Chapter 1 #2
“Okay, I’m sorry for that,” she continued, cradling the plastic flamingo in her lap. “Can it be a judgment-free zone starting now?”
David snapped another two pieces together, glancing at her over his shoulder. He looked like he wanted to complain more about being teased for his lack of knowledge of slightly archaic texting acronyms, but there must’ve been something in her voice that made him nod instead.
Amie took a deep breath, holding her emotional support lawn flamingo a little tighter. “Do you know what a time loop is?”
David shifted on the floor to look at her fully. “Like in The Bird Returns Again?”
“In what?”
“The Bird Returns Again. 1987 sci-fi novel by Dana Malett.”
“You know, most people would’ve just said, ‘Like in Groundhog Day,’ ” Amie pointed out.
David waved a piece of the car track at her scoldingly. “The judgment-free zone didn’t last long. SMH.”
“Okay, you’re right, sorry,” Amie apologized. “Like The Bird Returns Again. I’m assuming. Did the person in that book keep repeating the same day?”
“I think the author called it a ‘temporal loop,’ ” David confirmed, facing his track again. “It was the same nine hours, actually, but I think the general concept remains the same.”
“I …” Amie tried searching for the right words. She was becoming increasingly more familiar with the reality that anything she said or did wouldn’t have an impact that lasted beyond the next sunrise. Yet somehow she still felt it was important to get this right on the first try.
“Do you think that could really happen?” she finally asked. “That someone could get … stuck, repeating the same day over and over again?”
David had finished with the tracks and was on his feet, heading for the wicker basket.
“I suppose,” he said, kneeling down and pulling the top of the basket open. “I don’t have the scientific knowledge needed to say definitively what would need to happen to cause something like that, if it was possible.”
He pulled a child-sized golf club out of the basket and let the lid fall, straightening as he turned back around. “Is this for an article?”
Amie shook her head silently, feeling her face begin to crumple. She knew she had to just let it out. But she didn’t know what scared her more: that David might not believe her, or saying the words out loud for the first time.
Seeing her distress, David made his way to the couch, gingerly sitting down on the arm at the other end of it. “What is it?”
Amie took in a slow, shaky breath. “It’s happening to me,” she said, her voice cracking.
David’s brow furrowed. “What is?”
“A time—” She cleared her throat, speaking a little louder.
“A time loop. It’s happening to me. This is Day 15.
Not counting the original one. This is the third day I’ve visited you since it started.
You wear the same gray T-shirt with the mustard stain and the blue sweatpants, and you always have Ella Fitzgerald on, and I don’t know what to do.
I don’t …” She hugged the flamingo closer, staring at the floor. “I don’t know what to do.”
The silence was unbearable. Amie instantly wished she hadn’t said anything.
Even if he wouldn’t remember it the next day, she hated to imagine what David was thinking of her at that moment.
The only thing that kept her from dashing out the door was the row of dominoes that she’d feel bad about knocking over in a hasty exit.
After what felt like a thousand years (she briefly wondered if she’d eventually learn what a thousand years felt like), David let out a soft “Hm.”
Amie’s head whipped over to look at him. “That’s it?” she burst out, her nerves bubbling over. “ ‘Hm’? That’s all you’ve got?”
“Give me a second,” David said mildly, using his thumb to dab at the mustard stain on his shirt. “I’m getting old; I need time to process.”
“Well, you have about …” Amie looked around. “Why don’t you have any clocks in here?”
“It’s close to 5:45,” David said, looking at the window and somehow seeing the time there.
“You have about nine hours to process before the day resets,” Amie finished, slumping back into the couch. “But take your time, I guess.”
“The day resets at two forty-five AM?” David asked.
Amie gave him a wary look. “Do you believe me, or are you making fun?”
“I’m curious,” he said simply.
Amie stared at him for another moment, but couldn’t find any teasing in his eyes.
“Two twenty-two,” she said cautiously. “I’ve stayed awake a few nights to see how far I could get. As soon as I see the clock hit two twenty-two AM, the next thing I know, I’m waking up, and it’s September seventeenth again.”
“Hm.”
“Really?” Amie stood, her voice rising in pitch as she spoke.
“You know what? Never mind. Forget I said anything. And you will. You and everyone else will forget everything that happens today. And I’ll just be here, living the same day over and over again until the sun explodes or whatever.
Why am I still holding this fucking flamingo? ”
“Okay, okay,” David held out a hand as if to block Amie from throwing the plastic bird across the room. “Take it easy. You’re all right. Let’s put down the bird.”
Amie realized she was brandishing the lawn ornament over her head. She lowered her arm.
David gestured for her to sit again. She did.
“Now,” he said, “are you feeling okay? Did you sleep last night?”
“You don’t believe me,” Amie said flatly.
David hesitated, clearly trying to figure out how to make his approach delicate.
“Kid, I’d … like to believe you,” he said slowly. “It’s just hard to—”
“Can we move past it?” Amie asked, suddenly feeling very tired. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”
She forced herself to smile as David continued looking at her with concern. “Really, I’m fine. It’s fine. You’re right, I just didn’t get much sleep last night.”
David’s brows were knit together with concern, but he just shrugged, sliding off the couch arm. “If you say so. Why don’t you help me with this next section? Take your mind off of things.”
He held up the tiny golf club. “What should I do with this?”
Amie shrugged, aimlessly tracing the plastic feathers of the flamingo with her finger. David didn’t usually pay much attention to any input she offered about his machines, much less solicited her for it. She knew he was just feeling bad for her.
