Chapter 10
Adam
The loop restarted, which meant Adam’s hands were on Shireen’s shoulders. He used to love looking at the beauty mark on her
nose, those thick lashes and the gold highlighter she’d brush across her forehead during her morning routine. But now being
in the same room as her made his stomach twist in knots.
Instead of dramatically jerking out of Adam’s reach and away from him—as she did in each reset—this time, she simply looked
up, and her eye contact was so jarring that Adam took a step back.
He searched for hidden meaning and, to his surprise, Shireen said, “I’m sorry I reacted so harshly the last loop. I was just
surprised. You know I don’t do well with those.”
Adam didn’t do well with surprises, either. Like the surprise of her and Dean, for example, but he kept that thought to himself.
“Okay,” he opted for instead. “Thanks.”
What else was he supposed to say? Still, this was maybe the nicest reset they’d had in a long time. Usually, she made quick
work of leaving, but now Shireen was talking to him, like they’d been married for a decade and . . . she respected him.
“Adam, I . . .”
His heart began to race. What was she about to say? Was she going to tell him she’d made a mistake in running to Dean? Was
Carly right? Had their fake kiss actually worked so well that Shireen wanted to have another chance?
Not that he’d take her back or anything, but still . . . he was anxious. Shireen’s lips parted, which is exactly when a door
slammed shut so loudly that they both looked toward the entrance.
“Carly?” he called out, but there was no response. Adam wordlessly moved around Shireen and approached the funeral service
room, but when he stuck his head in, Carly wasn’t in her usual chair.
“Did you do something to piss her off?” Shireen asked.
“No?” His statement came out as an anxious question, because he couldn’t help but remember the tears at the tree house. His
heart began to thump loudly in his ears. Had he done something? He’d asked her about the last day of the reset. Maybe his tone had been misunderstood?
“Good luck with that.” Shireen raised her brows in a way he didn’t altogether appreciate, like she was in on a joke at his
expense. With a shrug, Shireen was out the door.
Adam stood alone in the hall. Carly had said they were in this together. She’d said they were partners. Maybe she’d just left
on a quick snack run and would return with food . . .
He waited an hour. But Carly didn’t return, send word via carrier pigeon, or so much as leave a note (he’d checked). She wasn’t
coming back, apparently. He’d obviously done something to offend her, as Shireen had said. And now Carly had changed her mind
about working with him, so much so that she couldn’t even stand to tell him to his face.
Adam’s feet dragged as he walked to the hearse.
Even though the loop had restarted as usual, everything felt just a bit more stagnant.
He was absolutely thrown by the abrupt about-face Carly had pulled but, then again, what did he really know about her?
She’d disappeared the day of her father’s funeral, so why wouldn’t she disappear any other time too?
Focus, he told himself. Just because Carly had bailed didn’t mean his work was done. The eclipse had shortened twenty seconds.
If the eclipse shortened by ten seconds every following loop, then they’d have about twenty-seven loops left.
Which meant there were only twenty-seven more opportunities to study the shadow bands. He still wasn’t any closer to discovering
why they occurred in the first place. And what if they held the key to breaking the loop?
Rick and Carly weren’t the only ones with ideas. Adam could have ideas, too, dammit. And maybe that was the thing—maybe, after
the “show me, I want to believe,” spiel, she’d changed her mind. Maybe Carly simply didn’t like what Adam was offering.
And, to be fair, he’d brought her to a tree house. They’d timed the eclipse. All things she could do by herself. The shadow
bands, though; those were Adam’s thing. And if Carly had decided to pursue theories on her own, or with Rick . . . Adam could do the same. He didn’t need Carly to help with shadow bands.
He might need an actual scientist, though.
Adam found his scientist at the local playground. While there wasn’t a child in sight, there was a Caltech-branded van in
the parking lot. When Adam parked the hearse next to it, he looked out into the park to see the merry-go-round spinning, and
a woman lying flat on her back as the world moved around her.
“Dr. Song?” Adam called out so as not to surprise her. He was completely aware that he was a tall guy and that women, in general, had been through enough.
She shot up, clocked him and said, “Hello?”
“I’m Adam. I’m . . . an amateur astronomer. Saw your Caltech van in the lot.” Indeed, he’d seen the van in previous loops.
He’d also met Dr. Heather Song, Director of Astronomy at Caltech, in a prior loop, but he was certain she wouldn’t remember
him.
“Oh great, here we go,” she said, as if to prove his worst fears. She lay back down on the merry-go-round. “I don’t respond
well to pickup lines involving astronomy, for the record. Well, there was one time, in a moment of weakness, but that’s not
happening again.”
