Chapter 5
When I wake up, I don’t hear the rooster.
The light isn’t as bright this morning, so maybe Christopher is sleeping in. I wish I were sleeping in, so I keep my eyes closed, knowing Grandee will be up here any moment.
I need to get up and talk to Grandee. I need to tell her what she did last night was wrong. And if she does it again, I’m gonna put her in a home.
Okay. Not really.
Burning wool is so unlike her, though. She knows—knows—what goes into making our yarn. She’s the one who taught Linden and me that a stitch is more than a stitch, and for her to just pull out …
I sigh, knowing I just need to open my eyes and talk to her.
“Hey!” Linden’s voice fills my bedroom. “First day of school! Up, up, up! You don’t want to miss your first class!”
Linden? My eyes open, but the ceiling I’m expecting to see is … not the ceiling …
I sit up.
This … this is … my dorm.
My dorm I shared with Linden in Founder’s Tower. What the …
“What’s happening?” I ask it through the lingering fog of sleep, even though I feel wide awake.
Linden’s face falls into confusion. “What?”
She sits on her bed against the opposite wall, wearing a soft gray shirt with our school’s name across it in red, and cute black sweats. On the wall behind her is a poster of a cat dangling from a tree branch, with the words HANG IN THERE!
A poster I tore down last winter after too many White Claws at a freshman mixer.
“How did I get here?”
“Here where?” Linden asks slowly. She looks around like she’s confused. “The dorm? Or, like … your life?”
“No, I—” I rub my eyes. “I fell asleep at Grandee’s. She made me spin yarn and … I didn’t…”
“Grandee is on a cruise.” Her eyes go wide. “Remember? Her empty-nest cruise since you’re finally at college.” She walks over to me and puts her hand on my forehead like she’s checking my temperature. “Did you have another nightmare?”
Did I? “What? No. Grandee went on a cruise my freshman year.”
“Yeah.” Linden says it slowly. “Because you’re a freshman.”
“Is this a joke? Are you pranking me? Because after the summer I’ve had, it’s not very nice.”
She’s frowning. “Nieve. I feel like you’re pranking me.” Linden grabs a bottle of water from our minifridge and hands it to me. “Are you okay? Is this some kind of first-day-of-school breakdown?”
First day of school? Freshman?
I grab my phone and check the date. September 2. Was yesterday the first? I can’t remember.
“I’m fine.” I pull up my calendar, but the date says … It says last year. “I think something’s wrong with my phone.”
“Want me to look at it?”
I’m already on Google asking what the date is. “It’s okay.”
September 2. But the wrong year.
What the fuck?
“You’re spiraling.”
I look up and see my cousin’s concerned face.
“Is this because your mom forgot to call you?”
My face scrunches as I try to remember what she’s talking about. My mom was out of the country, again, and forgot to even message me on my first day of classes. I was really upset. “How do you remember that?” I ask, awe in my voice.
“What do you mean, Nieve? You wouldn’t shut up about it yesterday.” She grabs her phone. “You’re being weird. Do I need to try to call Grandee on the cruise?”
“No!” Or maybe she should. I sit up in bed and crawl over to her on my knees. “Linden. Just be honest with me. What the fuck is happening?”
She takes a deep breath and smiles patiently at me. “I think you’re having a psychotic break.”
And I nod, because that’s the only thing this could be. A psychotic break. Carter died and now my brain is broken. Makes sense. Yes.
“I have to go to class.” She looks skeptical as she grabs her dance bag. The purple one she had to replace last year after the handles broke. “Text me if you leave this room to go anywhere other than your first class, okay? I’ll be back after mine’s over.”
I nod. I watched her throw away that bag.
“Do not go anywhere else.”
“Okay.” It was in the huge dumpster next to the cafeteria.
Maybe it’s a different bag?
She opens the door, and I hear the noises of the hall.
A hall that isn’t at the top of Founder’s Tower, because those rooms were being renovated …
The RA yells about leaving trash in the common areas, something he asked people to clean up all last year and eventually quit over.
The girls across the hall complain about their whiteboard that keeps getting stolen.
I was almost positive they figured out it was the music major boys from the floor below us.
The choral group practices too loudly, but they’ve been banned from the dorms already … right?
Linden waves, and the door shuts behind her.
What the fuck? What is happening to me?
And then I’m back on the internet searching the date. Searching for anything that will tell me what’s really going on. I type in the last date I remember, but the only websites that come up are a few wedding websites and different calendar planning apps.
I let out a shaky breath and pull up something that makes my stomach tighten.
Carter’s social media.
His latest post is of him and his two dorm mates, Benji and Max. The bottom says, Back at it with the boys. Junior year.
What the hell is happening? Is Carter still … Is Carter …
My hands shake as I dial his number, but instead of the automated voice announcing that the phone has been turned off … I hear it ring. And …
I’m sent to voicemail.
