Waking up on Day 2 feels like surfacing after being held underwater for too long. My first conscious thought isn't panic. It's a jolt of pure, unadulterated relief.
It's Tuesday.
The world didn't reset. I didn't wake up to that mocking Monday morning alarm. My memories of yesterday—the disastrous lunch, the triumphant job application, the bookstore, the dream—they're all still here. Intact. They count.
This small victory feels monumental. I get out of bed with an energy I haven't felt in… well, in a very long time. It's the feeling of having a future, even if it's just the next twenty-four hours.
At school, the atmosphere feels charged, different. Or maybe I'm the one who's different. I walk through the crowded hallways not as a ghost replaying a script, but as an actor who has just been given permission to improvise. The fear is still there, a low hum beneath the surface, but it's joined by something else now: a wild, precarious curiosity.
I don't have art class today. Our schedules only align on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. This is both a relief and a disappointment. I don't know if I could handle another encounter like yesterday, but the thought of not seeing her at all leaves a hollow ache in my chest. I have no idea where her classes are, no established pattern for "accidentally" bumping into her. This new timeline is uncharted territory.
I find myself walking slower between classes, my eyes scanning the sea of faces, searching for one in particular. It's a stupid, hopeless impulse, but I can't stop it.
And then, just before third period, I see her.
She's at her locker down the hall, grabbing a textbook. Iris is with her, leaning against the adjacent locker, talking a mile a minute. Sophia is just listening, nodding occasionally, a small, weary smile on her face. She looks tired. The kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix.
My heart does a stupid little flip. I should just keep walking. Mind my own business. Let the day unfold naturally. That would be the smart, sensible thing to do.
But since when have I been smart or sensible?
I change my trajectory, making a beeline for a water fountain just a few feet away from them. It's the most transparent excuse in the history of high school, but it's the only one I have.
As I get closer, I can hear fragments of their conversation.
"… and then he just looked at me," Iris is saying, gesturing dramatically. "Like I was speaking ancient Sumerian. I swear, boys have the emotional processing power of a toaster."
Sophia gives a faint, noncommittal hum.
I lean down to take a long, unnecessary drink from the water fountain, my ears straining. My back is to them, but I can feel her presence like a change in atmospheric pressure.
"Speaking of boys who look at people weird," Iris says, her voice dropping conspiratorially, "what was with that guy from yesterday? The one in art, and then at the bookstore? The universe is really trying to push him into your orbit, huh?"
I nearly choke on my water.
Sophia doesn't answer right away. There's a long, loaded pause. I imagine her shrugging, brushing it off, changing the subject.
"I had a dream about him last night," Sophia says, and her voice is so quiet I almost miss it.
My entire world freezes. The water from the fountain is still running, a meaningless, metallic stream. My heart has stopped beating. I'm not sure I'm breathing.
A dream. She had a dream. Was it the same dream? Was she in the library with me?
"Ooh, a dream?" Iris's voice is practically buzzing with intrigue. "Spicy dream? Awkward dream? Did he have lobster claws for hands? That happens to me sometimes."
Another pause. Longer this time. I hear the clang of her locker shutting.
"It wasn't spicy," Sophia says finally, her voice sounding distant, confused. "It felt… familiar. Like a memory I don't have. It was strange. I woke up feeling sad."
Sad. She woke up sad. Just like I woke up knowing our dream conversation had been cut short.
I push myself up from the water fountain, my mind reeling. I have to talk to her. I have to ask her. I turn around, my mouth already forming a question, a plea—
And she's looking right at me.
Our eyes lock across the ten feet of crowded, noisy hallway, and the world goes silent. It's just us. Again. Her expression is a whirlwind of confusion, suspicion, and something else I can't name. Something that looks a lot like recognition.
She knows. She dreamed it, too. On some subconscious, unreachable level, she knows.
The warning bell for third period rings, a shrill, jarring sound that shatters the moment. The spell is broken. A dozen students surge between us, a sudden river of bodies, and she's gone. Lost in the current.
I stand there, paralyzed, while the hallway empties around me.
The physics test Ethan was worried about is in my next class. It's taught by Dr. Helena Morse.
I've never paid much attention in her class before. Physics was always just a collection of abstract rules and equations about a world that, until recently, had always behaved itself. But today, I listen to every word she says with a new, desperate intensity.
Dr. Morse isn't like other teachers. She has a calm, almost serene presence, and she talks about physics less like a science and more like a philosophy. Today's lecture is about quantum mechanics.
"We often think of time as a straight line, an arrow moving inexorably forward," she says, her voice gentle as she sketches on the whiteboard. "But some theories propose that time is not so simple. That multiple timelines, multiple possibilities, could coexist simultaneously."
My pen freezes in my hand. The entire classroom could have disappeared and I wouldn't have noticed. She is speaking directly to me.
"And at the quantum level," she continues, tapping the board, "there's a phenomenon we call entanglement. Two particles can become linked, their fates intertwined, so that no matter how far apart they are in space, a change in one instantaneously affects the other. As if they are still connected by some invisible, unbreakable thread."
She turns from the board, and for a fleeting, heart-stopping second, her eyes seem to find mine in the crowded classroom.
"Some have even theorized that this entanglement could occur across dimensions. Across time itself," she says, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. "A connection so profound it defies our classical understanding of reality. Imagine that. Two souls, forever linked, echoing each other across the spaces between worlds."
The bell rings, signaling the end of the period. But I don't move.
The classroom empties. Dr. Morse erases the whiteboard.
And I sit there, staring at the empty space where she'd written the word 'entanglement'.
An invisible, unbreakable thread.
Two souls, echoing each other.
My dream. Her dream. The bookstore. It's not a coincidence. It's not chaos. It's a pattern. It's entanglement.
It's the physics of hope.