by Anita Oh
We wore different dresses than we had the first time. Mine was amethyst purple and had a kind of Victorian feel, with a high, lacy collar. Althea wore a black sheath dress that looked dramatic with her dark hair and red lips. This time, my shoes were way more comfortable, tan lace-up boots that I’d be able to run in if I needed to. When we met up with the boys, they were all wearing the same outfits as last time, except for Nikolai, who was eye-catching in his orange damask tuxedo with lacy cravat.
“This is fantastic!” he said. “If we do this enough times, I can wear every suit in my wardrobe!”
He practically skipped out the door. Some days, he was a lot more stressed about the dance than others, but now that I had a larger sample size, his moods seemed random and not related to breakfast cake.
Tennyson fell in beside me as we walked, giving me a curious look.
There’s nothing we can do about it tonight, I told him. We may as well let everyone have a good time.
That color suits you, he said in response.
For a moment, I wondered if he was speaking in some sort of code, but then why would he, when he was speaking in my mind? He was probably just being polite.
Thanks, I said. Formalwear suits you.
He gave a little nod of thanks, and I could see the edges of that smile twitching his mouth.
“It’s going to be the best night ever!” Nikolai was saying up ahead, tap-dancing his way along the path. He made his way over to a group of girls from Green House. “There’s no tomorrow, everybody! Live like there’s no tomorrow!”
“He is going to cause so much trouble,” I said.
“But only for the next few hours.”
The pavilion looked just as amazing as it had the first time. The cherry blossoms were pretty, petals floating down from the top of the pavilion.
“I assume you don’t want to dance?” Sam asked me.
I was about to refuse, but then I figured why not.
“I don’t know the steps,” I said.
“Make them up!” said Nikolai. “No tomorrow, remember?”
So, I let Sam lead me onto the dance floor and we danced some complicated dance that probably took years of lessons to learn properly. I stepped on Sam’s feet about a hundred times, but he never once flinched or said anything. He’d obviously matured a bit since sixth grade. Nikolai twirled Althea around close by, to a different dance completely, making couples scatter out of their way.
I looked around to see if Tennyson was dancing with someone. I didn’t like the idea, somehow. All the girls who followed him around were so grasping, only liking him because of who he was and how he looked, without really knowing him. If they somehow got the chance to be with him, they’d probably sell the story to the press the first chance they got. They weren’t the sort of girls he could trust. It made a hot flare of indignation burn in my chest. But then I spotted him at the edge of the dance floor, and the burning died down. He was staring out onto the dance floor, watching all the couples. I caught his eye and smiled, but maybe it was hard to see in the dim evening light, because he turned away.
It didn’t take me long to tire of dancing, so I left Sam with Althea and went to sit at the table with Tennyson. A group of girls were gathered close to where he was sitting, whispering behind their hands and glancing at him. When I sat down, they moved away.
“Are you nervous about tonight?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Worst case scenario, I get struck by lightning. Then I’ll wake up and it will be this morning again. Well, that or I’ll be dead, in which case the time loop will probably be broken and you’ll all be saved.”
“That’s not funny.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t really kidding.
Tennyson was in a strange mood and not really chatty. Anything I said, he just replied to in monosyllables, so I gave up and watched Nikolai attempt to dance with every person there. He was really having the time of his life, I thought as I watched him grab Mr. Porter’s hand and drag him out to the dance floor, grinding his hips obscenely in the air as he somehow paired Mr. Porter off with Mrs. Pritchard and then danced away into the crowd.
Eventually, the night cooled off. It was getting late, and I had to go. The others looked as if they were having fun, and I didn’t want to disturb them.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I told Tennyson, getting up from my seat and feeling like Cinderella.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re a terrible liar.” He got to his feet and started walking out of the pavilion.
“You don’t have to come with me,” I said, hurrying to catch up. “It’s not as if you’ll remember what happens.”
“Yes, but I may be able to provide a keen insight into what happens. The only two people to have witnessed it are yourself and Sam, and neither of you have my background in the paranormal.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t actually mind him coming along. Walking into a storm to be hit by lightning was the kind of thing that was better with company.
We made our way through the gardens and past the people milling around, in the general direction of the clock tower. Beyond the glow of the pavilion, the night was dark. If I’d had normal human eyes, I’d barely have been able to see Tennyson walking beside me. As it was, I stayed close to him, as if he could stop the night from swallowing me up and spitting me back to the morning.
Although clouds covered the moon, there was no sign of the storm. We made it to the clock tower, but there was no rumble of thunder, no flash of lightning.
“Maybe we’re early,” I said.
“We could climb up,” he suggested.
I shook my head, shivering at the thought of trying to climb those cobwebby stairs in the pitch-black night. “I’m sure here is close enough.”
And if it wasn’t, we could try again tomorrow.
We waited in silence, but still there was no storm, no rain, nothing. I marched on the spot, trying to stay warm.
“Here, take my jacket,” Tennyson said, but I waved him off.
