Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
How to Save This
Amie was writing (and pretending not to notice that Ziya still hadn’t texted her).
The writing had begun with Amie putting all her notes about Savannah’s murder into one document, and typing out anything she hadn’t already recorded.
This effort to combat her weakened memory led her to searching for memory tests online, and ended up occupying a full two hours with cognitive training.
By lunchtime, her mind was swimming with strings of letters and grids of symbols.
She was glad she’d written down all of her Savannah notes before taking the tests, worried that she might have somehow managed to make her brain worse in the process of attempting to strengthen it.
After lunch, she returned to her laptop, scrolling through everything she’d typed out. Savannah, Benny, Madeline, Andrew, Raina, Jonathan Oakland. The bookstore, the grocery store, the coffee shop. Money and blackmail and cheating and murder. Savannah was murdered. Why? Who would do that?
Amie rolled backward in her desk chair, as if staring at her laptop from a distance would somehow reveal a crucial piece she’d been missing.
She closed her eyes, taking herself back to the time loop, trying to think of anything she might have missed, anything that was different or stood out.
Unfortunately, there was very little from Amie’s experience in the time loop that could be described as “different” or “standing out,” as far as she could remember (which, if the multiple memory tests she’d taken earlier were any indication, wasn’t very far).
Deciding she needed a step back to give her brain a rest from the murder investigation, she turned her attention to a more calming task—brainstorming article ideas for her job that was probably going to lay her off before the end of the month.
If she was being honest with herself, Ziya’s gentle suggestion the other day about applying to journalism school had stuck with her more than it had any of the previous times the suggestion had been made.
Going back to school, to Amie, always seemed like a step backward.
She preferred to grind at these low-paying writing gigs in hopes that one of them would one day lead to something better.
“You make things so hard for yourself sometimes. It doesn’t always have to be so hard, Ames. It can just be easy.”
Amie glanced at her phone, caught herself, then flipped it over to hide the screen. She opened a new window and typed journalism programs into the search bar.
An email notification was waiting for Amie once she finally flipped her phone back over that evening. She’d gone down the rabbit hole of tertiary education research and only noticed how much time had passed once her head started hurting from staring at the laptop screen for so long.
Rubbing her exhausted eyes, Amie picked up her phone and swiped on the email notification. Her breath hitched when she saw the sender’s name:
Dear Ms. T.,
I am emailing in response to the message you submitted through my website regarding Savannah Harlow. While I don’t tend to respond to vague meeting requests from people who only go by their first name and last initial, I have to admit, my curiosity is piqued.
My address is below. Come by tomorrow at 6 PM. I will give your name to the doorman.
Regards,
Jonathan Oakland
Click here for my entrepreneurship course
Amie gaped at the email, skimming over it twice more before putting her phone down.
She hadn’t expected a response, and that was before she even suspected that Jonathan Oakland could have been Savannah’s murderer.
If he was guilty, why would he invite over someone who wanted to ask questions about his victim?
Did he want to steer Amie off course? Was he planning on killing Amie, too?
She shook off the second thought, rolling her eyes at herself.
If this was the person who seemingly lured Savannah to be murdered in her own store by impersonating her on the phone, inviting someone over to his own apartment to murder them would be a significant downgrade in the murder strategy department.
Picking up her phone again, Amie opened her texts with Ziya. She had been trying to play it cool and let Ziya take the lead on their romantic reconciliation, but she figured this was reason enough to reach out first.
Amie: I’ve got a lot of new Savannah info to fill you in on. Are you free tonight?
The typing bubbles from Ziya popped up almost immediately. Amie waited. The bubbles disappeared. In the interest of her own sanity, Amie put down her phone and walked away, looking for something to occupy her while she waited for Ziya to reply.
