Now that the killer was dead, the loop would be broken, and tomorrow morning, wherever she stayed, she and Carter would be on day two. No bracelet would automatically be forgotten or returned.
“Thanks.”
Tree held out her palm and waited for him to drop the bracelet into her hand. And maybe he did it on impulse, or maybe Carter saw the tears in her eyes and somehow understood. Either way, he took her whole hand in his and interlaced their fingers, pressing the bracelet safely between them.
They sat there for the rest of the afternoon, watching the news coverage and eating french fries. She had some rosé. Carter had some beer, and later if you’d asked Tree what they talked about for hours, she’d probably shrug and tell you about the first subject that arose after Carter held her hand.
“Hey, you know what your little scenario reminds me of?” he asked her.
“What?”
“Groundhog Day.”
She frowned. “What’s that?”
Carter was amazed. “The movie Groundhog Day?”
“I don’t know it,” Tree confessed.
Now he was alarmed. “With Bill Murray?”
“Who’s Bill Murray?”
Just the look on his face had made Tree giggle.
Carter felt this question was an outrage. “Are you kidding me? Ghostbusters?” He realized how loud his voice was now and apologized. “Sorry.”
“I don’t know.” She smiled.
“How do you sleep at night? You’ve never seen Groundhog Day?”
She couldn’t stop laughing. “You’ll have to show me.”
27
It was the bell in the tower that woke her up but the ringtone that struck fear in her heart.
Yeahhh! It’s my birthday, and I ain’t gotta pick up the phone!
Tree sat up in Carter’s dorm room and felt like she might be imploding. Her whole body started to fold in on itself as she watched Carter crawl out from under the desk and turn around.
“Oh, hey. You’re up! I wasn’t sure if you wanted to sleep in or not.”
Tree felt the panic of the past seventeen days wash over her, and she scrambled away from Carter, pressing her back against the cinder block dorm room wall. There was no escape from this. Terror gripped her heart with icy fingers and threatened to squeeze the life out of her. Her breath went shallow, and her lips quivered as the tears began to well in her eyes.
Then she saw Carter break into a huge grin.
“I’m kidding!” he said and held up his phone. “It was me. I just called you.”
“What?” Tree’s throat choked around the word. She blinked at him in confusion.
“It’s Tuesday the nineteenth,” Carter said with a grin. “You made it.”
Tree had never been more ready to strangle anyone. “Oh. My. God!” she yelled. “You are such a jerk!”
Carter was laughing as Tree leaped out of bed and grabbed a pillow.
“I’m gonna kill you!” Tree screamed. She ran across the room and started giggling with relief as she pummeled him with the pillow.
“Hey! That’s enough!” Carter was laughing as he tried to shield himself from Tree’s pillow onslaught.
“What is wrong with you?”
Carter couldn’t defend himself because he was laughing so hard. He finally resorted to a bear hug, wrapping both arms around Tree and the pillow and pushing the whole operation back over to his bed.
Tree collapsed beneath him, still giggling in protest. “That was not funny! You are such a punk!”
Carter leaned in to kiss her, and just as their lips touched, the door swung open.
Ryan appeared, bleached blond, disheveled, and—upon seeing Tree—dismayed.
“She’s back?”
“Out.” Carter pointed to the hallway.
“I’m not sleeping in my car again. It smells like Hot Pockets and feet.”
“Get out.” Carter meant business. He picked up the pillow Tree had been hitting him with and threw it at the door.
Ryan pulled it closed to avoid the pillow. Tree heard him yell from the hallway, “I just want clean underwear!”
Tree and Carter both started laughing. She pulled him in closer and said, “Now, where were we?”
“Day two,” he whispered.
Tree smiled as she kissed him. This day was already off to an excellent start.
HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U
◼
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
and death shall have no dominion.
—DYLAN THOMAS
1
Ryan Phan stood in his dorm hallway, wishing he could start this day over again. He wished he could rewind and wake up in his own bed, instead of in his car. He wished he hadn’t been startled to consciousness by a food truck blasting “La Bamba.” But most of all, he wished that Carter would get herpes from that blond girl he was hooking up with right now.
Tree Gelbman was one of the biggest bitches on campus. She’d been known to make football players weep tears of defeat. Even if she was squeaky clean in the STD department, it was only a matter of time before she crushed his roommate like an ant.
Ryan wasn’t always this cranky, but the jolt of “La Bamba” was no way to start the day—especially when you were covered in drool and your car smelled like a junior high locker room. If that weren’t enough, he’d only barely stumbled from the car when a Pomeranian tried to eat his leg for breakfast. The woman walking it just said, “Jelly Bean! No!” while grinning through her dentures as if it weren’t that big a deal; as if it were perfectly fine for her dog to attack strangers—or be named Jelly Bean. Ryan rolled his eyes at the memory. People are crazy.
