After Dr. Morse's lecture on cosmic soulmates—or, you know, quantum entanglement—my brain feels like it's been rewired. The frantic, buzzing anxiety is still there, but it's been joined by a strange, terrifying calm. It's the calm you feel in the eye of a hurricane. The world is falling apart around you, but for one brief, impossible moment, you can think clearly.
I am entangled with Sophia Winters.
It's the most insane, egocentric, ridiculously romantic idea I've ever had, and I've never been more certain of anything in my life.
We aren't just two people stuck in a weird supernatural event. We're connected. My actions create ripples that reach her, even across the barrier of a mind that doesn't remember. My dream bled into hers. My presence in her world is a constant, a gravitational pull she can't explain but can't ignore.
This changes everything. It means my choices aren't just about me anymore. They're about us. It means I'm not just a passive victim trying to replicate a lost timeline. I'm an active participant. I am one-half of an equation, and my variable has an effect.
I find Ethan after school, lurking by the vending machine near the gym, just like he said he would be. He's trying to coax a bag of chips out of the machine with a series of complex thumps and shakes.
"Come on, you glorious bastard," he's muttering to the machine. "Give me my salty reward."
He sees me approaching and his face breaks into a grin. "Ah, the transfer student. Come to witness my eternal struggle against the tyranny of snack-based capitalism?"
"Something like that," I say, a real smile touching my lips for the first time all day. Ethan's unshakable normalcy is a life raft. "How was the physics test?"
"Brutal. I think my brain is still leaking out of my ears." He gives the machine one last, mighty shove, and two bags of chips tumble down in a victorious clatter. "Yes! See? Persistence. And a little bit of percussive maintenance. The keys to success in all things."
He straightens up, handing me one of the bags. "Here. Spoils of war."
"Thanks." I open the bag. The salty, greasy smell is ridiculously comforting.
We start walking toward the school exit, moving with the slow, aimless shuffle of teenagers with nowhere urgent to be.
"So," Ethan says, between crunches of chips. "You survived another day at Northwood. Any new developments in your ongoing saga of looking like a lost, haunted puppy?"
I almost tell him. The urge is so strong it's a physical pressure in my chest. The girl from art class dreamed about me. Our physics teacher might be a metaphysical guide. Time is a lie and I think my soul is quantum-ly-entangled with a girl who thinks I'm a creep.
But I can't. Not this Ethan. This Ethan is my friend of two days. He thinks my biggest problem is finding the right classroom. Telling him the truth wouldn't just sound insane; it would be a violation of a friendship that hasn't even been properly built yet in this timeline.
So I go with a half-truth. "I'm thinking of trying out for the school paper."
Ethan stops walking. He looks at me, genuinely surprised. "Seriously? You write?"
"A little," I say. This, at least, is true. My dad is a journalist. Writing is in my blood. And in Cycle 1, joining the paper on Day 15 was how I finally got a valid reason to be in the same places as Sophia, who was the paper's unofficial photographer.
"Huh." Ethan seems to consider this, looking me up and down. "I wouldn't have pegged you as a 'school paper' type. You seem more 'sits in the back of the class and writes angsty poetry' type."
"Who says I can't be both?"
He laughs, a loud, genuine sound. "Touché, Rivera. Touché. Well, if you need any help navigating the journalistic politics of Northwood, let me know. The editor, Sarah Jenkins, is a ruthless tyrant who runs the place like it's the Washington Post. But she likes people with guts."
The advice is helpful. It's also another landmark, another piece of the future bleeding into my present. A part of me is terrified of accelerating the timeline like this, of jumping ahead and skipping the small, quiet moments of connection I'd cherished.
But a larger part of me, the part that remembers her tired face at her locker and the sadness in her dream-voice, knows I don't have time to wait. I can't spend another two weeks orbiting her from a safe distance while she thinks I'm a weirdo who shows up in her dreams. I have to create a reason for our worlds to collide. I have to manufacture gravity.
The conversation with Ethan feels… easy. Real. By the time we part ways at the edge of the school grounds, I realize I'm not just acting the part of his friend anymore. I'm genuinely glad he's here. Having someone to ground me in the absurdity of normal high school life is essential. Even if he doesn't know he's my anchor, he is.
I don't go straight home. I feel a pull, an instinct I can't explain, guiding my feet back toward the center of town. Back toward the bookstore.
I tell myself it's a stupid idea. Eleanor won't be there. Sophia definitely won't be there twice in two days. I'm just being obsessive.
But I keep walking.
The Last Page looks the same as it did yesterday, warm and inviting. I hesitate outside, my hand on the door. This is ridiculous. I'm just torturing myself.
I'm about to turn around and leave when I see her.
She's not inside the store. She's across the street, sitting on a bench in the small town square, her back to me. Her sketchbook is open on her lap. Even from this distance, I can recognize the intent posture, the complete absorption in her work.
My heart starts doing that familiar, frantic tap dance against my ribs.
What are the odds? What are the actual, statistical, mathematical odds of this happening again? It's impossible. Unless it's not. Unless this is just how it works now. Unless she is the north on my compass, and my feet will just keep carrying me back to her, no matter which direction I choose to walk.
She is my inevitable force.
I stand there for a long time, hidden in the shadow of the bookstore's awning, just watching her. The late afternoon sun filters through the leaves of the old oak tree above her, dappling her in shifting patterns of light and shadow. She looks peaceful. More at ease than I've seen her since the reset.
Whatever she woke up feeling, whatever confusion or sadness she felt from our shared dream, she's processing it the only way she knows how. She's turning it into art. She's taking the chaos and she's giving it a form.
I could walk over there. I could sit on the other end of the bench. I could try to apologize for being a weirdo at lunch. I could try to explain something I don't understand myself.
But for the first time, I understand that my role right now isn't to push. It's to wait. Our entanglement isn't a string for me to pull, it's a connection for us both to feel. Forcing it, rushing it—that's what created the rejection. She needs to feel the pull, too. She needs to wonder why the universe keeps putting this strange, familiar boy in her path.
So I don't move. I just watch her from across the street, a quiet, unseen guardian of her peace.
After a few minutes, she stops drawing. She closes her sketchbook, a soft, final thud. She just sits there, looking up at the sky, her expression thoughtful.
And then, as if she can feel my eyes on her, she slowly turns her head. Her gaze sweeps across the street, across the cars, across the space between us.
And her eyes meet mine.
She doesn't look away. She doesn't flinch. She just… looks. And I look back.
There's no confusion in her expression now. No anger. Just a quiet, unnerving, profound stillness.
A question.
An echo.
An acknowledgment of the invisible, unbreakable thread that binds us together, stretching across a busy street on a Tuesday afternoon. Stretching across time itself.