“I’m fine,” I said.
He shook his head. “You’re always so stubborn.” He turned to face me, catching my hand, and suddenly I didn’t feel cold at all. “Lucy, you have to promise me something.”
I held my breath. I would’ve promised him anything, but I never found out what it was. The next moment, I blinked and woke up in my bed. It was morning. Again.
Chapter 11
I’d been super creeped out by the fact that there had been no storm, but Althea thought it was a good sign.
“Has the weather changed any other time?” she asked me over the picnic breakfast.
I was so sick of mini quiches, it broke my heart. My actual heart, not the heart pendant that Sam only gave to me sometimes, probably because I kept crashing the picnic breakfast with unpleasant news.
“We normally just stay in and research until I go back to the morning, so I haven’t noticed any big changes,” I said, trying to think. The storm had been so sudden and right before the loop reset, it seemed as if I’d notice if it was suddenly different, but I couldn’t recall noticing it any other time but the first. “I honestly can’t say for sure. I do know that Sam only transformed on that first night though.”
She nodded slowly, as if she was collating the data in her head. “Sam’s transformation was probably caused by the electricity in the air, that’s happened before and would explain why he’s been fine every time since. If the storm only occurred on the first day, before the loop actually began, that increases the likelihood of the storm being a product of the creation of the time loop.”
“Does that help us at all?” asked Sam. “If there’s no evidence at the clock tower of the time loop, then it doesn’t really tell us anything.”
It seemed as if it should be meaningful information, though, so I filed it away with all the other stuff I had to remember to tell them each day.
You look tired, said Tennyson.
Probably because I haven’t slept in about a zillion Friday
s.
Even though my body woke up each morning after a full night’s sleep, I didn’t actually get to experience that sleep. I wonder if I’d go crazy, like those stories you hear about soldiers they keep hopped up on pills so they stay awake for weeks at a time when they’re on missions. It might not be affecting me physically, but I’d been around spooky stuff long enough now to know that the physical body wasn’t necessarily the main player. Maybe I needed sleep on a psychic level or something. I didn’t say that out loud, though, in case Sam decided we should meditate some more.
Can’t you nap?
If I nap, then the day resets.
That’s very depressing.
He wasn’t wrong, but it was better not to think about it.
“If we’ve exhausted all the research, then the only thing I can think to do is for Lucy to be inside the clock tower when the day resets,” said Althea. “Even if there’s no storm, maybe she needs to be there at the moment the loop is activated for the daily reset. Probably Tennyson, too, if the theory about him being linked somehow is true.”
“No way,” I said. “You clearly haven’t seen how spooky that clock tower is inside. There is no way I’m climbing those stairs in the dark. It’s a total death trap.”
“You could go early and wait,” said Sam.
“You’ll miss the dance,” said Nikolai. He’d eaten my share of the mini quiches and had moved on to the cakes. He was clearly on one of his stress eating days. “Not that it matters for you, really. But people will be disappointed if Tennyson isn’t there.”
Sam clearly didn’t care if I didn’t go to the dance either, but Althea looked disappointed.
“Nobody will even know tomorrow that I wasn’t there,” said Tennyson.
I was a little surprised that he agreed so easily. “It really smells,” I told him. “And it won’t be a very interesting way to spend the evening.”
He shrugged and pulled the plate of cakes away from Nikolai. “You’ll throw up shortcake all over your tux if you don’t stop. And I’m sure it won’t be any duller than watching a bunch of people circle around the dance floor.”
“If I can’t eat cake, I’m leaving,” Nikolai said. “I have to go and check on my hydrangeas, anyway.”
I drifted through the rest of the day without much of a goal. Messing with people seemed less fun now that I knew any of them could vanish at any minute. As much as I didn’t like most of my classmates, I didn’t want them sucked into my dad’s evil time vortex machine or anything. The others went to classes, so I went along too. I sat my history test and ate curry for lunch and listened to the biology lecture, but none of it seemed real. It seemed like a rehearsal.
I watched everyone else in my classes in a way I never would’ve before, actually noticing things about them. The way Olivia Hearst passed her charging bank over to Charlotte Du Pont when Charlotte’s laptop battery went flat without even looking up from her notes. The way Troy Hathaway went through and liked every single post on his grandmother’s Facebook page. I only ever thought of these people when their lives intersected with my own, but they were all real, actual human beings. They had families and friends and their own reasons for doing the things they did. It wasn’t fair for a giant pause button to be hit on their lives, even if they didn’t realize it. It wasn’t fair for their lives to be constantly in danger just because my father was a jerk.
After class, Tennyson and I went to the Golden House to watch the others get ready so we could head over to the dance with them.
“No, that won’t do at all,” Althea said when we started to go into the common room rather than get dressed. “Just because you don’t get to go to the dance doesn’t mean you should miss out on dressing up! Come on, that’s the best part!”
Tennyson gave in easily — years of being Althea’s brother had probably trained him to pick his battles. I didn’t want to be the only one in my school uniform, so I followed Althea into her room and let her do her thing.
