Chapter 13
thirteen
Chris
My mind is still racing as I slide into an empty seat across from Percy in the cafe. This is the sort of impossible bullshit I’d write about in one of my stories, not something that’s supposed to happen in real life! But it’s hard to deny the truth staring me in the face.
I’d woken up and gone through my usual morning routine before knocking on Quinn’s door.
She’d greeted me the same way she had yesterday.
Like exactly, down to the clothes she wore and the precise words she’d used.
At first, I assumed it was a powerful sense of déjà vu.
But as we talked, it didn’t take me long to realize something much more insane was going on.
Quinn had remained her usual unflappable self through my mini-freakout as I raved and shouted and threw random accusations her way. When I’d finally calmed down enough to listen, she’d made it clear that, so far as she was concerned, yesterday—or at least, my yesterday—had never happened.
Which…fuck. I’d begun to think maybe I’d had some sort of fever dream or mental break or something. How else could I explain all these memories of a day that apparently didn’t exist?
Then, I’d run into Percy, and…well, seeing him as freaked out as me has been sort of a mixed bag.
On the one hand, it’s nice to know I’m probably not crazy.
I mean, I suppose this could all still be in my head, Percy nothing but a figment of my messed-up imagination.
But having someone else along for the ride makes a psychotic delusion seem at least marginally less likely.
On the other hand, it’s Percy who’s stuck in this nightmare with me.
Like, seriously, universe? Why couldn’t it be Quinn, or hell, even Oshkoff?
I’d take literally anyone else on this godforsaken island—except maybe Devon—over my ex.
The universe must have a sick sense of humor.
“Do you think this is some grand cosmic joke?” I blurt, fiddling with the napkin holder on the table.
“I don’t know,” Percy says after an awkward pause, refusing to meet my eyes. “Maybe.”
I tap my foot nervously on the linoleum and glance away.
Great. Our fight last night appears to still be fresh on both our minds.
I barrel ahead, barely even processing what I’m saying.
“I mean, why else would the universe pick us out of all the possible people who could be experiencing this temporal bullshit?”
“Maybe it didn’t,” Percy suggests quietly. “Maybe it’s pure random chance the two of us are caught up in…whatever this is.”
I snort. “Yeah, right. What are the odds?”
Percy shakes his head. “We don’t even know what’s going on. It seems to me like that’s where we need to start.”
“I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on.” I lean back in my chair and cross my arms. “We’re caught in a time loop. I’ve seen enough films and read enough books to recognize the signs.”
“Possibly,” Percy concedes. “I’m not sure a single iteration is enough to call it a loop yet. This could be a one-time thing.”
I raise an eyebrow, my lips curving in a humorless grin. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not that lucky. Better to expect the worst so we’re prepared no matter what happens.”
Percy’s expression darkens at that, but before I can ask why, he holds up a hand. “All right, fine. Let’s assume for now that you’re right and this phenomenon continues. That still leaves a ton of unanswered questions.”
“Such as?”
“Well, the cause, for starters. There had to be an event to initiate the temporal anomaly. Cause and effect. Understanding the cause could go a long way to figuring out our role in this.”
“Our role?” I ask, resisting the urge to call him out for using such a blatantly Star Trek-y term as temporal anomaly.
A sudden thought occurs to me, and my mouth gives it voice before I can think it through.
“Uh-uh, no way! This isn’t Groundhog Day.
I don’t care how much the universe tries to shove us together. I am not going out with you again!”
Percy winces, fiddling with his cup as he stares at the table, and I suppress a flicker of guilt.
I know I should apologize for how heated things got last night—that was mostly on me—but I can’t quite bring myself to do it.
I might regret how I’d said what I had and the effect my comments had on him, but I’d meant every word.
Besides, he’s the one who ghosted and broke up with me.
What right does he have to get upset about it now?
Another long silence passes before Percy sighs.
I risk a glance at him and find his face hardened with determination.
“Look,” he says. “I know things are strained between us, and I get it. But since we seem to be stuck together, I think our best shot at figuring this out is to combine forces. Two heads are still better than one, no matter how much they dislike each other.”
“You’ve got a point,” I admit, apprehension squeezing my chest. A single weekend with Percy had been tortuous enough, and that was with us mostly avoiding each other.
