Page 23 of Not You Again
“You’ve been doing this by yourself?” Carly asked.
“Well, no. The town helped me work on this initially, but then people got discouraged and stopped trying.” Rick folded the map up and put it back into his pocket. “There’s still a few of us working to find a way out. I’d say we’re about a quarter through the map.”
The town was only eight square miles, and that was exactlywhat their world was, too. Eight miles would be the only thing Adam would ever know for the rest of his life if he didn’t find a way out. Adam hadn’t allowed himself to feel hopeful about ending the loop in a very long time. Hope could be a dangerous thing—he knew that firsthand when it came to Shireen. But there was something about this conversation that lit an ember in his chest. What if theycouldstop this? What if he didn’t have to restart every day in the middle of an argument?
“Remember when someone suggested a town witch had cast a spell to trap us all?” Carly looked nervously into the woods. “What if the witch is listening?”
“Tell you what. If I’d been mayor instead of Franco, the aliens would’ve come to take us out of this by now,” Rick said with total and utter conviction.
Adam pinched his eyes closed. What he wouldn’t give for the aliens to appear at that very moment to carry him away from this conversation.
“Have you noticed anything unusual in the past few loops?” Carly asked.
“I haven’t.” Rick puffed out his chest. “And to be honest, should we even be getting worked up about this yet? The timing could easily be user error.”
Adam was reminded that he’d never liked group projects. Why try to be nice to people you barely knew? Why work the hardest and then have to share the credit?
He should be home. He should be getting ready to observe the shadow bands and time the eclipse. He should be back to the life he was comfortable with instead of having to defend his own findings. If they didn’t want to believe that Adam had witnessed a deviation, then they didn’t have to. He could continue to watch the eclipse as he always had and always did.
“I better head out.” Adam massaged his temples. “Just got a splitting headache.”
Rick’s expression was all sympathetic concern, exactly what Adam wanted. But Carly watched him with beady certainty. While Rick had bought the bullshit, it was clear that Carly wasn’t going to.
Adam didn’t want to stick around, though. If he did, Carly would call him out. They’d have another argument. And he wasn’t in the mood to fight when they’d just gotten to a place where he made her laugh and she gave him knowing looks.
So he pivoted on his heel and tore off toward the hearse. The thunder of boots behind him was alarming, but he refused to turn around.
“A headache? Really?” Carly’s voice was low, so only he’d hear. “You’ve apparently been timing the eclipse every loop like a mad scientist, but a doomsdayer pokes and you go running?”
Carly made a valid point, but Adam wasn’t always as delicate as the day she’d taken pity on him. He could bark back, too.
“This is the one thing in my life that I really like doing. I don’t have a lot of options, but the eclipse, and the stars? Those aremythings. And I don’t have to explain those to anyone, especially not people who want to believe in witches causing a time loop.” He finally stopped walking and faced her.
Instead of Carly rolling up her sleeves to deliver the next wallop, she said, “For the record, I brought up the witches thing because I sensed Rick would feel some camaraderie. It’s calledreading the room, and you should try it sometime.”
“Something tells me that’s a theory you bought, though,” Adam sniped back.
“You know what? I don’t want to fight. Show me, Rhodes. I said we’re in this together, so show me what you’re seeing. Maybe Rick doesn’t want to believe, but I want to believe.”
“Is that anX-Filesreference?” He was annoyed by how hopeful his voice was.
But then, to his additional surprise, she said, “I’m learning how to speak Adam.”
Adam could’ve brought Carly to a field or the center of town to watch the eclipse, but the day had been unpredictable, and Adam didn’t want any more surprises.
Carly shoved her hands in her pockets and spun in a slow circle as she took in the tree house. “This place is...”
Horrendous. Grimy. Creepy. He waited for whichever word she planned to choose, but then she filled in the blank with, “Way more spacious than I anticipated. It’s basically the size of my living room back home.”
Her expression was something close to awe. “I always wanted a tree house. We didn’t have a huge backyard, though.” She picked up the binoculars and looked through them and directly at him. “So you were always a nerd, huh?”
“I...” Was he flustered?Thiswas why Adam didn’t bring other people into his space.
“Chill out, I was a nerd, too.” She put the binoculars down. “Just a film nerd instead of Bill Nye.” She leaned a palm against his desk, and he really did have to acknowledge the curve of her hips as her dress clung from the gravitational pull. He wondered what it might be like to use his fingers to trace a line from her hip all the way up to her—Stop, he told himself.
And then he forced himself to say something. “What does a movie nerd do, just watch movies?” Adam crossed his arms and tried to imagine baby Carly during a movie marathon. Her big glasses, boots and a bag of popcorn.
“Excuse me, we call themfilms,” she corrected. “I went to film festivals. Worked on student films. I made a list of every one I saw and wrote reviews. I had a blog.”