“I get sent so many dresses from designers that I never get a chance to wear them,” she said. “If only I was the one stuck in the time loop so I could try them all out! Now, tell me which ones we’ve worn before, so at least one of us can wear something new.”
She chose a pale pink dress with a sweeping skirt and a lace overlay of silver flowers that made her shimmer like a fairy princess. Because I was going to be climbing a spooky tower, she decided I should wear black, and started flicking through all the black dresses on her rack.
“Something that will be easy to climb a rotting staircase in,” I suggested. “Nothing I’ll trip over in. And something warm! It gets really cold out there later.”
The dress she pulled out had a simple bodice with a sort of feathery ankle-length skirt, and a furry capelet to go over the top. I was worried it might make me look a bit like Jon Snow, but Althea assured me I’d look way more like Sansa.
“You look quite good in black,” said Althea. “Even though your skin is so pale. I like the dramatic contrast.”
“That’s probably only because you’re, like, a makeup wizard,” I told her.
She left my hair down, with only a few sections pulled back into some sort of braided bun thing that looked very complicated but took her about five seconds to do. With her own hair, she twisted it up into a series of crown braids that only added to the fairy princess effect, especially with the delicate jewelry she’d added — I was fairly sure that all those sparkles were real diamonds.
“We look stunning,” she said, staring at our reflections in the mirror once we were ready. “It’s such a waste that you’re going to be stuck in that tower in the dark. Alone with my brother. Just the two of you. Alone in the dark.”
She elbowed me in the ribs, just in case I hadn’t gotten her meaning. Which I had, loud and clear. It wasn’t the first time that she’d implied that kind of thing about me and Tennyson, but it was easiest just to ignore her. Anything she’d picked up on that had led her to such assumptions was from the soul bond, but it was impossible to explain that.
“I thought you were against that kind of thing,” I said. “You know, in case you end up as alpha.”
She blushed and turned away. I knew it wasn’t nice to remind her of something she felt guilty about, but at least it stopped her from making any other creepy comments about me and Tennyson.
When we got downstairs, she decided we needed to take a bunch of photos so that her awesome makeover wouldn’t be wasted. It seemed mean to remind her that the photos would just vanish in a few hours anyway.
We walked toward the dance together, the five of us. Nikolai was excited again and yelling about no tomorrow. This time, he was wearing a top hat and a monocle and was carrying a cane. Sam walked on up ahead with Tennyson, chatting quietly.
“It’s starting to get you down?” Althea asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t want to ruin your night with my moping.”
She shook her head, and her whole body made a tinkling sound. She really was the embodiment of a magical creature. “You don’t get to go to the dance. You should be allowed a little bit of moping.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s just that all these things keep happening, but none of you remember them. It kind of feels like nothing’s real. I’m not real, you’re not real. None of this is going to have existed tomorrow. It’s going to be overwritten.”
“You’ll remember it,” she said. “So, it will still mean something. But I can see how it would become frustrating. And lonely.”
The boys were waiting for us up ahead, so we hurried to catch up, then Tennyson and I watched as the other three went off to the dance.
“Are you sorry you can’t go?” he asked as we began to walk toward the tower.
“I’ve been before,” I said. “You?”
“You obviously don’t read my blog,” he said. “The Spring Fling is at the very top of the ‘Worst Things About Spring’ list.”
“I thought Althea wrote your blog for you.”
“She’s always tried to take credit for my wit and charm.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Is that so? Does that mean the list of ‘Worst Things About Freshman Year’ was all you as well?”
“I have no memory of such a thing,” he said. “I do recall that around that time, my blog was quite frequently hacked by people with malicious intent.”
When I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, I caught the best of his secret smiles yet. It was almost too wide to be called secret, enough to bring out a half-dimple in his cheek.
Night was just beginning to fall as we reached the tower. We lit the flashlights on our phones, and Tennyson forced open the door.
“Perhaps you should take my hand as we climb,” he said. “For safety.”
We linked fingers, and he led me into the tower. Even with our flashlights, it was as if the shadows swallowed up any light. The tiny windows were coated in centuries of grime that made them too opaque for light to filter through. I’d thought with our enhanced vision, we’d be able to see a bit, but the darkness was impenetrable.
Tennyson climbed the stairs before me, his light aimed at the next step, and reached back for me. I aimed my light at our feet and kept a tight hold on him, scared that if I let go, I’d vanish into the darkness. There was no sound but our footsteps and our breathing, both of which became heavier the more we climbed. It seemed as if we were climbing forever with only that small circle of light to guide us, just the two of us clinging to each other within a vacuum.
When we finally came to the top of the stairs, it was almost a surprise. I’d been convinced we were stuck in an endless darkness together.
“Be careful,” he said, still not letting go of me and shining his light around the room. “There are broken bottles and other rubbish on the floor.”
It was too dark for him to see the floor without his light pointed directly at it.