Spending the foreseeable future in close collaboration sounds close to my own personal hell.
Still, I force a grin. “Where do we start?”
Percy chews on his bottom lip the same way he always has when pondering a difficult question. “Well…I guess we should investigate. You know, search for other strange occurrences on the island. See if there’s anyone else out there like us.”
Once again, my mouth gets ahead of my brain. “Oh, there’s plenty of other people like us out there, Perce. I can show you some websites if you’re not convinced.”
Percy turns a deep shade of crimson, his eyes darting from side to side to make sure no one else is close enough to hear. Just like that, my good humor evaporates. He must catch the annoyance on my face because he rushes to his feet. “I’m going to, uh, go use the bathroom.”
I muffle a sigh as he leaves, my gaze lingering against my will on the way his jeans hug his long legs.
His continued discomfort around his sexuality is really none of my concern.
Everyone should have the right to decide when or if they’re ready to come out on their own terms. Still, I can’t help finding it a tad ridiculous that he’s more willing to discuss a freaking time loop than he is being queer.
Not to mention the way the constant reminder of how things ended between us grates on me.
Scowling, I rip my eyes away in time to see Quinn bouncing down the stairs.
She spots me and waves, heading over. I start to wave her off, then pause.
I’d already spilled the beans to her this morning.
Even if she isn’t stuck in this thing with Percy and me, that doesn’t mean she can’t help us out.
Besides, Percy and I have been together less than five minutes, and we’re already getting on each other’s nerves.
Quinn might make a perfect buffer to stop things from becoming too personal.
She detours to snag a pastry from the cafe, and by the time she’s settled at our table, happily munching away as if I hadn’t recently confessed to possible insanity, Percy’s walking over. His steps slow when he spots Quinn, and he raises an eyebrow at me. My only response is a shrug.
Quinn’s eyes brighten when she sees him. “Oh, hi. Percy, right?”
He nods. “Hi, Quinn. You, uh, excited for the bike trip?”
“Totally! There’s so much cool history on this island. I can’t wait to take it all in!”
“Yeah. Um, me too. Hey, Chris? Can I talk to you for a sec?” He tips his head to the side, indicating for me to follow him.
I consider refusing, but in the end, I reluctantly trail after him. As soon as we’re out of earshot, I say, “I think we should tell her.”
His face gets this pinched expression that’s equal parts cute and irritating. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? It’s kind of a lot to take in, and I don’t want to waste all day convincing her.”
“Trust me, no convincing necessary. I sort of already told her most of it this morning. She was there when I started to put the pieces together.”
He runs a hand through his mop of messy hair and sighs. “If this is a loop, she won’t remember anything tomorrow. We’d have to bring her up to speed all over again.”
I shrug. “So, we do it if it seems like it’ll be helpful and skip it if it seems like it won’t.
” He looks ready to protest again, and I cut in before he can.
“Look, like you said, we don’t even know if there’s going to be another repeated day.
All we can do is focus on the now. And if two heads are better than one, three heads working on a solution trumps two. ”
Reluctance oozes off him as he bows his head.
“Fine. If you genuinely think it’s a good idea, I’ll go along with it.
” He shoots a glance toward the front of the Royal Lilac.
“But whatever we’re doing, we need to come up with a believable excuse for Professor Oshkoff so she doesn’t drag us along on the bike tour. ”
I check my phone and see it’s almost 9:00 AM. She’ll be looking for us soon. “Easy. We slip out the back before she notices we’re gone.”
Percy looks at me like I suggested we murder his favorite pet. “We can’t do that! It’s against school policy.”
I fight to keep the exasperation from my voice. “Percy, we’re experiencing an inexplicable phenomenon that may or may not be a time loop, and you’re worried about school policy? Jesus, you sound like Hermione right now.”
His lips quirk. “Yeah, well, without Hermione, they’d have died a dozen times over, Harry.”
I meet his grin with one of my own, and for a brief, glorious moment, it’s as if everything’s all right between us. Then, his smile falters, and he looks away. I grimace as reality comes crashing back in with a vengeance.
“Fine.” I turn toward our table, where Quinn’s still waiting. “We’ll play by the rules—this time anyway. Let’s go fill Quinn in and see what we can come up with for Oshkoff.”
