The Time Loop

by Anita Oh

  Don’t encourage her, he said.

  But I really want to know!

  Even though his head was bent down toward his book, I could see that he was smiling again. I wondered if that was his own Tennyson way of cutting loose with no consequences, smiling twice in a day. I wasn’t sure why he’d hide it, but I liked that I was one of the few people he allowed to see it.

  “I know!” said Althea. “Why don’t you tell us all why you refuse to transform. It might help you get past the mental block.”

  She didn’t seem as if she was saying it to be mean, just genuinely curious. The question had probably been burning inside her ever since he’d gotten his ability to transform back and hadn’t used it. I wanted to know too, and even Sam was leaning forward in his seat.

  “It’s not a mental block. It’s a conscious decision,” he said, his voice tight.

  “Really?” said Althea. “And what prompted that decision?”

  Tennyson pressed his lips together and didn’t reply, and eventually Althea gave up and went back to her research.

  Nikolai breezed in and then back out on his way to the dance, and the bell rang to say cake had arrived. It grew darker, and I read the list of book titles over and over, trying to burn them into my brain. I kept one eye on the clock so that I wouldn’t be caught by surprise when the day ended.

  “Okay, this is it,” I said when it was almost midnight. “It’s about to happen.”

  The three of them stared at me, and I could feel their fear. I reached out and grabbed Sam’s hand, and then Althea’s. It felt as if they were about to blink out of existence, and in a way, they were. They’d never be these exact people again, with the same memories of this day. My eyes met Tennyson’s across the table, and I wondered if I’d see him smile again tomorrow.

  Then everything was gone and I was in my bed again.

  Once again, I messaged everyone, and we met at the greenhouse and ate cakes and mini quiches as I caught them up.

  “So, maybe today, rather than research, we should try out a few theories from what we learned yesterday,” said Althea.

  “No way,” said Nikolai, and I braced myself for another defeatist rant. “This is the perfect opportunity to mess with people! We can bet with them on the outcome of things and make predictions in spooky voices!”

  Cake for breakfast definitely had a good effect on Nikolai’s mood.

  “And I can tell everyone that Tennyson waxes his monobrow and that red makes Althea look sallow.”

  “Or you could shut up before we test the theory that anyone who dies today stays dead,” Althea said, raising her eyebrows at him.

  He smirked at her, obviously not deterred from his evil plans.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but not even Nikolai suggested that the simplest way to solve the problem would be for me to leave the pack. There wasn’t even a hint of it, as if the thought didn’t occur to them. In the interest of fairness, though, I felt I should bring it up. Every fiber of my being revolted against the idea, but I couldn’t be selfish if everyone thought it was for the best.

  “How could you even think such a thing?” Althea snapped, surprisingly angry.

  “A pack isn’t something you can just throw away when it becomes inconvenient,” said Nikolai. “Are you really so selfish that you’d just cut us off like that at the first sign of trouble?”

  I stared at them in confusion. I’d expected some polite rejection of the idea, but they were acting as if I’d suggested doing something to hurt them, not myself.

  I understand why you said this thing, but it is not an option, said Tennyson.

  “Hey, guys, you’re misunderstanding her,” said Sam. “She’s new to all this, so she’s got no way of knowing how the whole pack thing works.” He turned to me and smiled. “When you join a pack, it’s like…” He paused for a moment, trying to think of how to explain it. “It’s like a drop of water in a pond. That drop contributes to the whole, and if it’s removed, the entire pond is diminished.”

  “That’s a terrible way of explaining it,” said Nikolai. “It’s like this cake, here. It’s a cake, right? But if I take a bite out of it, it’s not a cake anymore, it’s just part of a cake. It’s no longer whole. It’s imperfect. Though very delicious.”

  Tennyson shook his head. “It’s not like an object. It’s more like sleep, an entire night’s sleep. If you’re woken up early, the entire quality of the sleep is less.”

