Tree pushed through the fire exit door onto the roof and felt a blast of cool air. She paused just in time to see the killer charge out after her, and she took off running across the rooftop. She glanced back over her shoulder, but the killer stopped cold and even seemed to tilt his masked face at her like a confused dog. For a moment, she couldn’t understand why.
The confusion didn’t last long.
Her next step landed on air, and Tree ran right off the edge of the building.
Tree wasn’t sure how many stories she fell (seven? eight?), but as she jerked awake in Carter’s bed to the toll of the bell tower, one thing was certain.
This might be a new dimension, but she was right back where she’d started.
13
Rookie move, Tree.
As she waited for Carter to get out from under his desk, she couldn’t believe she’d been stupid enough to run off the roof of a building.
“Oh, hey. You’re up! I wasn’t—”
“What dimension am I in?” Tree asked.
“Huh?”
Tree tried again. “Danielle.”
“My girlfriend?”
“Ugh,” she moaned. “Same one.”
As her dad’s ringtone played, she rolled out of bed and started getting dressed. Her whole body ached.
“You okay?” Carter asked her.
“I’m fine,” she said. She looked up at him and changed gears. Something had been bugging her since, well, the last time she lived through this day.
“I mean, no offense,” she said, “but how could you possibly end up with her?”
Carter shrugged. “Well, I mean…she’s really nice.”
Tree laughed. “Nice. Ha.”
“Wait. Isn’t she, like, one of your besties?”
The door swung open before she could answer, and Ryan appeared, mid-yell: “Dude! You hit that fine vagine—?” He saw Tree and froze.
She looked at Carter. “Hmm. Interesting.”
“No. I wasn’t trying to—”
Tree wasn’t buying it. “Not as innocent as you look.”
She turned to Ryan. “You—meet me in the lab in an hour.”
“Huh?” Ryan blinked at her.
“I’ve got to get out of these disgusting clothes.”
Tree grabbed her bracelet and phone. As she made her way down the hall, she heard Carter’s voice and smiled. “Nice one, dickhead.”
* * *
—
It took some time to do the recap for the whole gang at once. As Sissy hummed in the background, Carter, Ryan, Samar, and Dre asked question after question as Tree tried to remain patient. She’d had plenty of practice at telling the whole damn story in a way that would get Carter to believe her quickly. It was the endless questions from Ryan, Samar, and Dre that really bogged things down. She’d finally remembered to tell Ryan to check the reports. Once he saw the anomaly at 12:01 a.m., they were all as convinced as they needed to be.
Wrapping up, Tree told them the most important point of the story.
“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “I have to stay here in this dimension. Just close the loop.”
“Oh, sure,” Ryan scoffed. “No problem. Even though we have no idea how this even happened in the first place!”
“You’re all brainy science people, right?” Tree said. “Figure it out.”
“We’re messing with forces we have no business touching,” Samar said with a solemn nod.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you built this big, dumb thing.” Tree took a breath. “Just do me a favor and try, okay? Please?”
Ryan looked at Samar and Dre. They shrugged and nodded. He turned back to Tree.
“Look,” Ryan said. “This is going be a trial-and-error situation. We have to rule out every variable in order to narrow down the correct algorithm that will close the loop.”
“Okay…” Tree said.
Dre tried to lay it out for her. “It could be days, maybe weeks of work. And if what you’re saying is true, there’s no way to keep a record of our progress.”
Tree frowned. “I’m not following.”
Samar stood up and walked to the dry-erase board, which was covered with code.
“Look, say we test dozens of variables,” he said, circling a huge swath of the code on the board. “By the end of the day, the loop will reset, right? So everything we learned gets erased.”
He wiped away all the code he’d just circled with an eraser. “We can’t track our progress because we won’t remember what we learned.”
“We’ll be back to square one.”
Tree sank into a chair. “Then I’m screwed.”
A hopeless silence hung in the air until Carter snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it!”
They all looked at him with what seemed to Tree to be extreme skepticism.
“Everything resets, but your memory doesn’t,” Carter said. “Right?”
Tree nodded.
Carter grinned. “So you’ll have to be a living record.”
“You mean memorize everything?” she asked.
Samar jumped up. “That’s genius!”
Tree couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No. No, it’s not genius! I’m not a scientist! And hello? You do realize there’s a psycho killer after me. I’ll have to die over and over until you figure out how to close the loop.”
They were quiet for a moment. Then Samar spoke up. “I guess you could always kill yourself before the killer finds you.”
Tree rolled her eyes. “Another genius idea.”
“Beats getting chased by some crazy dude in a baby mask,” Dre said.
Tree groaned. This was not what she’d had in mind. These science geeks had broken her life. Why the hell couldn’t they fix it?
“Do you have a better idea?” Carter asked her.
Tree sighed. “I knew you’d say that.”
