Chapter 14 #2
Adam, however, was not treating this as a social visit, and instead scoured through his dad’s hobby closet to find the camera.
He’d hear slivers of conversations and feel the unmistakable urge to pluck his own ears off.
We’re just so glad that Adam is making friends—it’s not right for someone his age to be so isolated. This is a time loop,
not the pandemic!
The snippet that ultimately led him to increase his efforts and find the damn camera was a question from his dad.
And your mother . . . ?
She had an aggressive form of cancer and died when I was a baby.
Carly had never mentioned what happened to her mother, but the words made his body clench. She shouldn’t have to bleed out
all of her personal details to his parents just so he could find a camera. At that moment, the black camera bag came into
view and he snatched it off the shelf. Adam hurried through the hall and toward Carly before his parents could cause any more
emotional damage.
“Carly.” His voice came out breathless as he skidded to a halt in the kitchen.
Carly and Sheila were at the kitchen island, adding cheese to a charcuterie board. Carly looked up and gave him a faint smile.
Uh-oh, cheese had been introduced. Now they’d never leave the house.
“Here.” Sheila handed Adam the cheese board, and he had to put the camera bag under his arm to manage it. “You two go eat
and we’ll get some wine.”
Adam didn’t argue with his mom. Time alone with Carly meant he could check in and make sure his parents hadn’t pushed her
too far. Adam closed the sliding glass door behind them and let out a shaky exhale.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized at the same time that Carly said, “I was so nervous to meet your parents.”
“Really?” He couldn’t imagine anyone being intimidated by Sheila and Bill.
“Yeah.” She laughed. “I figured if they were anything like you, I’d have to call the scowl police.”
Carly popped a grape from the plate into her mouth and chewed. She seemed . . . okay. Not traumatized, but still.
“They can be really nosy,” he hedged.
“They asked a lot of questions,” she said. “But sometimes it feels like there was no life before the loop. It’s kind of nice to be reminded
of the past.”
“Mm.” Adam had spent most of the loop trying to forget the past.
“Tell me about the duck,” Carly said.
“The duck?” He glanced at the woods, as if searching for one.
“You know what I’m talking about. The duck in the window by the fireplace.” She studied her hands. “It has a corkscrew for
a penis.”
Ah, that duck. “It does.” He pursed his lips.
“Why?” Carly held a hand out, as if expecting him to place the answer into her palm.
“Well.” His gaze turned skyward. “The thing about male ducks, is that they do have corkscrew-shaped penises. And my dad was going through a woodworking phase and thought this was quite funny. So he made
a wine opener, using a corkscrew, and molding a duck around it.”
Carly pursed her lips and stared at a hummingbird flitting between overflowing planters. Eventually, she looked at him. “Cute,
fluffy ducks that swim in ponds have penises shaped like corkscrews?”
“Yup.”
Carly smacked her palm against her thigh. “Okay, I regret asking about that.”
Adam tried to mask his smile.
“Everything is just . . . not what I expected. I mean, this is a home. The kind of cozy ones you see in movies. Like, your house is so cutesy. I’ve never seen so much squirrel art.” She tapped
her index finger against her chin. “Oh my God, the acorns! In the funeral home!”
“My dad made all of those, and these.” Adam waved a hand to the tiny ceramic squirrel family and the colorful nuts they chased
after. His dad had placed this set on a corner of the porch.
Carly bent to inspect the squirrel figurines. “This squirrel is wearing glasses and a little bow tie!”
“That’s Smarty Squirrel.”
Carly raised an eyebrow. “They have names?”
“And backstories.” Adam clasped his hands together and rocked a bit.
“I feel like your dad could really be a working artist. I mean, that corkscrew duck would sell out in LA.”
He laughed. “I’m not sure he ever even thought it was an option.
” Adam’s parents weren’t risk takers. Unlike Carly’s dad, who’d pursued not only a dream of working on movies, but also opening his own theater, Adam’s parents had grown up in Julian, met in high school and never thought to pursue careers that weren’t the ones their parents had wanted for them.
And then, like swallowing a stone, the realization that Adam was just like them hit. A nauseating wave at the fact that he hadn’t taken a risk with what he wanted to do, either. Maybe that was
why he’d never even applied to Caltech.
Adam believed his parents were very much in love and happy with their lives, but maybe Carly was right. Why hadn’t his dad
ever tried to sell his art? Was there a world where he could’ve pursued his passion and kept his job?