  “No,” said Althea. “It’s more like…”

  “I get it,” I said, waving my hands. “It’s like something that was whole is no longer whole. Sorry, I didn’t realize it would affect you guys as well.”

  To be honest, someone should’ve maybe told me that joining the pack was such a big deal before they were just, like, oh yeah, you’re in the pack now. I’d thought it was like signing up to a mailing list, not to the mafia. There was no unsubscribe button here. Not that I minded; I just liked to have all the information before I made a decision that would affect the entire outcome of my life for the rest of forever.

  “I think we should interrogate Katie,” said Nikolai. “I don’t believe that she’s not in on it, and even if she’s not, she might know more than she’s letting on.”

  I picked up a mini quiche but then put it back down. I’d eaten so many that they’d lost some of their appeal. “Well, I vote that someone else does it. You’re too soft. You could barely interrogate Olivia Hearst without crying about it, and Katie is about a hundred times tougher than her.”

  “I’ll do it,” Althea said with an elegant shrug. “I’m fine with violence. There’s a bunch of other things we can try, too, rituals and counter-spells. I say two of you work on that and the other two on research.”

  I kind of felt bad for Katie that Althea was tracking her down. Out of everyone, I thought Althea would be the most relentless, but she wouldn’t do anything unnecessary and we needed to know the truth.

  Nikolai and Tennyson headed off to start on research.

  Good luck, I told Tennyson. You know he’s not going to do any work at all.

  After the three of them left, I helped Sam pack up the picnic.

  “I suppose if you’ve done all this before, my present won’t be a surprise.”

  I smiled at him. “It’s still really thoughtful. I’m the only girl you’d give your heart to.”

  He gave a little laugh. “I guess I’m not that original.”

  “You don’t need to be. You just need to be Sam.”

  He smiled at me, his special smile, the one that lit up his whole face. There must’ve been something wrong with me, because that smile didn’t make my belly flip or confuse my head or anything. But I was pleased he was smiling, anyway.

  A horrible thought occurred to me as I stood there with him smiling at me. It was the pendant. His mother’s pendant. Sam’s mother had been in cahoots with my dad and they were both evil. I’d been right about there being a magical object we needed to break to end the spell.

  I smiled back at Sam and tried to act normal until I could make an excuse to get away. I couldn’t tell him, not when he’d been so thoughtful. Not when he was finally getting over everything.

  Once I was back in my room, alone, I smashed that pendant into pieces. I waited but nothing changed. There were no magical lights. Nothing felt different. Everything was the same, except that I sat there with the broken pieces of that heart held in my hands. It felt like something bigger than it was, smashing that heart.

  But the next day, it was whole again.

  The next few Fridays followed the same pattern — breakfast together, then rituals and research. Katie avoided me, even more so after Althea’s interrogation. No matter what we tried, nobody could get any information out of her, so she either knew nothing or had no intention of talking. Either way, we didn’t know any more than when we’d started and I’d lost her as a friend for good.

  After we’d exhausted all the possibilities we’d read about, we got creative. A
s usual, that didn’t go so well for me. Mixing magic with the laws of physics was not for the faint-hearted. There was one day where nobody could use words containing the letter E, and another where I got stuck in wolf form, but luckily, when each day reset, so did the effects of the rituals.

  “I think we’re overlooking the fact that it needs to be physically linked to me somehow,” I said, floating around the ceiling of the Golden common room after the ritual had taken away my connection with gravity.

  “I think we can’t rule out the importance of the lightning striking the clock tower, either,” said Tennyson. “I know that last time we were there, you said you couldn’t see anything strange, but maybe we need to be there at the moment the lightning strikes.”

  I was about to argue with him, to say that he was the one who had said that was pointless, when I realized something. I’d started leaving out any information that we’d not found useful because otherwise it took me half the day to catch them up to speed, and that particular bit of information wasn’t useful.

