A Week of Mondays (15 page)

Then something snaps. I don't know if it's the repetitiveness of his words, the familiarity of this scene, the same people passing by and staring at me like I'm a leper, but I can't take it. I rip my hand from his and launch to my feet.

“No. You don't get to do this again. You don't get to say the same stupid things that mean nothing. I want an explanation.”

“Ellie,” Tristan falters. “I—”

“A
real
one.”

“I … I don't know.”

“Yes, you do,” I press.

“Well, I mean, you're a little clingy sometimes. But that's not—”

“Clingy?!” I shout the word and then quickly lower my voice to an urgent whisper. “I'm not clingy. When have I ever been clingy?”

“Look, I'm not saying that's the only reason, I'm just…” But he doesn't finish. He breathes out like he's surrendering in a war before he stands up, steps toward me, and kisses me gently on the forehead. “I'm sorry, Ellie. I really am.”

Then, with a pitying look on his face, he walks away, leaving me alone all over again.

 

Come See About Me

9:20 p.m.

I don't expect to see anyone when I get home, which is why I don't bother to clean up my mascara-smeared face before skulking through the door. I tiptoe toward the stairs, nearly jumping out of my skin when my dad calls my name from the pitch-black guest room.

Was he just sitting alone in there? In the dark?

I flip on the light switch and that's when I see that he's lying in bed. The covers are pulled up around him and he's propped up against two pillows.

He's sleeping here.

I'm suddenly reminded of what I heard last night when I returned from the carnival. I came upstairs and my parents were fighting. But that was earlier in the evening. Did they fight again tonight? Did my mom kick him out of their room?

“Are you okay?” he asks me, probably noticing the tear tracks on my face.

“Are
you
?” I throw the question back at him, nodding toward his bed for the night.

He sighs. “Yeah. Just a little misunderstanding between your mother and me.”

“Little?”

He chuckles. “Your mom has a tendency to overreact.”

“I think it might be genetic.”

“What happened?”

I feel more tears stinging my eyes and I almost tell him. I almost spill it all. How I tried to save my relationship …
twice
. How I failed …
twice
. I almost tell him about my day, the suspicious ibuprofen, the dreamlike déjà vu, but then I see the crease between his eyes. The worry marks of a father who cares too much, and I realize I can't burden him with this. Not when he's clearly dealing with his own mess.

“Nothing,” I say quietly. “It's nothing.”

He nods, like he believes me, or at the very least he's respecting my decision to keep it to myself. “How did softball tryouts go, by the way?”

A pang of guilt strikes me in the chest. “Fine. I got in.”

I don't have the heart to tell him the truth. That I missed them altogether because I got detention. Or that I probably wouldn't have gotten in anyway. I'll save that bad news for tomorrow.

His tired, weary eyes brighten. “That's great! I knew you could do it!”

I change the subject before he has a chance to make too big a deal about it. “What about you?” I ask, nodding to the guest bed. “What happened here tonight?”

He turns his head and looks out the window. “Oh, nothing you need to concern yourself with. Some days I just wish I had a do-over, you know?”

I crack a smile. “Yeah.”

“Go get some sleep.”

I bend down and kiss his forehead. “Do you want me to shut off the light?”

He nods. “Thanks, sweetie.”

I flip the switch and climb the stairs. When I pass my sister's room, I hear
The Breakfast Club
playing on her TV again. It's a little more than half over. Like last night, she invites me to come and watch with her, but like last night, I turn her down.

I collapse onto my bed and stare at the ceiling, thinking about what my dad said.

Some days I just wish I had a do-over, you know?

I do know. It's exactly what I wished for last night. I may get my dramatic side from my mother, but I definitely get my idealism from my dad.

I think about the words my mind whispered into the darkness as I was falling asleep.

Please just let me do it over.

Please give me another chance.

I swear I'll get it right.

What if today
wasn't
a curse? What if today was actually some kind of wish fulfillment? A prayer being answered? Was I given a second chance only to fail miserably again?

Will I be given another chance tomorrow? Or was that it?

A onetime thing. A fluke.

I hear a tapping at my window and I sit up.

“Owen?” I call out.

“Yeah. Let me in.”

The window is already unlocked. I hoist it open and he tumbles ungracefully inside, ducking and rolling before jumping unsteadily to his feet.

“I suppose I don't have to guess why you left the carnival in tears,” he says, after the same long pause he took last night.

I had passed Owen again on my way to the parking lot. This time he was wandering around one of the concession stands, but I still couldn't bring myself to talk to him.

I let out a soft whimper. “Yes, it's true. He broke up with me … again.”

Owen looks confused. “Again?”

I sit down on the bed. “Owen, if I tell you something will you promise to believe everything I say?”

He looks skeptical. “Is this a trick question? Are you going to tell me you formed your own cult and now I'm going to be stuck joining it because of this promise?”

I roll my eyes. “No, it's not a trick question.”

He sits, pulls Hippo onto his lap, faces him toward me, and raises Hippo's left leg in the air, like he's being sworn in. “Okay, fine. We promise to believe you.”

I look down at Hippo's beady black eyes, then up at Owen's inquisitive green ones.

“Something weird happened to me today. I think I might be stuck in the same day.”

He lets out a groan and turns Hippo around so they can share a look of disbelief. “This again?”

“You promised to believe me. You both did.”

He and Hippo exchange another glance. “That's before we knew you were, you know”—he spins his finger next to his ear and whispers—“craaaazy.”

“I can prove it to you,” I offer.

“Ah, yes, the moment of proof. This is where you tell me some deep, dark secret that I just happened to have divulged to you on a different version of this same day.”

