Chapter 5
I’m suspicious of the flowers, and there are flowers fucking everywhere.
It’s a wedding. There are multiple vases on every table, vines wrapped around the ceiling beams, arrangements in the corners.
Steph’s still got her bouquet. I can smell them over the food, over dinner.
I pick at my lukewarm pesto orecchiette and herb-crusted salmon.
“Are you not hungry?” Cassie asks me. “You should eat if you plan on drinking.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Is there bread down that way?”
She passes me a loaf on a wooden tray. I take a slice, smear it with butter. “Thank you.”
“I’m not cleaning up anyone’s puke this weekend. It’s my time off.”
“That’s fair.”
“Thanks for that,” Evan says. “I love hearing the word ‘puke’ while eating dinner.”
“There were worse things I could have said. Being a parent, you discover all sorts of horrific shit about the human body. Babies are so gross. No one ever tells you that.”
“I wonder why,” Evan says.
Wyatt changes the subject to a medical scam podcast he’s been listening to.
I nibble on bread, watch the flowers, watch as the petals twitch, as the roses appear to grow, doubling in size over the course of dinner.
I’m afraid that if I step out for a second, that’s when it’ll happen.
That’s when the universe will prove to me that it’s not enough to take it on the chin with a shrug and a smile.
When it will enforce that, of-fucking-course, I need to actually do something if I want out of the loop.
Something beyond an attitude adjustment.
As much as I fear leaving the reception, I really don’t want to sit through Luke’s toast again. Love isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes bravery. You know what isn’t for the faint of heart? You know what takes bravery? What I’m dealing with.
I excuse myself and go to the bathroom.
I stand in front of the mirror studying my reflection. The bags under my eyes are so big they should qualify as dependents on my taxes. I smooth my hair, go into my bag for some lipstick.
There’s a flush, and I hold my breath.
One of the stall doors opens.
It’s Tanya. She looks up, and our eyes catch in the mirror, and it’s like she’s just seen a ghost.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi…” She cautiously approaches the sink.
“I’m…I’m…” I want to reassure her that I’m not mean or psychotic, but I’m pretty sure I am in fact both of those things. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You, too.” She runs her hands under the faucet, works up a lather.
I let her rinse in silence, unsure of what to say next.
Congratulations on your new relationship with the guy I almost married?
Did you know that he didn’t tell me you were coming?
What products do you use in your hair? Can you give me a quick physics lesson to help me break out of a time loop before we all die by, I don’t know, flesh-eating flowers?
She reaches for the paper towels, dries her hands, then turns to me with a brief, apologetic look. She starts toward the door, but before I can call after her, she doubles back, opening her mouth to say something. She changes her mind, shakes her head.
“Um, Tanya? Hi. There’s something I need to ask you…” I can’t say it. I can’t fucking say it. She’s pale. Horrified. “Not about Ravi. About…physics.”
She doesn’t seem at all relieved that I’m not confronting her about my ex.
I take a breath and keep talking. “Ravi told me you said something about a time loop.”
“I can’t believe this. I can’t…I can’t believe it,” she mutters to herself. “I should have left. I knew I should’ve just turned around the second I—”
“Tanya.” I don’t have the patience, and we don’t have the time. “Please.”
She looks at me with wide, anxious eyes. “I want you to know I’ve been there. I’ve been there. Here.”
“Wait, what? You’ve been—been where?”
“I’ve been there.”
Is she saying what I think she’s saying? This is the weirdest game of chicken I’ve ever played. I should say it, but I want her to say it.
The door to the bathroom swings open, and Olivia walks in. I expect her to stop and chat me up, but instead she hurries into the nearest stall, clearly sensing the weird vibe.
I look back at Tanya. “Meet me out front in ten?”
—
The floral arches are obviously in a different spot.
At least, it’s obvious to me. They’re much closer to the reception hall and farther from the cocktail area.
The mobile bar has been packed up, closed for business.
I wonder if the bartenders noticed the arches walking away. I wonder if they’re still alive.
