For three full minutes, I just sit on the edge of my bed and listen to the house.
The gentle clink of a spoon against a ceramic bowl from the kitchen—my dad, making his oatmeal. The low murmur of the morning news from the TV in the living room. The rhythmic creak of the floorboards above me as our neighbor gets ready for work. These are the sounds of a normal Monday morning. They are supposed to be comforting. Solid.
Instead, they feel like the bars of a cage. An invisible, temporal prison built of the mundane.
My body moves on autopilot. It knows the script. Shower—not too hot, or the mirror will fog up exactly wrong. Get dressed—the same pair of dark jeans, the same gray henley that's soft from being washed too many times. I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. It's me. Marcus Rivera, seventeen years old. Dark, perpetually messy hair. Eyes that have seen a little too much for their age, I guess. The same faint scar above my right eyebrow from a childhood disagreement with a tree branch.
But it's not the me from yesterday. Yesterday's me—the me of Day 47—had felt the warmth of Sophia's hand. He was braver. Happier. Less… haunted. The me staring back from the mirror is just the new kid again. Scared. Anxious. Entirely alone.
I head downstairs. The smell of coffee and burnt toast—Dad's signature scent—hangs in the air. He's at the kitchen counter, scrolling through his phone with one hand while methodically stirring a glop of oatmeal with the other. He doesn't look up. He won't for another twelve seconds.
"Morning, kiddo," he says, right on cue. "Toast is on the plate. Don't worry, I only sacrificed one piece to the toaster gods this time."
The joke is exactly the same. The dry, warm delivery. The small smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. My dad is a good man. A great man, even. A journalist who taught me about truth and authenticity, which is brutally ironic considering the lie my life has become. He moved us here after the divorce, hoping for a fresh start. And I got one. Every single morning.
"Thanks, Dad," I say, my voice feeling like a recording. I grab the plate. One slice of toast is perfectly golden-brown. The other looks like a charcoal briquette. I force myself to take a bite. It tastes like ash and déjà vu.
This is the hardest part. The sheer, suffocating normalcy of it all. It's one thing to accept you're in a time loop. It's another thing to have to live out the perfectly scripted banality that proves it, moment by agonizing moment. Each repeated detail is another nail in the coffin of my sanity.
On the school bus, I claim my usual seat—two-thirds of the way back, on the right. I put in my earbuds but don't play any music. I just need the excuse not to talk to anyone. I watch the familiar landscape of suburbia scroll past my window. The same golden retriever chasing a tennis ball in the same yard. The same "For Sale" sign with a jaunty red "SOLD" sticker slapped across it.
Each landmark is a breadcrumb leading me back to a beginning I don't want. My stomach twists itself into knots. I feel sick. Sick with dread, with loneliness, with a grief for a forty-seven-day relationship that no one else in the world knows ever happened.
A terrifying thought surfaces, sleek and venomous.
What if I just don't go to art class?
What would happen? If I just… sat in the library instead? Or ditched school entirely? Could I break the pattern just by making a different choice? Avoid the whole thing? Avoid her? Avoid the inevitable heartbreak when the reset comes? For a dizzying moment, the idea is intoxicating. Freedom. I could choose a different path. I could just… stop.
But my chest immediately constricts, a sharp, physical pain.
Stop? Stop what? Stop meeting her? Stop seeing the way her eyes light up when she talks about a painting she loves? Stop hearing the sound of her laugh? The loop is a prison, yeah. But it's the only place she exists for me right now. Avoiding her wouldn't be freedom. It would be a different kind of hell. An empty one.
My hands are shaking by the time the bus lurches to a stop in front of Northwood High. I'm not a hero. I'm not some brave protagonist fighting against fate. I'm just a terrified kid who's so hopelessly in love that he's willing to walk back into the fire just to feel the warmth one more time.
Stupid. So incredibly stupid.
I'm already halfway to first period when a voice I know as well as my own cuts through the hallway noise.
"Yo, transfer student! You alive?"
I turn. There's Ethan Brooks, leaning against a locker with that easy, practiced confidence he wears like a second skin. He's got that same damn smirk on his face, the one that's equal parts charming and infuriating. He has a smudge of what looks like ink on his neck, in the exact same spot it was on Day 1, Cycle 1. A constant, immovable part of my universe.
