Page 26 of Not You Again
“Carly?” he called out, but there was no response. Adam wordlessly moved around Shireen and approached the funeral service room, but when he stuck his head in, Carly wasn’t in her usual chair.
“Did you do something to piss her off?” Shireen asked.
“No?” His statement came out as an anxious question, because he couldn’t help but remember the tears at the tree house. His heart began to thump loudly in his ears.Hadhe done something? He’d asked her about the last day of the reset. Maybe his tone had been misunderstood?
“Good luck with that.” Shireen raised her brows in a way he didn’t altogether appreciate, like she was in on a joke at his expense. With a shrug, Shireen was out the door.
Adam stood alone in the hall. Carly had said they were in this together. She’d said they were partners. Maybe she’d just left on a quick snack run and would return with food...
He waited an hour. But Carly didn’t return, send word via carrier pigeon, or so much as leave a note (he’d checked). She wasn’t coming back, apparently. He’d obviously done something to offend her, as Shireen had said. And now Carly had changed her mind about working with him, so much so that she couldn’t even stand to tell him to his face.
Adam’s feet dragged as he walked to the hearse. Even though the loop had restarted as usual, everything felt just abit more stagnant. He was absolutely thrown by the abrupt about-face Carly had pulled but, then again, what did he really know about her? She’d disappeared the day of her father’s funeral, so why wouldn’t she disappear any other time too?
Focus, he told himself. Just because Carly had bailed didn’t mean his work was done. The eclipse had shortened twenty seconds. If the eclipse shortened by ten seconds every following loop, then they’d have about twenty-seven loops left.
Which meant there were only twenty-seven more opportunities to study the shadow bands. He still wasn’t any closer to discoveringwhythey occurred in the first place. And what if they held the key to breaking the loop?
Rick and Carly weren’t the only ones with ideas. Adam could have ideas, too, dammit. And maybe that was the thing—maybe, after the “show me, I want to believe,” spiel, she’d changed her mind. Maybe Carly simply didn’t like what Adam was offering.
And, to be fair, he’d brought her to a tree house. They’d timed the eclipse. All things she could do by herself. The shadow bands, though; those were Adam’sthing. And if Carly had decided to pursue theories on her own, or with Rick... Adam could do the same. He didn’tneedCarly to help with shadow bands.
He might need an actual scientist, though.
Adam found his scientist at the local playground. While there wasn’t a child in sight, there was a Caltech-branded van in the parking lot. When Adam parked the hearse next to it, he looked out into the park to see the merry-go-round spinning, and a woman lying flat on her back as the world moved around her.
“Dr. Song?” Adam called out so as not to surprise her. Hewas completely aware that he was a tall guy and that women, in general, had been through enough.
She shot up, clocked him and said, “Hello?”
“I’m Adam. I’m... an amateur astronomer. Saw your Caltech van in the lot.” Indeed, he’d seen the van in previous loops. He’d also met Dr. Heather Song, Director of Astronomy at Caltech, in a prior loop, but he was certain she wouldn’t remember him.
“Oh great, here we go,” she said, as if to prove his worst fears. She lay back down on the merry-go-round. “I don’t respond well to pickup lines involving astronomy, for the record. Well, there was one time, in a moment of weakness, but that’s not happening again.”
“I’m not going to hit on you.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible.
“Excellent news.” Dr. Song gave him a tight look.
“I’m here to ask some questions about shadow bands.” He cringed as the words left his mouth because, really, would she even take him seriously?
She sat up on her elbows and considered this. “Shadow bands?”
Talking to Dr. Song was a longshot, he understood—she may have something, nothing, or everything to fill in the blanks for him. But he could take a page from Carly and see if this risk paid off. “Yeah, the library doesn’t have much research on them. And I read the theories online before the loop, but they’re kind of foggy to me. I saw the Caltech sticker, so I assume you were here to see the eclipse.”
“My students and I were, yes,” Dr. Song sighed. “I told them we should go to Arizona, but here we are. In hell.”
“I’m trying to figure out what causes the shadow bands,” he said.
“No one knows what causes them,” she said.
“Right.” Adam paused to take a breath, because this next part was the real leap of faith. “But since we’re stuck here, maybe we can try to figure it out?”
“Most people have given up trying to do... anything.” She squinted at him. “What got you into this?”
“I’ve always been into this,” he said. “I wanted to go to Caltech.”
“Ah, didn’t get in?” Dr. Song gave him a pitying look.
He felt a bit ridiculous when he responded with, “My parents didn’t want me to apply.”