I hear the doors open. The click of heels. Tanya comes up beside me. After a beat, she asks, “How many times have you lived this day?”
Maybe I should feel relieved, but all I want to do is scream.
“We should…” I lead her over to the Adirondack chairs, beyond earshot of the reception hall or anyone who wanders out of it. I sit and she stands. “Five. This is my fifth time on today.”
“That’s it?”
I snort. “Certainly feels like a lot to me.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine. Um, yeah. The first time, it was a guy in a mask with eyeballs who stabbed me in the head. Then it was these ravens and—”
“Again, I’m sorry. But…what?”
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Ravens and this, like, ghoul in a top hat.”
“Ghoul? Willa, how does the day reset?”
“When I die.”
She gasps. “When you die?”
“Is that not how it works? How did it reset for you? Can we…can we back up, for a second? What happened to you?”
“This used to be a camp. First, Camp Serling back in the seventies, eighties, early nineties, then it shut down for a while after one of the campers had to be institutionalized. It reopened briefly as Camp Luna in two thousand seven. I spent two summers here, and during my second, I was upset one night because I was a fourteen-year-old girl addicted to romance novels and crazy about this guy Noah Cafferty, who didn’t know I existed, so I went wandering off into the woods to brood, and all of a sudden, I had this sensation of falling.
When I came to, everything felt different in a way I couldn’t articulate.
I ran into Noah on the way back to my cabin, and he was sweet to me.
We had this magical fairy-tale night, and he kissed me, and then I woke up and I was in my bunk and it was the morning, and as the day went on everything was the same, people kept repeating themselves, Noah was ignoring me, and I thought I must have been imagining it, or it was a dream. ”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No. It wasn’t. That night Noah kissed me again, and then I woke up.
The days kept on like that, everything too familiar.
I felt like I was losing my mind. At first, I really didn’t care, because every night ended with Noah.
With us kissing. It was all I’d wanted all summer, all I’d thought about.
I’d been infatuated. And it wasn’t just a casual camp kiss.
It was always the most outrageously romantic scenario my teenage brain could fathom.
But every time we kissed, I would wake up and it’d be that morning.
I tried to do things differently. I tried to avoid him.
I hung out with my best friend Matty instead. Then he kissed me, and—”
“You woke up.” I’m having a hard time empathizing with her because I’d much rather be kissed than killed.
“I was exhausted. It was like I hadn’t slept.
And I didn’t have a driver’s license or access to the Internet.
I couldn’t research. I begged every counselor to take me to the local library, until I finally found one willing.
I started reading about physics, about time reflections, electromagnetic waves being reflected not spatially, but temporally.
How they could change course and disturb the frequency.
How that could occur in tandem with another anomaly and result in a CTC. ”
“CTC?”
“Closed timelike curve. I researched wormholes. Warped space-time. I was fourteen obsessing over the concept of non-orientable space, which in hindsight I’m grateful for—it was a welcome redirect from obsessing over boys.
Or solely obsessing over boys. I tried hiding in the library one night, thinking the day might only reset at camp, and if I left, I could disrupt the CTC, but then there was the librarian’s son with his curly dark hair and lip piercing and…
” I catch her smiling at the memory, and it’s stupid endearing.
“I understand now that because we are the variable in the time paradox, we create and manipulate the exotic matter. Subconsciously, through our own negative energy.”
“What are you saying? This happens because we’re, what? Cynical?”
“No. Negative energy is another term for exotic matter. What I’m saying is that our subconscious, whatever is part of us and our awareness, it influences the paradox.
That’s why it’s different for everyone and why it changes every time.
Think of it this way. Every thought we have, every emotion, every decision we make, it ripples out into the universe.
It informs the world around us. Inside the wormhole, our ripples are tidal waves.
Because it’s our world, in a sense. But I only discovered all this after I talked to Jesse. ”
“Who’s Jesse?”
“The camper who was sent to the institution. He’s out now. He moved up to Maine. He was in the loop for almost four years, so he’s a little—”
“Four years?”
