Page 74 of Time Loops & Meet Cutes
One morning, I wake up and something feels different. I can’t explain it, but then I see the time on my alarm clock, and I bolt up.
8:03 a.m.
Did I sleep through my alarm? Turn it off and go back to sleep?
Huh. That never happens.
I get out of bed and pad toward the washroom. When I sit down on the toilet, I realize that I’m wearing flannel pajama pants rather than shorts.
My eyes widen, and I finish up in the washroom as fast as possible and rush to the living room, where I look out the window.
There’s snow on the ground.
part twoBoy Meets Girl
27Noelle
I stare in shock at the snow on my balcony. It’s clearly not June 20 anymore, but what the hell is going on? It sure doesn’t look like June 21, which is where I thought I’d be when I got out of the time loop. I grab my phone from the kitchen table and check the date.
Saturday, January 24. More than seven months have passed.
I let out a scream, then cover my mouth with my hand.
Okay, self. Calm down. You can figure out what happened.
At least it’s a Saturday, which means I don’t have to go into the office. I scroll through the contacts on my phone. Cam’s name isn’t there, nor is Avery’s. I add her number.
ME: Hey. Is it January 24 for you?
AVERY: Oh thank god. You’re here.
ME: I’m freaking out
AVERY: Me too
After arranging to meet Avery at eleven, I load Wordle. The word isn’t “happy,” though it does have ap, but not in either of those spots. I solve it in three: “plumb.”
I didn’t do anything special on the last June 20, so what got me out of the loop?
However, I first need to figure out what my current reality is like. I look inside my messenger bag and see my Woods & Olson laptop, which is good. At least I know what my job is, even if I don’t know what else is going on.
Then I start up my home computer and look at my credit card statements. I open up the one for last June and sigh in relief that there are no expensive restaurant bills or flights to New York. The single purchase on June 20 is from a vendor I don’t recognize, but it’s for a small amount of money—I think it’s the calamansi iced tea I purchased on my first trip to the night market. The dumplings were bought with cash, so it can’t be those, but I believe the booth serving calamansi iced tea was card-only.
Okay, the first June 20 must have been the “real” one.
I write that down. I assume it won’t be erased overnight—unless I’m now fated to repeat January 24. But I won’t know that until tomorrow morning.
My next question is what everyone else remembers. I assume that nobody but me and Avery has any memory of those repeats, but I could be wrong. I call my parents.
Dad picks up on the second ring. “Hi, Noelle.”
My father is here. That’s reassuring.
“Dad, do you remember back in June, I showed up at your house in the middle of the afternoon and cried?”
“Uh…”
That’s a no. My father would definitely remember such an unusual event if it happened within the past year.