  As I gaped at him, gravity suddenly came back into play, and I dropped heavily to the floor.

  “I didn’t tell you about that today,” I said from the floor. “How did you know?” I pulled myself up into a sitting position. “Tennyson, do you remember?”

  The rest of us stared at him as confusion settled across his face, his furrowed eyebrows, his pouty bottom lip, head leaning on a slight angle.

  “I thought I didn’t, but now… There are small things, just day-to-day, ordinary things that might have happened any time.” He sighed. “It feels like trying to remember a dream. The more I focus on it, the more it slips away. I remember Nikolai saying I wax my eyebrows, and I remember Lucy at the top of the tower, and dancing with Althea at the Spring Fling. But it’s just flashes of images. There’s nothing concrete that I can recall.”

  “What about you guys?”

  The other three shook their heads.

  “Nothing. Yesterday was Thursday. That’s everything,” said Althea.

  “Tennyson, what time did you wake up this morning?” I asked. A terrible idea was beginning to bloom in my mind.

  “7:47,” he said. “That’s when my alarm is set for.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. What could this mean?

  “Lucy?” asked Sam. “What’s wrong?”

  I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t put it into words. Not when it was so terrible.

  “She thinks I’m the link,” Tennyson said, staring at me in horror. “Not her. The spell is linked to me somehow, and that’s why I can remember. Her father has somehow used me to channel the magic needed to create the time loop.”

  As I heard the words said aloud, I knew it was true. I’d been right when I thought there was an enchanted object I had to break to end the loop, and that object was Tennyson.

  Chapter 10

  There was one thing I’d been putting off doing, one last resource that we hadn’t tapped out. Even though we couldn’t contact anyone outside of school, I knew my father was somehow monitoring his spy phone in case I tried to call him. I stormed out of the Golden House and was well into the forest before I realized that Tennyson was following me.

  This doesn’t have to mean anything, Tennyson said. Just because I’m connected to the loop doesn’t mean I will be harmed in any way. We can research it, find out if there’s any precedent for this kind of thing. You need to calm down, or you’ll be of no use to anyone.

  He was right. Nothing good ever came out of acting from anger. I’d messed up far too many things because I’d let my emotions overrun my reason and thoughtlessly rushed in.

  I stopped walking and turned to face him. He took me by the forearms and ducked his head to stare right into my face. That ridiculous lock of hair flopped across his forehead, and I wanted to reach up and brush it away. Maybe I even would have if there hadn’t been the slightest possibility he’d remember.

  “We’ll get through this,” he said. “Just like we’ve gotten through everything before it.”

  I nodded. Like the day in the clock tower, just the sound of his voice made it seem as though everything would be fine. We were safe. We were protected. Nothing could harm us. I knew that was a lie, just something I was telling myself to ward off panic, but it comforted me anyway if he was the one saying it.

  “I still want to talk to him,” I said. “I won’t mention anything about you. I’ll just try to make him mad. He might give something away that we can use. We don’t have many other options left.”

  “Fine. I’ll come with you,” he said, and we started walking through the forest. “Then we can try the lightning thing later. Maybe we should even go to the dance. I know Nikolai and Althea are disappointed we’re missing it.”

  “Nikolai will only spend the whole time following Laura Montgomery around, complaining about cherry blossoms,” I said. “He should’ve just asked her to the dance instead of torturing her about it.”

  Tennyson laughed. It was only a tiny laugh, more a huff of breath than anything, but still I chalked it up on the tally I was keeping of things I needed to remember once this had all vanished.

  My dad had obviously been waiting for me to call. I’d barely picked up the phone when it started to ring. However he was monitoring me, he was doing it pretty closely. Tennyson stood opposite me, his eyes steady on mine as I answered the call.

  “So, you haven’t solved the mystery yet, Nancy Drew?” my father said.