And just as he was recovering from psycho puppy? A homeless dude decided it was the perfect time to ask him for some spare change—which Ryan didn’t mind—except that this guy scared the bejesus out of him by popping out of the hedge along the sidewalk unannounced. Then, as he recovered from the near heart attack caused by the Spare Change Ambush of September 19, some douchebag on a skateboard nearly ran him over. And did bro-y skater dude bother to stop? Nope. Just kept surfing down the sidewalk (Isn’t that illegal?) with—get this—a tray of lattes in one hand.
“Sorry, brooooooo…”
So, by the time he made it to the entryway of his dorm, where that annoying activist girl with the clipboard had asked him to stop global warming—however that was supposed to be accomplished by a signature—Ryan Phan was a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He truly wanted to help stop global warming, but he possessed zero bandwidth at that precise moment for human interaction. And so, he did the thing he hated doing more than any other, the thing he saved as his Get Out of Jail Free card for situations where he had come to the end of his rope: he pressed his hands together, bowed to her as he hurried by, and pretended to be a fresh-off-the-boat exchange student who didn’t speak English.
That charade made him cringe, but fuck it. It was his prerogative. He was one of, like, four Asian people on this campus to begin with and (as far as he knew) the only student of Vietnamese descent. All he wanted was a shower and a couple of hours of sleep in a horizontal position before he had to go to class.
Instead, he was greeted in the hallway with the endless standoff between Tromboner and Dickwad, the world’s most incompatible roommates. He felt for the guy on the horn. The music building was, like, eighteen light-years away by foot. Still, they were called practice rooms for a reason. And when was it going to be time to admit that you were probably not the guy who winds up playing trombone in the New York Philharmonic? Or…any harmonic? I mean, this asshole is struggling with the Bayfield Babies fight song.
So, to battle through the last fifteen minutes, and then have his roommate, Carter, throw a pillow at his head? Yeah, fuck that. Ryan ran a hand through his bleached-platinum hair and was about to
barge back into his own room when his phone blew up in his pocket.
Oh my god, Ryan! Answer me already!
That was Samar’s ringtone. Ryan reminded himself to change that but then realized he’d only forgotten because Samar never called. Ever. Only texted.
You’d better not be in jail right now, you asshole, Ryan thought. Then he sighed and answered.
“Dude! Dude! Get over here now! This is crazy! You won’t believe it!” Samar was always excited, but this bordered on hysterical. He was talking eighty miles per minute.
“What? I understood two percent of that.” Ryan rubbed his neck and tried to work out the kinks.
Samar’s response was basically a high-pitched scream:
“Come now!”
2
The student physicists of the Bayfield Science and Engineering building had been relegated long ago to the basement. Here, under the cold fluorescent lights, a maze of classrooms, storage spaces, and labs was linked by a crazy warren of corridors that ran through the building’s underbelly like intestines.
Ryan was about halfway down the hallway to the lab when Samar, one of his research partners, came barreling up, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him down the hall.
“Hurry!”
Ryan was running now to keep up. “What?”
“You’ll see!”
Samar pulled him through the door of the lab, and Ryan almost tripped over the tangled mess of electrical cables that covered the floor. Samar let go of his arm to scramble over and around the obstacle course of power cords and instruments, joining Andrea “Dre” Morgan, the other member of the team, at the computer terminal panel on the far side of the room.
Dre didn’t take her eyes from the screen as Samar joined her. Ryan took his time. He never got tired of looking at what they created. As he picked his way carefully around the perimeter of the room, he couldn’t help but admire the huge globe in the center of the room, crackling with energy: the Sisyphus Quantum Cooling Reactor. It had taken them all two full semesters to build “Sissy”—so many all-nighters and endless weekends stuck in this airless, windowless realm. The premed assholes called them the mole people, but Ryan didn’t give a shit. It had been worth it. He stopped for a second and took in the glow as Sissy pulsed and hummed. Their quest to build a mini hadron collider had become something even more intriguing and beautiful—a creative event of such inspiration and precision that it had transcended mere experimentation.
They’d applied science and achieved true art.
Now they just had to get it to work.
Dre’s head popped up above the monitors, and the look she shot Ryan brought him back down to planet Earth. Something had happened. Something big. He joined them at the terminal, scanning the code on the screens until his eyes landed on a piece of data that made him gasp.
“Whoa.”
“Right?” Samar said.
“Point-seven millinewtons of energy.” Dre shook her head, short curls bouncing around. “That’s like…huge.”
“When?” Ryan asked her.
She pointed to the time code on their analytics monitor. “Yesterday—12:01 a.m.”
Ryan leaned in closer to the screen. He could scarcely believe his eyes.
“We just don’t know what set the device off.” Samar was so excited he could barely stand still. “Lab was locked. It’s like Sissy just decided to fire on its own.”
The door crashed open, and Ryan jumped as Roger Bronson, the dean of students, stormed into the lab, his balding head burning Bayfield crimson above his rapidly shrinking crown of remaining hair.
“That’s it!” he thundered at them. “I’ve had it.”
Bronson was out for blood, and Ryan thought he might have actually shed their own had he not been caught in the snarl of cables blocking his way. Dre and Samar grabbed their book bags and were already halfway around the opposite side of Sissy by the time Ryan noticed.
“Where are you going?”
