I look up, and the world recalibrates around her face.
It's the same face from the sunset, from forty-seven days of stolen glances, from the last dream I had before waking up this morning. But it's been stripped of all recognition, all warmth. It's like looking at a photograph of a home you grew up in, now gutted and owned by strangers. The architecture is familiar, but the feeling is gone. All that remains is a ghost.
She's holding a handful of charcoal pencils like they're defensive weapons, her knuckles pale. Her eyes—those impossibly gray eyes—are narrowed, boring into me with an unnerving focus. She's trying to solve me, to categorize me. Threat? Idiot? Both? Last time, I didn't have the context to read her expression. This time, I can see every micro-expression. The slight pinch between her brows means she's annoyed. The way she isn't blinking means she's genuinely waiting for an answer, not just being rhetorical.
My brain has apparently clocked out for an early vacation, because all I manage to say is, "Oh."
That's it. My brilliant opening line. One syllable of pure, unadulterated genius. The panic that had been simmering in my stomach begins to boil.
"This seat is… conceptually empty," she explains, as if to a very small, very stupid child. "But it's emotionally and practically occupied. By my bag. And my general need for a buffer zone."
I blinked. That line was new. A slight deviation. A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and my carefully reconstructed timeline starts to crumble. Stay on script, stay on script.
"Right. Sorry," I say, my voice sounding tight and unfamiliar. I force myself to stand, the stool scraping noisily against the floor. Every sound is magnified, every movement feels clumsy and wrong.
She watches me, her expression unreadable. Then she delivers the next line, the one that's supposed to break the ice.
"You should be."
It's said with the same deadpan seriousness as last time. No hint of a joke. The script demands that I laugh now. A real, disarmed laugh that's supposed to charm her, to show her I'm not just another clueless jock who wandered into the art room. It's a crucial beat. The lynchpin of our entire first interaction.
I force the sound out of my throat. It feels like a betrayal. A cheap imitation of a genuine emotion, a recording played at the wrong speed. It sounds hollow, thin. Anxious. I wait for her to call me on it, to see the absolute fraud sitting behind my eyes.
But she doesn't.
Instead, something in her expression shifts. Just the tiniest softening around her eyes, a flicker of… something. Amusement? Curiosity? It's enough. It's the crack in her armor I was waiting for, the one I know is there.
Okay. Okay, I can do this. Next step. The introduction.
"I'm Marcus," I say, and against all reason and every shred of common sense I possess, I stick out my hand. Like an idiot. A complete, five-star, generational idiot. Who shakes hands in high school? Me, apparently. Twice. I'm cringing on the inside so hard I think I might actually implode.
She looks at my outstretched hand. Then at my face. Then back at my hand.
This is the moment. The silence stretches out, a taut, shimmering wire of infinite possibilities. In Cycle 1, the pause lasted exactly three seconds before she spoke. I know because I replayed it in my head a thousand times.
I count.
One…
Two…
Three…
She just keeps staring at my hand, her head tilted slightly.
Four…
Five…
My heart plummets into my shoes. She's off-script. This isn't right. The whole delicate, fragile architecture of the last forty-seven days rests on this one stupid, scripted handshake, and she's not playing her part. I should pull my hand back. I should say something. But I'm frozen, a statue of social awkwardness, my arm suspended in the most mortifying moment of my life, which is really saying something.
Finally, just as I'm about to die of humiliation, she speaks.
"I… feel like I should know you," she says, her voice quiet, uncertain. Her eyes meet mine, and they're filled with a genuine, unnerving confusion.
My entire world tilts on its axis.
That's not what she's supposed to say. She's supposed to say, "I know," with a hint of sarcasm. She's supposed to think I'm just some transfer student whose name she heard in the morning announcements. This… this is something else entirely. This is a crack in the foundation of the loop.
Before I can respond, before I can even process the implications of what she just said, a loud, cheerful voice booms from the front of the classroom.
"Alright, my little Picassos! Find a seat, any seat, and let's make some magic!" Mrs. Gable, a whirlwind of colorful scarves and clanking jewelry, claps her hands together. "We have a new face with us today! Don't be shy, introduce yourselves!"
The moment is shattered. Sophia pulls her gaze away from mine, her expression snapping back to its default setting of guarded neutrality. She looks almost… flustered. Like she's annoyed at herself for saying what she said.
I retract my hand, my arm feeling strangely heavy. My mind is racing. I feel like I should know you. She felt it. On Day 1, with no history between us in this timeline, some part of her felt it. The echo. The ghost.
I find an empty stool at the table behind hers, my legs feeling unsteady. I'm supposed to feel relieved that the encounter is over, but all I feel is a dizzying mix of terror and a wild, electric hope. Things can change. The loop isn't a perfect copy. There are variables.
For the rest of the class, I can't focus. Mrs. Gable talks about perspective and vanishing points, her voice a meaningless drone in the background of the storm in my head. I spend the entire hour staring at the back of Sophia's head. She's back to drawing in her sketchbook, her focus absolute, as if our conversation never happened.
But it did happen. It was different.
And I know she feels it, too. Because ten minutes before the bell rings, I feel a prickling on the back of my neck. That familiar, unnerving sensation of being watched.
I risk a glance over my shoulder.
She isn't looking at me. She's looking at her paper. But the hand holding her pencil is still. And I can just make out the lines she's drawn. It's not the chaotic, abstract pattern from before.
It's a face. Messy hair. A slightly crooked smile.
My face.
Her eyes flick up for a fraction of a second and meet mine across the room. There's no annoyance in her gaze now. No cool detachment. Just a deep, profound confusion. A look that says, Who are you, and why are you already in my head?
Then she looks back down at her paper, and with a few quick, angry strokes of her eraser, my face is gone.
The bell screams. She's the first one out of her seat, shoving her sketchbook into her bag and disappearing out the door before I can even stand up.
I sit there for a long time, the chaos of the classroom emptying around me, leaving me in a sudden, echoing silence.
This time was different. It wasn't just a replay. Something new happened. A new variable was introduced into the equation. Her soul remembered something my timeline said her mind couldn't possibly know.
I don't know if that makes this better.
Or so, so much worse.