Page 64 of Not You Again
“No, I meanMayor Franco.” Carly pointed a finger above the crowd, and when Adam looked, there was Mayor Franco in a head-to-toe lemon-yellow suit. She stood on a makeshift stage crafted out of boxes piled on top of each other like pancakes.
“Incredible,” Dr. Song said. “It’s like she’s cosplaying Big Bird.”
“Can’t argue there,” Carly said. “When we escape the loop and I become a famous screenwriter, I’ll miss her outfits the most.”
Carly almost looked hopeful at the mention of escaping. And Adam wanted that for her, too. He wanted Carly to be able to pursue her dreams. But he was certain he wouldn’t be able to get her out until he brought Shireen back—if he could solve that, then there was a chance.
“Hi! Hello!” The mayor said into a megaphone. “You all are beingreallyloud right now, so I just need you to, like, chill. Okay?”
To Adam’s surprise, people did quiet down.
“Now, I called this town hall because, as I’ve already explained to most of you, the eclipse is getting shorter!” The mayor’s excitement beamed out through the megaphone.
“Oh shit,” Carly said and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“The mayor figured that out on her own?” Rick asked. “Maybe the aliens got to her.”
“Not on her own,” Carly said through gritted teeth. “I may have told her when I was in my sad cheese-girl era.”
“What exactly did you tell her, again?” Adam wasn’t a dramatic person, but Main Street was beginning to feel like the fiery depths of hell. Not only because Adam was worried about what the mayor knew, but also because someone had lit multiple trash cans on fire and the flames really did heat up the space in an uncomfortable way.
“I think we should turn back,” Carly whispered into his ear.
But then the mayor said, “Our do-gooder friend, Carly Hart, told me all about how she and the spooky Rhodes kid have been measuring this thing. Come to think of it, probably best if I let them explain. Carly? Adam? Are you here?”
Well, Carly had certainly made telling more people easier. And Adam had learned from life as a tall redhead that hiding wasn’t an option. Sure enough, multiple sets of eyes landed on him. His shoulders hunched at the attention.
The mayor gestured to the piled-up boxes as if they were the steps that would lead them to accept a prestigious award, rather than a march to implode the town.
Carly’s eyes went wide but Adam said, “We’re not going to be able to Irish goodbye at this point. Come on, we’ll getit over with.” When he glanced around, the eyes of people he knew, didn’t know and vaguely remembered, met his. He swallowed way too loudly, and the fact that he could hear himself clued him to the other fact that the space had grown quiet. Everyone truly was waiting for them to provide answers.
Carly took the steps to the “stage” one at a time, and Adam hoisted himself up, too. The base was precarious at best.
“What is happening?” someone shouted from the crowd.
Heather and Rick had also climbed up, and Heather took the megaphone, a professor in her element. Heather looked out to the crowd as she said, “Hello, my name is Dr. Heather Song, and I’ve been helping Carly, Adam and Rick try to understand the changes that have been happening with the eclipse.”
“Isn’t that guy a scientist, too?” Spider-Man asked, pointing to Adam.
Adam wasn’t at all a scientist but found that someone calling him that made a little well of joy form in his chest. What if he got to call himself that every day? What if—
Carly’s loud voice cut him off, “Hey, yeah, common mistake. Adam here may look like the redhead version of Bill Nye, but he’s actually a mortician.”
“A statistician?” Spider-Man asked.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.Adam rolled his eyes, then said, “A funeral director, actually! A mortician is different.”
“How?” someone called out.
“It’s kind of technical!” he shouted. “It involves different licenses, but the same dead people.”
“Oh,” Spider-Man said. “That’s gross, man.”
“Thanks for the feedback,” Adam replied. And then, because he wanted to get this over with so they could go about finding Shireen, he decided to finally use his voice. “Theeclipse is something I’ve been timing since the loop began. For 238 loops it consistently was four minutes and thirty-two seconds long. Then it shortened by ten seconds, then another ten. It’s now clocking in at two minutes and forty-seven seconds. There is really no way to know what this means for any of us in a practical sense.”
“The loop is ending!” a loud voice boomed from the crowd and then, like a chant at a football game, the town began to shout, “Ending! Ending! Ending!”
There was a kind of elation in the air that was both exhilarating and unfortunate, because as Adam already knew, a happy ending wasn’t guaranteed.