Carter laughs into the phone. “It’s me. Don’t leave a message. Text me like a sane person.”
It’s the voicemail I made him change when we started dating and he was looking for a job. I’m floating outside my body. This can’t be real.
Carter. Carter is … He’s here. It’s his first day of school. Junior year. This is a stress dream or nightmare.
If this is a dream, maybe I can see him. Before I can even consider what to do next, I’m getting dressed, throwing on the first thing I can find and the first pair of shoes I see.
What was Carter’s first class this year? Why can’t I remember? Fuck.
He loved coffee from the little cart right in front of the library. I look down at my phone. It’s still early enough that maybe he went to grab it.
And then I’m running, past fresh-faced people all ready to start their new college lives.
Bleary-eyed professors with leather briefcases and paper cups in their hands.
I run past courtyards and buildings where students gather inside, but I’m unsure of what to do next. Finally, I see someone I recognize.
Max. He’s standing inside the student services building with his back to the giant windows. Max will know where Carter is.
I push open the door …
And suddenly I remember.
I push open the door to the student services building because this must be a mistake. The email said I had been dropped from Art History 101. There’s no way I could already be dropped from a class.
There can’t be.
The boy standing in front of me is wearing a soft navy shirt and a pair of trendy joggers. The kind that are expensive but understated. His backpack is slung over one shoulder, and he wraps a hand around the strap.
“Excuse me,” I say to him.
He turns around, and his green eyes find me with a frown. “Yeah?”
“Are you in line?”
He looks at me like I’ve just said the dumbest thing ever and motions toward the front desk.
Right; of course he’s waiting. “It’s just, I got an email this morning saying one of my classes was dropped, and it starts in, like, twenty minutes, but I don’t want to get kicked out because of this mistake.”
He keeps staring at me like I have ten heads. “Everyone’s class starts in twenty minutes.”
“I’m an art major. Or I will be. I’m still a freshman, and I feel like this is a terrible way to start off here.”
“Art major,” he repeats.
“Like drawing, painting, and…” His frown is getting deeper.
“I need to be in this class. It’s a part of my four-year plan.
Art History my first year. The Founders Fundraiser showcase and the festival.
Then next summer, I can apply to different art galleries and really beef up my résumé.
But if I don’t take this class, my whole plan falls apart.
I don’t want it to fill up before I even get to go.
” I’m rambling, but I need him to understand how important this is.
He shifts his weight. “I’ve been waiting here for an hour.”
“An hour?”
“Yeah. I’m also going to miss my class.”
I feel relief. “So, do you think I could go in front of you and talk to the person from student services?”
Now he rolls his eyes and faces forward again. “No. You can wait like everyone else.”
Everyone else. But I’m not like everyone else. “I didn’t get your name.” He turns to look at me. “I’m Nieve Monroe.” His eyes narrow. “Like the founders.”
With a sigh, he’s back to facing the front and pulls out his phone, and I let my humiliation sink in. Did I really just say that?
And then suddenly he’s looking back at me. “You’re not special just because you happen to have the same last name as someone from a hundred years ago.”
I know that. I really do. But I’m also the girl who tried to cut in front of him by telling him I was special.
When he turns away again, I’m left staring at his back for the next twenty minutes, thinking of things I could say to justify why I said what I did, or to apologize, or tell him what an asshole he is, until a girl in expensive athleisure wear comes out from behind a door.
She smiles at him just as an administrator calls him to the front.
While I wait.
Like everyone else.
Max. This is where I met Max Emerson on my first day of freshman year. He was so rude to me that when I finally met him properly later that day, I had already decided he was an asshole. And I had been pretty embarrassed, but that wasn’t something I realized till much later.
Now Max is standing at the front of the line just like before.
It feels like déjà vu. It feels … like any minute a doppelg?nger version of me is going to walk through the door.
Everything in this moment is surreal. A girl wearing a matching sweat suit asks him if she can go ahead of him.
The same girl who will walk out of the office after I show up an hour later.
He looks a little like he wants to say no but nods and tells her yeah.
That girl asked Max for the same thing I did and caused him to be late to his first class.
It’s only a few moments later when Max notices me standing by the door. He tilts his head like he’s thinking. His green eyes stare into mine, not with irritation but something else that I don’t have words for. A look I’m not used to from him.
“Do I know you?” he asks. His voice is almost … soft.
My heart twists inside my chest because, for a moment, I was sure he recognized me. Remembered me. And the world could go back to the way it was.
A world without Carter.
I clear my throat because the next words I’m going to speak are unbelievable. Improbable. And there’s a good chance he will look at me like I’m insane. Which is how I’m beginning to feel.
“I’m looking for Carter.”
It doesn’t come out as a question, and I’m proud of myself.
Max raises his eyebrows and points over my shoulder. “Right behind you.”
And when I turn around—
Carter Henry Adams Delaney III is standing in front of me.