Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
The Sacred Rule of No Take Backsies
Ziya had managed to silently remove the bells from the doorknob and slip out. It was also possible that the bell removal was not silent, and Amie was a heavier sleeper than she’d thought. Either way, silently or not, Ziya had left.
Amie tried not to read into it as she climbed out of bed and got dressed. She tried not to read into it as she went into the bathroom. She tried not to read into it as she picked up her phone and read the text from Ziya, which just said: Had to get to class. Talk later!
She wasn’t reading into it. Everything was fine. It had to be. And Amie was capable of being alone with her thoughts and emotions without feeling like she needed some sort of distraction to—
Knock knock. Knock. Knock knock knock.
“Oh, good,” David said upon opening the door. “You’re alive.”
Amie gave his retreating back an indignant frown. “After all your freaking out last night, that’s what I get?”
“Well, I figured I would have heard about it by now if you were dead, so it wasn’t all that surprising.”
Lingering in the doorway, Amie said, “Do you wanna go to Eons? Get some breakfast?”
“I already ate.” David was breaking down his machine from the day before. He seemed to be taking meticulous care to decide where to store each item, which was ironic considering half of his storage boxes were simply labeled “Miscellaneous.”
“Oh. Okay.” Amie stayed where she was, closely studying a chip in the paint of the doorframe.
“Where’s Ziya?” David asked, lowering the tube of toilet paper rolls into a box.
“Gone.” Amie sighed heavily, trying to garner sympathy. “Kind of felt like we got somewhere last night, and then she just left.”
David stopped what he was doing to raise his eyebrows at her. “You ‘got somewhere’?”
Amie suppressed a smile. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Thank god.” David rubbed his face with both hands like he’d just been through an exhausting ordeal. “Took you two long enough. All your pining was killing me.”
“I wasn’t pining.”
“You were pretending not to pine, which was even worse than if you’d just been doing it outright.”
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Amie said, “But this morning she left without a word. Well, she texted. But still. No goodbye or anything.”
She pretended to have a sudden thought. “If I went to Eons to get a blueberry bagel and a tea, that might take my mind off of things. But I don’t know if I can handle the journey alone.
” Slumping against the door frame, she added, “Maybe I’ll just stay here and pine on the couch. You don’t mind, do you?”
David shook his head, using his foot to push a box under the work table. “Everyone thinks you’re so nice and sweet,” he said accusingly, pointing at her. “But you are manipulative. I’m being manipulated.”
“I’ll buy you a cake pop.”
“Fine.” David stomped across the apartment, grabbed his keys from where they hung near the door. “Anything to keep you from pining. Let’s go.”
“Yaaaay.”
Amie insisted they take her normal route to Eons.
Despite Ziya’s hasty departure that morning, she was feeling good.
It was Friday, her fourth day out of the time loop.
She’d had three whole days A.L. to refamiliarize herself with experiencing a new day every twenty-four hours.
Granted, she’d spent a significant part of those days investigating a murder, but she was still refamiliarizing while doing so.
And other than almost walking into the path of a bicyclist and refusing to jaywalk (David waited patiently on the opposite curb until the crosswalk light turned white), she handled the trip like someone who’d done it seven hundred and sixty-ish times before.
“Well?” David asked as they sat down—him with his promised cake pop, Amie with her bagel and tea. “Did you think it over?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Are you sure you want me to answer that?”
David looked unsurprised. “I guess not.”
“I’m gonna be careful,” Amie insisted. “You saw how I was back at the crosswalk. I’m not taking any more risks.”
“Until you find yourself dangling from a balcony three stories up,” David reminded her.
Amie scrunched up her nose in acquiescence. “Okay, fair point.”
“I really do believe I’m not a suspect anymore,” David said, unwrapping his cake pop. “Elena tracked me down to inform me that the police think Savannah interrupted a robbery.”
“Yeah,” Amie said absently, splitting her bagel in half.
David narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you already know this?”
“Huh?”
“Did you already know that the police think Savannah was killed because she interrupted someone mid-robbery?”
“Oh, uh …” Amie couldn’t see any way of getting around it. “I might’ve … heard something about that.”
Not seeming to notice (or, more likely, care) about Amie withholding information from him, David gestured at her with his cake pop. “Then there’s nothing to worry about. I’m in the clear. You can drop this investigation with a clean conscience. I’ll be okay.”