14
For the next few weeks, Tree studied harder than she ever had in her life. The truth of the matter was that she wasn’t a bad student; she’d just stopped trying after high school.
When her mom died, Tree no longer had an interest in studying anything. Why should she be knocking herself out to learn a bunch of stuff that she’d probably never use again anyway? Her mom had done all of that: gotten the degree, pursued the career, had a family. And for what? To die at fifty? What was the point of that? Tree decided then and there that if she saw a shortcut, she’d take it every time. On her deathbed, her mom hadn’t looked back on her life with satisfaction because she’d aced statistics in college. Tree swore she’d have all the fun she wanted, and if that meant a C− here and there, that would be just fine. Since then, college had been an experiment in the bare minimum. Tree was smart enough that she could party as hard as she wanted and coast by on quick wit and SparkNotes.
With the exception of Dr. Butler’s biology lab, she’d never signed up for any class she didn’t have to take. Bayfield only required two science classes to get a communications degree. She’d knocked out geology her freshman year. “Rocks for Jocks” hadn’t been that hard, and there were lots of field trips to a nearby quarry for extra credit to keep her GPA from tanking. Astronomy was her sophomore year, and “Stars at Bars” involved fake IDs and pitchers of beer on the patio at a bar called the Deadwood. She and Danielle had taken that class together and met there every Tuesday night to copy notes from the guy who Tree had been hooking up with at the time—precisely for access to his notes. He was sort of a douche, but he had excellent handwriting.
Gregory’s biology course was tougher, but she’d only signed up to be close to him. He’d given her the grade so she’d keep coming back. Telling that asshole she’d already dropped his class had been one of her finest moments back in her old dimension. Tree smiled at the memory as she sat
in the lab copying the equations she had to memorize in today’s cram session.
Samar was at the dry-erase board writing an endless string of numbers under the label FAILED ALGORITHMS while Dre and Ryan worked on the next set of codes they’d try. Carter was surprisingly helpful. He was always bringing her Diet Cokes or going out to grab food and churros for the gang. He had a calming effect on Ryan, who tended to get worked up about the endless number of equations they still had to try.
With every reset, it never got easier having Carter around because Tree knew he’d be going to meet Danielle later, but the thing was, he made her smile. As long as she had to twist her brain memorizing equations and symbols she’d never even seen before, she figured she might as well have some eye candy nearby. Tree finally decided that she wanted Carter in her life any way she could have him, and if that was friendship, well, his presence was better than his absence.
Every morning, when Tree woke up in his bed, she’d check to see if Carter was still with Danielle. He always was, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. Things had a way of shifting around in this dimension, but she eventually gave up hope that this would be one of them.
After she climbed out of bed, Tree would open the door and call Ryan into the room. She’d spend the next half hour convincing the two of them she was stuck in a time loop by telling Ryan things he hadn’t even discovered about Sissy yet and, as they walked through the quad to the lab, pointing out exactly what was about to happen the second before it did. This blew Carter’s mind, adorably, every time.
Once they were both onboard, she’d sit them down in the lab, grab a marker, and start writing out the algorithms that had failed previously. Dre and Samar would stand there stunned, watching the blond alpha bitch scribble the information on the dry-erase board while Carter and Ryan explained what was going on.
After the gang determined which equations to try next, Samar would walk her through them while Ryan got to work writing the code. Once he was done, he’d enter it into the system, and Sissy would rev up.
So far, Sissy had glitched fatally on every attempt. The machine would power down with a slow whir, and the screen at the terminal would flash Sequence Failure.
That was Tree’s cue to memorize the latest equation that didn’t work. She’d study by writing it out herself, asking Samar and Dre to explain to her (again) what the symbols were, how they were supposed to work, and why they didn’t. At first, she could memorize the equations by rote—just a string of numbers. But after a few failed days, it became too hard to remember that many characters in a row without any context.
If she had to tell the truth, Tree was curious. As long as she was stuck in this day, she might as well understand the science behind it. The whole process required an intense amount of focus—not unlike going through rush, only this time to join a club exclusively for them. She was being inducted into this weird science sorority, one where the Greek letters she’d worn for years actually meant something.
When she could write from memory that day’s failed algorithm in addition to all the equations that had come before, Tree would head out to have lunch with her mom and dad and enjoy what was left of the day before it was time to reset the loop.
Usually, she’d stop for a cherry Slurpee on the way back to campus. At the Kappa house, she’d been helping Danielle run her lines for The Miracle Worker by making videos of her clumsy blind walk. Tree found that Danielle did better when she could see herself, and she was helping her tone down some of the movements so Danielle didn’t look like a crazy person trapped in a kitchen mixer.