  “I don’t know what that means,” I told him. “And I just wanted to tell you that we’re all quite happy as we are. Nobody else even realizes they’re stuck here, and as for me, well, one day is a lot like another anyway. At least this one isn’t full of unpleasant surprises. I could just keep on living here literally forever. There’s good food and good weather and good friends, so I have absolutely no incentive to agree to your terms. I can do anything I like and there’s no repercussions. So, nice try and all, but I’m never going to leave the pack.”

  My dad laughed. “Is that right?” he said. “So, in all your research on trying to break the loop, you never once came across what happens if you stay in there?”

  I knew he wanted me to ask what would happen and I didn’t want to play into his hands, but I needed to know. The question just burst out of me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, out here, life is still moving on. The world is still turning, and you’re on that world. At the moment, you’re avoiding time, but it will catch up with you eventually. You’re not immortal in there, and time doesn’t like to be cheated. You can’t just use magic for free. There’s always a cost, and this kind of spell is expensive. One day soon, the loop will start to warp, and people will begin to vanish. Where will they go? Will they just fall out of the loop? Will they fall through time to be lost somewhere? Will they die? Just wink out of existence? Well… I guess I can only leave that up to your imagination. But as someone who knows the answer, let me tell you that your imagination can’t even begin to picture how awful it will be for them.”

  Tennyson’s eyes widened in horror, but I wasn’t so easily convinced.

  “You’re lying,” I said. “I’ve called you out on the hole in your plan, so you’re making this up to cover yourself.”

  He laughed again. “I’m flattered that you think I’m powerful enough to maintain such high-level magic indefinitely, but the truth is, to do this, there need to be sacrifices.”

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. “What are you saying?”

  “People will vanish from the time loop. That energy needs to go somewhere. It may as well go to a useful purpose.”

  I felt sick. I was actually going to vomit. I thrust the phone toward Tennyson as I bent over, clutching my stomach. How could I be related to this man, who cared so little for anyone else that he’d use up human lives like AA batteries? Over the sound of my retching, I heard Tennyson speak to my father, but I couldn’t make out what he said. After a moment, he started awkward
ly patting my back.

  “I’m okay,” I said, straightening up and wiping my mouth. I hadn’t actually thrown up, but I didn’t want Tennyson to catch me drooling.

  “You look flushed,” he said. “You should drink some water. Will you be okay to get back to the house?”

  I nodded, though I felt shaky on my legs. I wasn’t so sure I was okay to do anything.

  By the time we got back to the house, Althea and Nikolai were in full preparations for the dance.

  “Fine,” I said as Althea herded me into her room to get ready, although it was really the last thing I felt like doing. “But I am not wearing those strappy shoes.”

  I showered and dressed, and as I let Althea primp me, I actually started to feel a bit better. We’d been in pretty harsh situations before, but Tennyson was right: we always managed to get out of it relatively unscathed. I mean, I was a werewolf now with a mind link to Tennyson, but we were all still alive.

  “So, did you find out how he used Tennyson as a link to the time loop?” Althea asked as she did my makeup.

  I couldn’t actually reply while she painted my lips, so I just made a noise in my throat that sounded vaguely negatory. I was pleased that I hadn’t discussed Tennyson’s link to the spell with my father. I didn’t want him to know that we knew Tennyson was involved, because it would only add another level of things he could threaten me with. And as far as we knew, it might not have even been intentional on my dad’s part. He didn’t have any magical DNA, so whatever power he was using was either stolen or scientifically manufactured, which meant he didn’t necessarily understand all the underlying technicalities. I mean, I could heat up a frozen dinner, but that didn’t mean I could build a microwave oven. Giving him that information would just mean he’d find a way to use it to his advantage.

  Althea finished my makeup and stood back to inspect it. I could’ve told her what my dad had said, but what would be the point? It would only worry her, and it wasn’t as if she could do something about it. I’d tell her tomorrow at breakfast, and we could add it to our ever-growing list of things we couldn’t do anything about. For tonight, she might as well enjoy the dance.