Amie took a bite of her bagel to avoid responding.
“Unless you have another reason to be doing this,” David said, studying Amie’s face. “Is it Ziya? Are you still trying to impress her?”
“Wub?” Amie asked through a mouthful of bread and cream cheese. She swallowed. “No. I’m not trying to impress Ziya.”
“So what is it? Why won’t you let this go?”
Amie shrugged. “I’m … bored?”
David made an incorrect buzzer sound. “Try again.”
“Why do I need a reason?” Amie demanded. “Maybe I just want to figure it out for my own curiosity!”
“That’s even more difficult to believe, somehow.” David’s shoulders slumped. “You still feel guilty.”
“No,” Amie said, far too fast to be convincing.
“I thought we talked about this.”
“We did.” Amie put down her bagel, crossing her arms self-consciously.
“You told me it wasn’t my fault that I never managed to stop Savannah’s murder despite being given two years of attempts, and I appreciated you saying that, but realized it’s an undeniable fact that I was given far too many chances to save her and because I am the way that I am, I didn’t take any of them. ”
David laughed with disbelief. “You can’t call it being given a chance if you didn’t even know what you were being offered! Kid, be serious.”
“I’m being serious. I know the past is in the past, and I can’t fix my mistakes now, but if I have a chance to at least bring Savannah’s murderer to justice, I should take it, right?”
“But why you?” David asked.
“I don’t know, because I know things!” Amie waved her hands, gesturing at the vague “things” she referred to. “I lived the day of the murder over seven hundred times. If anyone’s qualified to figure out who did it, it’s me.”
“But how much of the day are you familiar with, really?” David asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you went to the park every day to help a woman find her missing ring. You weren’t exactly exploring every nook and cranny of the town.”
“I didn’t go every day,” Amie mumbled.
“Were you ever even near the bookstore when Savannah died?” David asked pointedly.
Amie was silent.
Sighing, David said, “I’m not trying to be harsh. I’m just saying—”
“Shh.” Amie held up a finger, her memory kicking into high gear.
“I’m just saying that—”
“No, seriously, shh. Please. Just—give me a second.” Amie buried her head in her arms, her hippocampus straining to separate individual memories from the blurry mess in her brain.
Through the self-imposed darkness, she heard David let out another sigh. “If it’s really that important to you … fine. I’ll help. There’s no need to get upset.”
Amie popped back up. “I’m not upset. I’m just trying to concentrate.” She hesitated, then added, “I … I feel like my memory’s gotten worse since leaving the time loop.”
“Hm.” David nodded. “That makes sense. You were barely absorbing any new information during that time. Now everything is new again, and it’s a struggle to hold on to it all.”
“I guess,” Amie said, less concerned with why this was happening and more with how to improve it.
“Remembering stuff from the time loop is a mixed bag, too. A lot of things are crystal clear, but pinpointing specific individual moments … agh, it’s hard to explain.
Anyway, I accept your help, no take backsies.
I just need a couple minutes of silence.
” She returned to her arms, David muttering something about being manipulated again before obligingly falling silent.
After a full minute of thinking, Amie popped back up, her eyes still closed as she struggled to retain her thoughts.
“Okay,” she said. “Hallie From The Park is also Benny’s ex-girlfriend Hallie.”
Receiving no response, she opened her eyes. David was absent from his chair, leaving behind only a bare cake pop stick to indicate he’d ever been there. Amie twisted in her seat to see him at the cash register, purchasing a muffin.
He looked defensive as he returned with the muffin, Amie’s expression apparently giving away her impatience. “You said I had a couple minutes. That cake thing was too sweet for me.”
“You ate the whole thing.”
“I wasn’t going to waste it.” David settled back into his chair and took a bite of the muffin. “Go ahead.”
Amie spoke quickly, concerned she’d lose her grip on a crucial memory if she didn’t get her thoughts out fast enough. “Hallie From The Park is also Benny’s ex-girlfriend Hallie. Correct?”
“You tell me,” David said. “You know better than I do.”
“All right. Hallie From The Park is also Benny’s ex-girlfriend Hallie. We know she caught him cheating and broke up with him on Monday, sometime after when she’d leave the park and before I talked to Benny outside of our building that one time. So between four fifty-ish and eight-ish.”
“I would’ve thought living the day so many times would mean your timings would be a bit more accurate than ‘ish,’ ” David commented drily.