“He was very, very into superheroes at the time, I think because he had a rough home life and was severely bullied at camp, but, anyway, so every day he would gain new superpowers and have to save the world. As soon as he did, the day would reset. Unfortunately, it left him with a bit of a god complex.” She pulls her hair off her neck and holds it to the back of her head.
“Did it just get humid all of a sudden?”
It did. It’s warmer and stickier than it was a minute ago. But I can’t acknowledge it, can’t get us off topic. “You both got out, though. There is a way out?”
“Yes. All evidence points to it being, essentially, a traversable wormhole. It’s fixed in place by its own gravity.
You have to find it and go back through.
Come out where you came in. It’s somewhere in the woods, but it’s been so long I’m not sure I could lead you to the exact spot.
It took me weeks to find it.” She fans herself.
There’s a breeze, but it carries no relief. It’s just a hot nudge.
“It’s not only here, though. I wake up in my apartment every day. The loop—”
“Right. The opening to the wormhole, the door, is here, but it’s a time paradox.”
“Yeah, I don’t really know what that means.”
“It’s a time-created and time-ruled portal that leads to a tangent pocket universe influenced by the variable, in this case you, that, based on the variable’s triggering event, in this case, you dying, resets to your first point of consciousness the day you entered.”
“I’m lost.”
“It’s not about where; it’s about when. Time transcends place, transcends matter, transcends everything.
We can’t manipulate it. Can’t control it.
Can’t outrun or outsmart it. It’s king.” She pauses to wipe the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
“I know it’s confusing and I’m not doing the best job of explaining.
There’s only so much I can explain; a lot of this is hypothetical.
This is all I have to offer, and I can’t tell you exactly where it is, but I can tell you that the wormhole is in a small, concentrated area that somehow exists in its own gravitational field.
That’s what the sensation of falling was from.
You’ll feel more unsteady the closer you get. And…”
“And what?”
“I didn’t know this then, but I know now, and I feel like I should tell you.
Warn you. Wormholes can, theoretically, collapse.
Every time you move through the loop, the likelihood of destabilization increases.
It’s lasted this long, obviously. For decades.
But if something were to happen, you could cease to exist in time. ”
“Oh.” Part of me thought I was safe in the loop. Yes, I’m dying, but you wake up enough times post-death and you start to feel immortal. “Thanks for the heads-up, I guess.”
“The sooner you can find the wormhole and go back through, the better. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” I exhale, push myself to stand. I’ve sweat through my dress. It’s so, so hot. “Not to…I don’t know. But…why the fuck would you ever come back to this place?”
“I didn’t know until I got here. Like I said, they changed the name. I never considered. I was so nervous about—” She cuts herself off.
I click my tongue and step forward, moving closer to the water in hopes of a cool breeze.
“I’ve been trying to keep it together. I didn’t want Ravi to think I was—” She stops herself again. “I told myself, don’t go in the woods, you’ll be fine, everything will be fine. Just act normal. I told myself it’s a wedding, who would go off into the…the…”
Me. I would. Avoiding her. “What are the odds? You used to go to camp here. You fall through a wormhole. You get out. You meet Ravi. He takes you to this wedding. And you meet me, inside the wormhole.”
“The odds? I could do the calculations,” she says.
“I bet you could. Dork.”
She laughs, and it’s so annoying that I like her so much.
“The universe is vast and amazing and has a wicked sense of humor. The more I study it, the more I believe that everything is a series of coincidences, and the more I understand that nothing is coincidence. Why are you looking at me like that? I’m sorry. Was that corny?”
I open my mouth to warn her but fail to form the words.
Watch out.
Run.
Behind her. The floral arches. They’re walking, taking long strides across the lawn, moving fast. Getting close.
I reach out and grab her by the wrist, drag her around to the front of the reception hall, up the stairs.
“Ow!”
“In, in, inside!”
I open the doors and push her through. She falls hard on the floor, but there’s no time to apologize. I spin around, pull the doors shut. Lock them. And I see. I see them watching us through the windows. The flowers. They’re right up against the glass.
Hundreds of hideous little faces.