The me from the first timeline was grateful for Ethan's easy friendship. The me from right now just feels a profound, aching sadness. I've seen this Ethan become my best friend, my confidant, the only other person in some far-flung, erased future who might know my secret. But this Ethan? This Ethan is just a friendly stranger making a joke.
"Barely," I say, the word coming out flatter than I intended.
His smirk widens. "Yeah, well, join the club. We meet Thursdays. Except apparently we also meet every other day this week because this seems to be a repeating circle of mediocrity."
The joke. The exact same stupid, wonderful joke. The first time, it made me laugh, made me feel seen, made this huge, intimidating school feel a little smaller. This time, it feels like a punch to the gut. The repetition isn't comforting; it's proof. Hard, undeniable proof that I am trapped.
"Funny," I say, trying to force a smile that feels like it's cracking my face.
Ethan's gaze sharpens for a second, his usual breezy demeanor faltering. He's surprisingly perceptive. I'd forgotten that about Day 1 Ethan. "You okay, man? You look like you've seen a ghost."
A hundred ghosts, I think. And they all have my face.
"Just new school jitters," I lie, waving a dismissive hand. "Still figuring out where everything is."
"Right, right. Labyrinthine, this place." He claps me on the shoulder, a solid, reassuring gesture that makes me feel even more disconnected. "Well, if you need a guide to the best vending machine—it's the one near the gym, it gives out two bags for the price of one sometimes—I'm your guy. What's your first period?"
"Art. Room 214."
"Ah, Mrs. Gable's Chamber of Creative Horrors. Godspeed, my friend." He gives me a mock salute and peels off the locker. "See you at lunch. Try not to get eaten by the clay monsters."
And then he's gone, swallowed by the river of students.
And I'm alone again.
The walk to Room 214 feels like a death march. Each step is heavy. My heart is a frantic drum against my ribs. My palms are slick with sweat. This is it. This is the moment. You have to get this right. I have to replicate everything. Same time. Same seat. Same stupid, awkward introduction. The thought of deviating, of messing it up and losing that path that leads to the sunset on the roof, is unbearable. The cycle is a prison, but its blueprints are the only map I have back to her.
I stand outside the classroom door for a long moment, my hand hovering over the handle. I can hear the murmur of voices inside, the scrape of stools against the linoleum floor. I close my eyes. I can picture her in there, exactly where she'll be. Bent over her sketchbook, a pencil tucked behind her ear, lost in a world of her own making. The world I'm about to crash into.
I take a deep, shuddering breath. It does nothing to calm me. Then I push the door open and walk inside.
The room smells of turpentine and clay and dusty sunlight. It's a chaotic, wonderful mess of splattered easels, half-finished sculptures, and posters of famous paintings taped to the walls.
And there she is.
She's sitting at a table near the window, in the far corner. The morning light pours in, creating a halo around her, catching the stray strands of her dark hair and turning them the color of fire. She's exactly as I remember. As I always remember her. Pale skin, a charcoal smudge on her cheek she doesn't know is there. She's wearing a paint-stained flannel over a band t-shirt, and she's hunched over a sketchbook with an intensity that makes the rest of the room fade away.
She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And she has no idea who I am.
My feet move before my brain gives them permission. I navigate the maze of tables and chairs, my gaze locked on her, on the empty seat beside her. The one I know isn't actually empty.
It's her seat. The one she keeps her bag on. The one I sat in by mistake. The mistake that started everything.
I can do this. I have to do this. I stop beside the table. I can see the page of her sketchbook now. It's filled with looping, intricate lines. A pattern that looks like organized chaos. It looks the way my own thoughts feel.
I slide my backpack off my shoulder. My heart is beating so loud I'm sure the whole room can hear it.
Here we go.
I take a final breath and sit down in the empty chair. Her chair.
The scratching of her pencil stops. The world holds its breath.
A moment of silence passes. It stretches for an eternity.
Then, a voice. Not angry. Not mean. Just… factual. A voice that is etched into my very soul.
"That's my seat."