“Last night you had a dream that you went skinny-dipping with Principal Yates in the school pool.”

Owen's mouth literally falls open. I think this is the first time he's ever been stunned into silence.

“You mean like that?” I ask, struggling to hide a triumphant smile. The shock on his face is too priceless. I would take a picture but I can't be certain it would be on my phone in the morning.

“H-h-how did you…”

“You told me about it. Last night.”

“I most certainly did not. Besides, I just had the dream last night.”

“Yup,” I say. “That's the problem. Last night for you was Sunday night. Last night for me was tonight. I mean, Monday night. This whole day and night has been a complete duplicate.”

“You mean Tristan broke up with you twice?”

The reminder is like a knife into my heart. I swallow. “Yes.”

“And we've had this conversation before?”

“Well, not this same conversation, but similar. Some details have been changed.”

He crosses his arms and rests them on Hippo's head. “Like what?”

“Like last night, you tried to cheer me up by insisting I rename Hippo.”

“He
does
deserve a real name.”

“That's exactly what you said last night.”

“Alternate me is one smart guy.”

“Then I said that he does have a real name, and you said—”

“Hold up. Calling something by its literal genus is not a real name.”

I laugh. “Exactly. That's exactly what you said.”

“Holy crap, Ells.”

“I know.”

“I mean like
bloody hell.
”

I nod in agreement. “Bloody hell, indeed.”

“How does it work?”

“That's the thing. I have no idea! I just woke up and it was … today.”

“What are you going to do? Like tomorrow?”

I shrug. “I don't know. I don't know if this will even happen again tomorrow. Maybe it was a onetime thing and I botched it up.”

“But what if it's not? What if you
do
get another chance? What would you do differently?”

I stop and think about that. “Everything.”

“Everything?”

“If I do get another chance, there's only one logical explanation for it. I have to fix what I messed up, right?”

“I guess.”

“And the biggest thing I messed up was Tristan. I have to get him back. Or, you know, stop him from leaving.”

For a flash of a moment, Owen looks disappointed in my answer. What was he hoping I would say? That I'd join book club? I don't think the universe is rearranging itself just to convince me to discuss
The Book Thief
at lunch.

“So that's your big plan, then?” he asks.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No. I guess not.” He sets Hippo aside and stands up. “Well, I better get home. I don't want to poof into thin air at midnight or anything. That can't be good for me.”

He steps onto the window ledge and grabs the overhanging tree branch for balance.

“Svnoyi Ostu.”
I tell him good night in Cherokee. It was one of the phrases used at Camp Awahili.

He cracks a smile.
“Svnoyi Ostu.”

I'm about to shut the window when I notice Owen pause and look back at me. “Ells?”

I stick my head out. “Yeah?”

“Did you rename Hippo? I mean, the last time we had this conversation?”

I smile at the memory of how effortlessly Owen cheered me up and how he made me temporarily forget my heartbreak. “Yeah, you wouldn't stop badgering me so I named him Rick.”

“But you're still calling him Hippo.”

“Because yesterday never happened, remember?”

“Ah, right.” He gives me a small salute. “See you tomorrow.”

I close the window and lean my forehead against it. “Or today,” I whisper, my words turning into fog against the glass.

10:42 p.m.

I lie in bed for a long time, thinking about the events of the day and my conversation with Owen.

What if you
do
get another chance?

I glance at my nightstand. The cup of water I spilled this morning is still sitting there empty. My phone is plugged into its charger. I grab the phone, tap on the Instagram app, and aim the tiny camera at my face.

I smile weakly, snap the selfie, and type out a caption.

I was here.

 

The Way We Were (Part 2)

Five months ago …

“So what
are
you doing out here?” I asked as I splashed my legs through the warm, heated water of Daphne Gray's pool. It felt so good on my skin. A shiver-inducing contrast to the freezing-cold air that swirled around us. The party still blared inside, a million miles away from here.

He stared at our feet, which were warped and distorted under the water. “I had to get out of there. It was too … too…”

“Much?”

He chuckled. “Yeah. Way too much.”

I sighed. “Me, too. I just came to look for my friend and—”

“So you claim.”

“I just came to look for my friend,” I repeated pointedly, shooting him a sideways glare. “And it was way too much. And oh my God, what is that noise they're playing in there? It's horrendous!”

He tipped his head back and laughed. A loud belly laugh.

“What?”

“That's my band. We're called Whack-a-Mole. Daphne's playing our demo.”

Suddenly all the heat got sucked right out of the pool. I turned a hundred shades of white. I wanted to disappear under the surface of the water. I remembered he played in a band, I'd just never actually heard his music before. But now it made total sense. Tristan was a rock star at our school. It went along with his popularity.

“Well,” I said, pulling my legs out of the water and readying myself to stand up. “That's my cue to leave.”

But he pulled me back down. “Don't.”

“I just insulted your art. You can't possibly want to spend any more time with me.”

“
Au contraire.
It makes me want to spend even more time with you.”

I gave him a dubious look. “Because you're … demented?”

“Because you're honest,” he corrected.

“I wouldn't give me too much credit for honesty. If I had known that was your band, I would have lied to your face.”

Smile.

Heart.

Puddle.

“Well, I'm glad you didn't know then.”

“You're not making all that much sense, you know?”

He gazed up at the night sky. “I know. I'm just kind of tired of it.”

I wasn't following. “Of people liking your music?”

“Of people
saying
they like something that they don't. Of the fakeness.” He nudged his chin toward the NASA-manufactured sliding glass door that was so soundproof I almost forgot half of our school was on the other side. “The girls in there. They're all the same. They say the right things. They wear the right clothes. They post the perfect pouting duck-face selfies on Instagram.”