I opened my mouth to protest at the rude treatment when my surroundings snapped into clarity. I was back in Edmunds High School. I was being carried along in the teenage river flowing down one of the school's many cramped hall corridors. My sense of unreality helped me to hang on to what had just happened. I could remember going with Cece to make, what, a drug deal?

She was a drug dealer?

I shook my head. My future self had told me I needed to, what, save the world? This was Saturday morning cartoon land. I shook my head again.

I didn't have the sense of déjà vu that I had before, but the memories of my first time through these halls—in Mr. Pheizer's office, going downtown in Cece's death trap of a car, and getting shot—remained crystal clear in my mind. I shook my head. I was bumped hard from one teen to another for my head shaking inattention.

I ignore the rough treatment.

There had to be a rational explanation for this. I'd read a theory about reincarnation and past lives, but this was like I had just lived a day and then died, and now what?

Was I repeating it?

Was this tomorrow?

Was the day I just experienced a dream?

I needed more information.

The tide of teenage humanity, either unwashed or over-perfumed, or both, carried me to my locker. I made a grasping attempt at pulling myself from the jostling stream in time to stand in front of it and think. I needed to know what day today was.

I needed to know where I was in the time loop.

I allowed myself to think those words for the first time. It felt too surreal.

Time loop?

Something hit me hard from behind, breaking me out of my thoughts and slamming me against the locker in front of me.

"Hey!" came the voice of Billy from behind me. "Watch where you're going, nerd!”

“Go back to walking school, you human traffic violation," I quipped back without thinking.

"Why don't you say that to my face?"

Realization dawned on me in that moment. This was the same day. I had gone back to the beginning.

As I turned, I reached hard for the sense that I had been holding when the bullet had been flying at my head. It came easily this time. Before I was fully turned, I saw the cocked haymaker of Billy's chubby fist moving slowly toward me.

I had it!

I had laid hold of it. Time was moving slow. I moved my body out of the way. I actually had control of my senses this time, and trying to move didn't cause me to lose hold of slow time.

As I moved my head to the side, I watched the meaty fist and the arm, covered in strange linear scars, travel past my face in ultra-slow motion. Once I was safely out of the path of the follow-up elbow, I let go of the slow time and allowed the fist to crash into the locker with a deafening bang.

Wincing at the sudden noise, I watched with pleasure as Billy's face broke first into astonishment, then into anger. It occurred to me in this moment that I probably should have held on to slow time long enough to...

The second fist came at me from Billy's left-hand side, catching me right under the jaw and knocking me back against the locker. It was too fast for me to react to, and my sense of slow time didn't return. I fell to the floor, my backpack carrying me with its momentum. My jaw felt wrong. I wondered if it was broken.

"Oh, is the little baby going to cry?" I heard Billy taunt.

Huh.

I realized that his taunts had nothing to do with reality. My eyes weren't even watering this time.

I didn't have time for this. I had to get out of here. I had to go talk to Cece. I had questions I needed answers to. I needed time to think.

Why did I have to be in high school?

Remembering my future self's warning against changing things too far from the past, I shrugged off my backpack and pushed myself to my feet. My jaw opened and closed just fine, so I supposed it probably wasn't broken. It hurt enough to be though.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"What, are you hungry for more?" Billy taunted.

Resigned to my role in this drama, I nodded and gave him a grin that, from the taste between my teeth, I was sure was bloody at this point. "What are you, the lunch lady? Yes please. I didn't get my fill with the first knuckle sandwich."

As the laughter rolled around us, I watched how Billy's face grew two shades redder. It was remarkable how much blood flow he had underneath his cheeks. This time, he caught me straight in the nose, just like before. At least he hadn't caught me under the eye. I wouldn't have a black eye this time.

"Thomason! George!" I heard Mr. Pheizer shout. "My office! Now!"

This seemed about right. I pushed myself to my feet again, noticing that my nose was bleeding, again. I trudged off to go sit for what was apparently going to be two hours in Mr. Pheizer's office. At least this was going to give me time to think.

***

“Hey,” Billy said, the moment Mr. Pheizer left us alone in his office, “that was badass.”