As I expected, Quinn takes the news in stride, nodding along calmly as we relate what little we’ve gleaned so far about our predicament. Only Quinn could accept something this absurd without batting an eye.
“Sounds like Groundhog Day,” she says when we finish.
“Exactly!” I agree. “Though, I’ll pass on the romance.”
Percy tenses at that, and Quinn blinks, appearing confused for the first time.
I mentally kick myself. Of course. She doesn’t remember my blurted confession from dinner last night because, to her, last night never happened.
That’s…huh. Percy might’ve had a valid point.
If this thing lasts through multiple iterations, it’ll be hard to keep straight what she or anyone else knows in any given loop.
“Okaayy,” Quinn says slowly, drawing the word out as her eyes dart between us. “No romance. Got it. That’s not what that movie was about anyway—at least, not entirely.”
“It’s not?” Percy asks.
She shakes her head. “It’s about learning from your mistakes so you can become a better person. Finding love was only one facet of that.” She grins, fixing her gaze on me. “Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling you to stop being such a grumpy asshole.”
I groan. “Quinn!”
“Hey, just calling it like I see it.”
While I glare at my current best friend, my former best friend’s expression grows thoughtful.
“I guess that’s one possibility for why this is happening.
Not necessarily because we need to work on ourselves,” he adds hastily when I switch my glare to him, much to Quinn’s amusement.
“But because there’s something we need to do. ”
I raise an eyebrow. “You honestly believe God or fate or whatever has selected us so we can carry out some ineffable plan?”
“Maybe, maybe not. At this point, we can’t discount any possibility. I’m open to other suggestions.”
He says it as a challenge, and I hesitate, racking my brain for other plausible explanations. Short of hallucinations, insanity, or brain tumors—none of which I’m particularly keen to raise as options, even in jest—I come up blank.
Quinn, thankfully, breaks the silence. “Well, Groundhog Day’s only one example of a time loop. There are plenty of others we could draw inspiration from. Take Edge of Tomorrow, for example. In that one, alien technology creates the loop. To break the cycle, they have to stop the invasion.”
“It’s something similar in Happy Death Day,” I interject. “Turns out the entire thing is caused by a science experiment gone awry.”
Percy furrows his brow. “Right. So, our options are fate, aliens, or mad science. That about cover it?”
“And magic!” Quinn adds. “Don’t forget about magic. You can never rule out the supernatural when it comes to something like this.”
“Of course not,” Percy replies, his voice strained. “I’ll add magic to the list.”
Poor Percy. He always did prefer the world to be nice and neat.
I think that’s one of the reasons he’d been so nervous to come out—it was a huge unknown he couldn’t control, which made it seem dangerously messy.
However, I suspect our current predicament might require him to get comfortable with some out-of-the-box thinking.
“Does it matter?” I ask. I raise a hand to forestall his protest. “I’m not saying it isn’t worth trying to figure out what’s causing this so we can understand how to stop it.
But sitting here speculating will only get us so far.
No matter what’s going on, the only way we’ll solve anything is if we go out and find some answers.
And you already brought up the best way to do that. We need to investigate the island.”
“Right on!” Quinn exclaims brightly. “Forget the bike tour—breaking a mysterious time loop sounds way more exciting!”
“And if it turns out there is no loop?” Percy asks, adjusting his glasses. “If we wake up tomorrow and everything is back to normal?”
I shrug. “Then, we wasted a day all of—” I glance at Quinn and correct myself “—most of us have lived through once already. That beats pretending nothing is wrong and hoping for the best.” I’ve learned the hard way how little good that does.
Percy nibbles some more on his bottom lip before nodding. “You’re right. It’s a lot of ground to cover, though.”
“It’s an island, Perce. One that’s, like, eighty percent national park. How much space can there possibly be to check?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” His nervous gaze darts once more toward the front, and I check my phone—9:14 AM.
Unless Oshkoff left without us, we’re out of time to handle her.
Percy must have the same thought because he swallows.
“Now, we just need to come up with an excuse believable enough that Professor Oshkoff won’t mind letting us out of the bike tour. ”
Quinn leans over the table, propping her face on her hands. She gives a grin I know all too well—the one that means I’m either about to have a ton of fun or witness an unmitigated disaster. “Leave that to me.”