Finding nothing of interest, she ended up doing a lap around her apartment before returning to her desk and retrieving the phone. To her relief, there was a response:
Ziya: I have plans tonight, sorry
A sick feeling began to bloom in Amie’s chest. She was used to Ziya having plans; that didn’t bother her. It had been a long shot to expect Ziya to be free that night. What bothered her was the lack of a follow-up, or even any interest in—
The bubbles popped up again.
Ziya: What did you find out?
The sick feeling withered on the vine, and Amie took a deep breath. Everything was fine. Ziya wanted to hear from her.
She typed out a summary of what she and David had learned from Madeline and sent it, walking away again.
This time, she attempted to occupy herself with making dinner, only getting as far as preheating the oven and removing the burger patties from the freezer before giving in to the siren call of her phone.
Ziya: Wow. So Madeline probably didn’t do it then
Ziya: Oakland guy sounds suspicious
Amie: Yeah. I have a meeting with him tomorrow at 6. Can you come?
This time she stayed at her desk, staring at the phone for a full minute before Ziya began typing.
Ziya: I might have something. Can you bring David?
After “Detective Richards” accidentally gave David a motive for killing Savannah, Amie thought it would be best to keep her neighbor away from anyone else who could mention to the police that David Lenski was asking questions about Savannah Harlow.
That, and Amie didn’t want to go with David. She wanted to go with Ziya.
Amie: He can’t go. If you’re not free, I’ll just go by myself.
Amie: Alone
Amie: To talk to a potential murderer
Amie: Who might murder me
Amie: Dead
Ziya’s response came faster than any of her others:
Ziya: Okay, I can meet you there
Ziya: Send me the address
Amie texted the address Oakland had listed below his email signature.
Her thumbs hovered over the screen, multiple follow-up messages running through her mind.
How was your day? What are your plans tonight?
Can we hang out tomorrow night? Are we okay?
She considered scrapping all of those options and pressing the call button, just so she could hear Ziya’s voice.
In the end, she settled for:
Amie: Great! See you then
Coward, she thought, locking her phone and returning to the kitchen.
Day 5 A.L.
Amie knew that being free from the time loop meant she should have been cherishing every fleeting moment of her newly mortal life.
However, she ended up spending the majority of her Saturday researching colleges and scrolling through social media, the latter being an addiction she thought had been beaten by the time loop, but turned out to have just been—as was everything else—put on hold.
She also talked on the phone with her parents.
Amie had been avoiding calling them, mainly because she was worried they’d be able to tell, even through the phone, that things were …
different. But her mother called her Saturday morning after Amie forgot to phone the night before (a Friday night ritual she’d forgotten about after 700+ Mondays).
Amie wasn’t sure if her parents entirely believed her when she said everything was fine, but regardless, she was happy to hear their voices, and promised to call back soon.
Then she moved her bed.
Alone in her apartment the night before, she’d once again had trouble falling asleep, until she’d pulled her sheets out from under the mattress, grabbed her pillows, and soon after fell asleep with her head resting at the foot of her bed.
After waking up late in the morning, Amie had a quick breakfast before getting to work rearranging the layout of her bedroom.
Her primary focus was moving her bed against the opposite wall.
It wasn’t the cleanest fit—her dresser was partially blocking the door to the closet, and she had to remove her hanging watercolor of the aurora borealis to push her bookshelf against that wall.
But in the end, her bed was in a completely different place than it had been for the entirety of the time loop.
Amie hoped that would be a big enough change to allow her brain to let her fall asleep without hours of anxiety-ridden torment.
Amie gave her room another once-over while preparing to leave late that afternoon.
She wondered if Ziya would like it. Ziya was always moving furniture around in her apartment, often to her roommates’ dismay.
Amie, on the other hand, hadn’t changed anything after moving in, not even the way her mom had arranged her chairs around the kitchen table, even though Amie was always squeezing past the one at the end to get to the sink.
But she liked it. It was different. A little awkward. But nice.
The bus dropped her off two blocks from her destination. As Amie walked, she checked the time on her phone. 5:50.