His thoughts were interrupted by the alarm on his watch. Carly stood and nodded to where the eclipse was about to make its
debut. “It’s getting close.”
Adam reached for the camera bag. He unzipped the thing and pulled on the lens of the camera to bring it out. Which is when
Carly swooped in with a “Woah, woah, woah.” She took the bag from Adam and swatted his hands away.
“You don’t grab a camera lens-first. Are you trying to break it?” she asked accusingly.
“Oh, right, your dad—the cameraman.” Adam felt more than a little foolish.
She smirked. “My dad, sure, but I majored in screenwriting and minored in video production. I can hit a power and record button
just as well as anyone else.”
Carly held the case and took out the camera by grabbing the side of it. She uncapped the lens, looked through the viewfinder
and gave a thumbs-up.
Something about the ease and authority she had while doing those steps had made Adam move closer. That peppermint smell was faint, but present, and had the interesting effect of sending a bump of energy through him.
“Which area of the ground should I be capturing?”
He enjoyed this dynamic of them working together. Adam leaned in and pointed at a spot. “Right around those oak trees, you’ll
see the bands appear in about fifteen seconds.”
“Gotcha,” Carly said. “Hitting Record starting now.”
He didn’t mind how close they were. She didn’t seem to mind, either. At one point, her body swayed and touched his.
“Wow, there they are,” she said with all the reverence you’d reserve for something beautiful.
Adam usually thought they were beautiful, too, but he also realized Carly was beautiful: dark hair falling in a curtain across the side of the camera, her excited half grin and the faint dimple in
her cheek. Her skin was cool against his forearm and he itched to drape his jacket over her shoulders. But there was no time.
“Ready, set, go,” Adam said as the sun vanished. He glanced at the time on his watch to keep track.
“They’re gone,” Carly said.
“Keep recording to see the shadow bands reemerge,” he said. “They’ll pop again just after the eclipse ends.”
And they waited, with Adam’s forearm touching Carly’s. When Adam stopped the time on the watch, a cool breeze kicked up.
“There are the shadow bands again, those sneaky minxes,” she joked.
But his attention was elsewhere.
And Carly must’ve clocked this, as she asked, “What’s happened?”
“Three minutes and forty-seven seconds,” he said. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
She smiled. “Fifteen seconds shorter.”
The shortening made no sense. What could’ve possibly made the time reduce even more? He already knew that Carly would chalk this up to their kiss. She might even suggest they up the ante and make out.
He gave her a sideways glance, briefly imagining his hands in her long, dark hair, her hips pressing into him, and her soft
lips parting for him. He hardened and had to adjust his stance to hide the evidence of his thoughts.
“Okay, shadow bands have officially vanished.” Carly ended the recording, put the cap back on the camera lens and stored it
in the bag. “I’m not going to gloat. I would like to, but I won’t. Because, as you said, maybe you’re on to something with
your theory, too.”
“Thanks,” Adam said. He clenched his jaw. It’s not that he didn’t want Carly to be right. He just still sensed her theory
wasn’t wholly correct. “Let’s review the footage while we can, then we can time the sunset, and the shooting star and the
end of the loop, and tomorrow we can regroup on a strategy.”
“Okay.” Carly had a warm look that told him she really wasn’t gloating. “We can still pursue multiple angles, in my opinion.
Especially considering mine takes very little time.”
Her angle was touching him, and he wasn’t sure “very little time” was how he wanted to approach that one, but kept the thought
to himself.
“As long as our goal is ending this loop, it doesn’t matter how we get there, right?” She asked.
And he supposed she was right. They should pursue all the angles. He swallowed down his concern that maybe he was just going
along with her theory to feel her lips against his again, and said, “Yeah.”
So they watched the footage. Adam took a tape measure to the actual area where the bands appeared, then compared them to the screen and was able to parse out the size of the bands compared to the ground.
When the bands reversed just after the eclipse ended, they were smaller in size, more frenetic in movement and lasted half as long.
He wrote the facts down in his notebook, hoping to commit them to memory.
They stayed at his parents’ house to watch and time the sunset, then the shooting star. When the day was nearly done, there
were no other significant changes Adam could see. The only change, really, was that he didn’t want this loop to end, because
he was, despite himself, enjoying being with Carly.