Usually, Carter would join them for the rehearsal before he and Danielle went to dinner. Tree would excuse herself after a little while and head upstairs to her room to study a little bit more. Hanging with Carter in the lab was one thing, but watching him flirt with Danielle was too hard.
Every day, even though she’d tell herself not to, she’d go to her second-story window and watch the two of them kissing down on the porch. A few repetitions back, she’d gotten so annoyed she’d held her cup out the window and poured her Slurpee on their heads, but most days, she was able to control herself.
When she was positive she could remember everything she had to write on the dry-erase board the next day, all she had to do was find a new way to get back into Carter’s bed. It was insane, and Tree knew it, but it was also her new normal. Sometimes, she just ran a bath and relaxed for a while before turning on the hair dryer and dropping it into the water. Or she’d stage a public display and drink a bottle of liquid drain cleaner in front of a startled customer at the supermarket.
Subtle things continued to shift every now and then. Once, as she was leaving the Kappa house to go meet her parents for lunch, she noticed Gregory’s Mercedes slow down and follow Lori until she stopped and got in it. Dr. Butler and her roommate proceeded to have a heated discussion, and Tree wondered if perhaps Lori had gotten her wish in this dimension.
It was super strange to walk through her day knowing that some of her actions had zero consequence, while others—learning the equations, especially—were a matter of life and, well, death.
As she began to accept the routine, she realized how much pleasure she was taking in the simplest things. It turned out she was a lot smarter than she’d given herself credit for being. The more she learned about physics, the more she wanted to know. Her deep dive into the field of quantum mechanics was expanding her mind, and as it did, she was seeing new possibilities for herself.
Tree actually began to enjoy the whole process—well, the science, not the suicides; but even those had a silver lining. She was experiencing life and death without fear, and it made her feel invincible. As she climbed the stairs of the bell tower one night, reading over the day’s failed algorithms for a final time, she couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of her college experience so far—and the hope it gave her about what she might accomplish if she ever lived to see a new day.
If I can live through this, I can do anything.
Tree tossed the notebook on the landing at the top of the tower and slipped the rope that would soon snap her neck over her head. Stepping out onto the ledge in front of the clock’s massive hands, she spread her arms, took a deep breath, and did a glorious, ten-story swan dive right into Carter’s bed.
15
Tree sat up rubbing the back of her head as Carter came out from under the desk and started his routine.
“Oh, hey. You’re up!”
Tree said what he was saying right along with him.
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to sleep in or not. I folded your pants for you last night. You know, I wasn’t sure if that material…gets wrinkled.” She pointed at the desk he was just searching. “And anyway, what are you always looking for under there?”
Carter reached into his pocket and removed a white plastic half circle. “Mouth guard,” he explained. “I grind my teeth at night.”
“Mystery solved.” Tree was too disappointed with this answer not to be sarcastic.
She hauled herself out of bed and winced in pain.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Tree grunted. “Never better.”
She started for the door, but another stab of pain made her stop and grab for the desk.
“Are you sure?” Carter looked worried.
Everything started to go white in front of Tree’s eyes. “Actually? I’m probably going to pass out.”
She felt herself start to drop like a rock and felt Carter’s arms around her at the last second.
Ryan burst through the door to yell about fine vagine, then stopped short and gasped up at Carter.
“Is she dead?”
Carter struggled to keep Tree from slipping to the floor. “A little help here?”
* * *
—
When Tree slowly came to at the hospital, the first face she saw w
as Carter’s.
“Hey,” he said softly.
She smiled. “You still came.”
“Yeah. Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
Tree smiled at him, but she had to fight the tears in her eyes. Of all the pain she felt in her body, her heart still hurt the worst.
“Oh, hey,” Carter said, “we just got ahold of your parents. They’re on their way—”
“No!” Tree said. “They can’t come here. It’s not safe.”
The lights flickered before Carter could answer, and the hospital was plunged into a blackout.
In the darkness, Tree realized Carter had no idea what was happening. She’d fainted this morning before she’d had a chance to explain anything to him.
Carter had no idea about Sissy, or the algorithms, or the loop. He didn’t know that in another dimension, the two of them were falling in love.
Right now, he wasn’t even sure if she remembered his name.
Of course, this time, Carter was with Danielle. Maybe he didn’t care if she knew his name or not.
Tree wanted to pull him close and tell him that he was the last thing she thought about every day. He was the reason she had the strength to do what she did. She found the courage to end every night because it brought her back to him every morning.
A second later, the lights flashed back up, and Tree saw Gregory had stepped into the room behind Carter.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Carter jumped. “Jesus!”
“It’s okay,” Tree told Gregory. “He’s a friend.”
Gregory smiled, but not with his eyes. “Visiting hours are over.”
Carter nodded and turned to go.
Tree called out, “Thanks, Carter,” and just like last time, he stopped in the doorway, turned around, and smiled.
“Feel better,” he said.
Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U Page 18