
“I’m sorry again…about the mess.”
As she watched him walk away, Tree closed her fingers around the bracelet. She was happy to have it back, but the only thing Tree could hear was the question tumbling over and over in her mind: How did I know he had this bracelet o
n him?
Finally, she turned back to the table.
“What a douchebag,” Danielle pronounced judgment on Carter as she watched him walk away.
Tree decided she’d had enough house meetings to last a lifetime. She slipped the bracelet into her pocket, took a play out of Carter’s book, and left the scene of the accident. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with her. Was it psychological? Was it all in her head? Could it be medically diagnosed?
Regardless, she was going to see the doctor.
* * *
—
Tree paced back and forth in Gregory’s office while she waited for him to arrive. Something about today didn’t add up. It was like she could sense what was about to happen before it happened—maybe not exactly what was going to happen but that something was about to. It felt like she’d dreamed this entire day last night, and if that were true—if she’d dreamed this day moment by moment—did she already know how it would end?
When Gregory came in, Tree hurried over to meet him. As he quickly closed the door behind him, she reached around him to lock it.
“We can’t do this,” he said. “There’s too much going on in the building today.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Gregory walked over and dropped his keys on his desk, then turned around and sat on the edge of it. “Tree, I know what you’re going to say.”
Tree felt a surge of hope as she walked over to him. Maybe he was more intuitive than she’d realized. Maybe he had an answer to this weird déjà vu moment she was having.
“You do?” she asked.
He took both of her hands in his and stared into her eyes. For a moment, she forgot where she was, or what she was worried about, or that she very well might be hurtling toward her dream-foretold death at the hands of a knife-wielding psychopath who ran around in a Bayfield Baby mask.
Gregory sighed. “It’s normal for a young girl to have feelings for an older man. But you can’t let it cross that line. You can’t fall in love.”
Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U Page 4