“I’m not going to hit on you.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible.
“Excellent news.” Dr. Song gave him a tight look.
“I’m here to ask some questions about shadow bands.” He cringed as the words left his mouth because, really, would she even
take him seriously?
She sat up on her elbows and considered this. “Shadow bands?”
Talking to Dr. Song was a longshot, he understood—she may have something, nothing, or everything to fill in the blanks for
him. But he could take a page from Carly and see if this risk paid off. “Yeah, the library doesn’t have much research on them.
And I read the theories online before the loop, but they’re kind of foggy to me. I saw the Caltech sticker, so I assume you
were here to see the eclipse.”
“My students and I were, yes,” Dr. Song sighed. “I told them we should go to Arizona, but here we are. In hell.”
“I’m trying to figure out what causes the shadow bands,” he said.
“No one knows what causes them,” she said.
“Right.” Adam paused to take a breath, because this next part was the real leap of faith. “But since we’re stuck here, maybe we can try to figure it out?”
“Most people have given up trying to do . . . anything.” She squinted at him. “What got you into this?”
“I’ve always been into this,” he said. “I wanted to go to Caltech.”
“Ah, didn’t get in?” Dr. Song gave him a pitying look.
He felt a bit ridiculous when he responded with, “My parents didn’t want me to apply.”
“Like, a tuition thing?”
“They thought I wouldn’t be able to do much with an astronomy degree.” Adam’s face burned hot. He didn’t realize how childish
this all sounded until he was in front of someone who’d dedicated their life to doing exactly what he’d dreamed of.
“I mean, I can think of worse career choices, but to each their own.” She shook her head in disbelief. “What do you do now?”
He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “I’m a funeral director.”
She let that sit for a beat, then asked, “Okay, amateur-astronomer-slash-undertaker, what do you think is causing the shadow
bands?”
“Me?” Adam knew the question was for him, but hadn’t he come to her for the answers?
“I’m not talking to the swings.” She smiled away her irritation.
Unfortunately, he’d just lowered himself onto a swing and felt quite juvenile. Still, he had to soldier on. “Well, we know
that they occur just before and after totality. They’ve been recorded at a few seconds, up to forty. Each loop they’ve been
lasting thirty-seven seconds, before and after.”
“I hear you reciting the facts,” she said. “But how do those tie to the cause?”
“I think the theory that they’re caused by atmospheric turbulence is compelling, but it doesn’t totally account for why they
move the way they do,” he hedged.
“An old colleague of mind called them shadow snakes.”
“I’ve seen that term, too.” Adam clasped onto the metal chains of the swing. “Only, sometimes the shadows do undulate like
snakes, but other times they’re just a straight line.”
“And here?”
He moved his hand in a pattern as he said, “More like a shimmering wave. There’s a thin sliver of light the total eclipse
gives us, where the moon doesn’t completely reach the top of the sun. The shadow bands, if you ask me, are coming from that
light source.”
“I agree. Go on.” She crossed her arms and he was renewed.
“The theories state that in order to have a total solar eclipse, all of the conditions have to line up perfectly. The same
goes with shadow bands—to have them, the conditions need to be just so. But what if, during the eclipse, something was slightly
off? Something that created a bend in time itself?” He wondered if this was what going to Caltech would’ve been like—discussing
ideas and getting feedback.
But here was where Adam lost her, apparently, because she cocked her head and asked, “You think the eclipse caused the loop?”
He was anxious now as he answered. “What if the shadow bands caused a perfect ripple in time that we’re now trapped in?”
“Sounds like a cool sci-fi book.”
The small ember of hope he’d had in his theory extinguished.
He was grasping at straws by believing that in solving a scientific mystery, he could get them out of the loop.
But she was right; this wasn’t a novel, this was the real world.
And in the real world, he wasn’t an astronomer.
He was the guy taking over his father’s business.
“Of course,” he said. “I just got excited because of the eclipse shortening.”
“Shortening?”
He swallowed down his apprehension. “I time the eclipse every day. For the past two days, it’s been ten seconds shorter, a
full twenty seconds shorter now.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Adam, Adam Rhodes.” He sounded way too eager, but he couldn’t help it. He’d given information that she seemed interested
in. Maybe there was something to his theory after all.
“Amateur astronomer,” she said, then added, “I’m Heather, but call me Dr. Song.”
“Dr. Song,” he repeated.
“Let me know if you see more changes, all right?”
“I will,” he promised. And then he walked away, not feeling quite as dejected as he had a few moments earlier. Maybe he wasn’t
such an amateur after all.