“You could attach it to something that rotates,” she offered, remembering this part of the machine from the last time she visited. “Don’t you have that round necklace display that spins? Stick it onto that, then make it spin and hit the ball.”
She’d stay for another twenty minutes, just long enough for David to stop worrying.
It was silly of her to have tried to tell him.
Sure, she could have probably dragged him out of the apartment and found some way to prove it.
It was almost six o’clock, which was around the time that terrier got away from its owner outside of their building.
She could call that just seconds before it happened and prove to him that she was telling the truth.
But what was the point, really? He was just going to reset the next day, same as everything else. And she didn’t have it in her to keep going through this.
Besides, now that she was thinking about it, what would happen if she was able to convince someone of the existence of the time loop?
What if it immediately made the day reset?
What if it somehow added another millennia to her sentence for breaking some rule she was unaware of?
What if it sucked David into the time loop too?
It wasn’t worth it.
The silence became loud enough to pull Amie out of her thoughts. She assumed David would have gone rummaging for the necklace display and continued his tinkering, quickly forgetting about her outburst.
Looking back up, she instead saw him sitting back down on the couch arm with a soft thump. His expression had gone from worried to intrigued.
“What?” she asked, frowning self-consciously. “It’s not a bad idea. It’s literally what you were …”
She trailed off, nervously studying his face.
“It’s literally what I was going to do,” David finished, pointing at her with the golf club. “And I knew if you knew what I was going to do with this club, you wouldn’t be able to resist telling me, because you knew I’d like that idea. Because it was my idea first.”
“It was a lucky guess,” Amie said, her worries of dragging her neighbor into the loop looming larger by the second. “I’ve seen you make enough of these by now; I know how you like to do things. Attaching it to the necklace display is an obvious answer.”
“Aha!” David leapt up from the couch, startling her into almost dropping the flamingo (which she was still holding, for some reason). “But what you didn’t know was that I just bought that necklace display at the yard sale this morning.”
“I … you …” Amie shook her head. “You’re confused. I’ve seen it before.” She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “You’re getting old.”
“Watch it,” David said warningly, circling the couch as he headed for the back of the room. “Don’t be rude.”
“I was quoting you.” Amie twisted around in her seat to look at him. “How come you can use that excuse, but I can’t?”
“Aha!” David said again, grabbing a reusable grocery bag and holding it up for her to see.
“That’s two ‘ahas,’ ” Amie said, trying to distract him. “You only have one left for the rest of the day. Use it wisely.”
David walked back over to the couch, holding open the bag for her to look inside. “See? My yard sale purchases from today. Toy truck. Bicycle wheel. Took some convincing to get them to sell it separately from the rest of the bike. And …”
“Yeah, I see it,” Amie said softly, untwisting back around before he could pull out the rotating necklace display.
She heard the bag crumple as he set it on the floor.
“You were telling the truth, weren’t you?” He walked around the couch to stand in front of her.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it does.” David was still holding the small plastic golf club. “This is … I mean, it’s remarkable. And you’re going through it alone? No one else has noticed the day repeating?”
“Not that I know of.” Amie had spent the first few days of the time loop closely studying everyone she passed, trying to find the same stifled fear in someone else’s eyes that she knew was visible in her own.
“And I’m just going to forget about it tomorrow.” David scratched his chin, studying the ceiling. “Well, you’re not gonna want to go through this every day.”
Amie shook her head.
“Aha!” David snapped his fingers, pointing at her.
“That’s your last one,” Amie reminded him.
“That’s fine; this is the best idea I’ll have today.” He began to pace, skillfully avoiding knocking over the dominoes. “We just need a code. Something that I can tell you to tell me that will immediately convince me of your situation. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
He stopped pacing. “I’ve got it.”
“What if I just mention the necklace display?” Amie suggested.
David visibly deflated. “Oh. That would probably work.”
“Would you rather do your idea?”
“A little, yeah.”
Amie gestured for him to proceed.
He sat down next to her on the couch. “When my niece was younger—”
Amie’s eyebrows raised slightly, but she tried not to react otherwise. David didn’t talk much about his family.
“—we had a code,” he continued. “ ‘Tell Genevieve I said hi.’ Just something she knew she could say to her parents or me that would let us know she was in trouble and needed help. Thankfully, the worst time she needed to use it was when she wanted to leave a sleepover early.”
“Who’s Genevieve?” Amie asked.
“No one,” David replied. “We didn’t know a single Genevieve. That was the point.”
“Ah.” Amie had gone to elementary school with a Genevieve. She wondered what she was doing on this day, over and over and over again.
“So tomorrow,” David instructed, “just say, ‘I’m stuck in a time loop. Tell Genevieve I said hi.’ And I’ll understand.”
“I don’t want to bother you any more with this,” Amie said quietly, her eyes starting to sting. She didn’t like asking for help, and she especially didn’t like asking for help when she didn’t even know what help she needed.
David waggled the golf club at her in a faux-threatening manner. “If you show up tomorrow and don’t tell me about this,” he said, “or, even worse, don’t show up at all, time loop be damned, I’ll find out somehow, and I’ll …”
“Force me to play golf?” Amie asked, blinking back tears as she nodded at the club.
“ ‘Tell Genevieve I said hi,’ ” David repeated, giving her a look that made her miss her parents. “Promise me.”
Amie tapped the golf club with the flamingo, sealing the deal with a plastic thunk. “Promise.”