“It—It’s churro day in the cafeteria,” Samar stammered.
Dre rubbed her belly and called out, “Nom nom!” as they scurried past the dean and disappeared into the hallway.
Perfect. Ryan already wanted this day to end, and now it had accelerated from suck to shit in 2.6 seconds.
“Dean Bronson!” he called out in a cheery voice. “Hi! Love the tie. Are those cats?”
The dean paused and glanced down at his tie, confused. “Turkish Angora,” he said, then, remembering his rage, barked, “Don’t change the subject!”
“What subject?” Ryan knew he couldn’t play dumb for long, but any time he could buy was helpful.
“That!” yelled Bronson, pointing at Sissy. “We’ve had four rolling blackouts, fried electrical circuits, broken bulbs all over campus—and it’s all because of your little science experiment.”
The way he spat out little science experiment like it was a filthy hate crime pissed Ryan off and terrified him at the same time.
“It’s my thesis project!”
“It’s an abject failure. This university’s science department prides itself on pioneering, forward-thinking ideas that yield results. Results that lead to patents. Do you see how it works?”
“So it’s just about money?” Ryan shot back.
“Yes, Mr. Phan.” Bronson wasn’t having it. “I hate to shatter your illusions, but somebody has to keep the lights on around here—something you seem hell-bent on stopping. Literally. Consider this joke of a project suspended, effective immediately.”
“What?” A panic seized at Ryan’s stomach. This couldn’t be happening. He’d worked too hard. They all had.
“That’s right. I already called Professor Boner—”
“I think it’s pronounced Bonner,” Ryan interjected, but the dean didn’t slow his roll.
“—and he’s in total agreement with my request. I’m sending security to collect this energy-sucking doohickey by six o’clock today.”
It felt like the room were spinning. This was a nightmare, and now all he could do was beg. “You can’t just take it!”
Bronson’s face twisted into a satisfied sneer.
“Watch me,” he snarled. “I suggest you wrap up whatever business you have left here. Capisce?”
The dean turned and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Ryan stood there for a second, stunned, then flopped into a swivel chair and let his face drop into his hands. He felt like he might start crying. Or hurl chunks.
This is the worst day ever.
His phone pinged in his pocket, and he grabbed it, ready to kill Samar in a hail of texts, but the message was from an unknown number. He swiped to read it, but there were no words, only a picture.
Of him.
Sitting exactly where he was sitting right now.
Whoever took it had to be standing at the door. He stood up and started picking his way over the cables around Sissy.
“Samar?” he called.
There was no answer. The only sound was the low symphonic hum of equipment—whirring drives, fans cooling drives, electricity crackling through wires.
Ryan swung the door open and listened. No footsteps. No voices. He stepped into the hallway and checked both directions. It was empty. As he stared down the dim corridor, he heard a distant, hollow bang at the opposite end. He turned toward the sound and started walking in that direction. The fire exit door that led into the stairwell was open about a foot, and the stairs beyond were completely dark.
His phone pinged again, and he felt his pulse quicken. It was another picture of himself, seemingly at this exact moment. He was standing right there, in front of this fire exit. It must’ve been shot from the other end of the hall.
“What the hell?”
His own voice was the only sound. When he turned around to see who was there…nada.
Ryan headed back down the hall. Now he was getting pissed. Why were his friends being such dicks today? First, Carter put the room on lockdown for that sorority girl who wouldn’t have given any of them the goddamn time of day if she hadn’t been so blotto the night before. Then, Samar and Dre totally bailed and left him to face Dean Bronson alone. That wasn’t the way friendship was supposed to work. Back in elementary school, he’d always been jealous of his classmates with big families. The friends he’d made at Bayfield had become the brothers and sisters he’d never had and always wanted. But enough was enough, and he was calling them on their bullshit.
Ryan flung open the door to one of the larger chemistry labs and scanned the long row of vacant workstations. The only light came from a row of glowing ventilation units lining one side of the room.
“Hey!” he shouted, his voice pinging off the metal surfaces and echoing down the hallway behind him. “While you shit-bags were off eating churros, our project got shut down! Hope you’re happy!”
Silence.
A weird bump and rattle sounded from the back of the room, and Ryan froze. He was too tired. He hated being this strung out and jumpy. He started walking down the rows, past a big unit of shelves, each one filled with glass beakers in every size and shape you could possibly need. He loved all the equipment scientists got to use. He was a true nerd at heart. Another time, he might have paused to examine them, but he was on a mission.
If he had paused, he might have noticed the distorted reflection of a Bayfield Baby mask.
But Ryan was too busy trying to flush out his friends and give them a piece of his mind concerning their so-called friendship. He walked with more purpose, increasing his speed when he saw an abandoned janitor’s cart and heard the same rattle-bump—only louder this time. It seemed to be coming from behind a closed door at the back of the lab.
He reached out and turned the knob. The door squeaked open to…nothing. And as Ryan squinted into the black emptiness—
Wham.
A hand landed on his shoulder with such force that he screamed as he spun around, swatting and punching as hard as he could.
Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U Page 13