I looked over at him, surprised to see he was being genuine. He had a fist held out towards me. The previous time, Billy had not said a single word the whole time that we'd been seated in Mr. Pheizer's office, except to the sports coach himself.

I cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah?" I said, unsure how to respond.

Billy nodded, appearing to be genuine.

"Yeah, dude. I thought you were a nerd, but that little punk rocker grin you gave me, and then taking the punch. Holy shit, dude. You’re alright."

I reached over and bumped Billy's still outheld fist. I didn't know if this was too far off script to carry me to the future that I was supposed to go to.

I didn't care.

Having Billy George not be an ass to me seemed like a positive development.

"Thanks," I said.

I almost opened my mouth to spark a conversation, but my head was too full of what I had just experienced. I felt numb. Not even the pain in my face felt real. So, I sat in silence, robotically watching the waste basket fill with blood soaked tissues. Billy looked at the floor and didn’t say anything else.

I had died.

I got shot in the face.

Then what, I’d come back?

Was I reliving the same day over again? Or was I still on the hallway floor from the first time I had gotten slugged, and everything that had happened after was a wild coma-induced fever dream?

That seemed to be the most scientifically plausible explanation. It was comforting to think this was what was happening. However, I was interested in the paranormal, which by definition was the study of things that were outside our current method of explanation. And so I had to be open to the possibility that what I was experiencing was reality, and try to figure out what I was going to do about it.

I contemplated the implications that my current only friend in the world, Cece, was a drug dealer. I shook my head. You thought you knew somebody. It was not going to be easy to get to the bottom of this. There had to be more to this story.

Then there was my future self. If that was really true. He could be an alien for all I knew. He said he couldn’t do this again. Way to be freaking vague future self, or alien. What couldn’t he do? Possess me? Reverse the day? Spin a hopelessly obscure set of warnings?

I vowed then and there to never turn into that prick, alien or not.

Despite my mind spinning on the problem for the entirety of the time I was seated in the office, I was nowhere by the time Mr. Pheizer came in and we began the dance of negotiating how much detention we were going to get. To my amusement, even though neither Billy nor I made any protests this time about the punishment, Mr. Pheizer seemed to take our silence as a lack of respect, or something, and went ahead and raised it to three weeks anyway.

I was given the same slip of paper with the same scrawled signature to go get signed by my guardian and shunted out of the office. The rest of my day, at high school at least, played out just as it had before. My mind too full to do anything except keep my head down and take it as it came.

***

“Hey Freak,” Cece said as I walked in the door.

She didn't look up from her phone. This was typical behavior for her. But I felt out of place, lost in an ocean of emotions that I didn't know what to do with. It had all been too much. I had already lived through today—well, scratch that—I had already lived through most of today and died, and then had to live through it again.

It made the homework easy on the one hand, but I didn't find the homework challenging to begin with, so that wasn't really a plus. The school’s repetition was boring already, and this was only my second go-around.

Worry crinkled my forehead as I thought I might have to do this again. Apparently, I was loitering in the doorway for far too long because Cece actually looked up from her phone. She started to say, "So, first week of high school, got a girlfriend—" she stopped mid-sentence, staring at me.

The look on my face must have said loads about my mental condition, because I had never seen Cece speechless before. Not even a man with a gun pointed at her chest had made her speechless.

"What's wrong, freak?" she asked, real concern entering her tone.

“I…” I started to say but stopped.

I didn't know what to tell her. I didn't know if I could trust her. She was dealing some sort of unknown drug in some sort of dark web thing on her college campus. Besides all that, I had just been bullied into being shot in the head by my future self— or an alien—, who told me that I had to follow some sort of weird drug dealing path in order to try and correct the future.

It didn't make any sense.

If I was back here to make changes— to, what, the apocalypse?— then how was I supposed to make those changes if I had to follow the same path?

I shook my head.

Was there some crucial moment?

I pictured the superhero in a movie on the big screen, waiting until just the right moment to reach out and snatch the MacGuffin away from the bad guy.

“I…” I tried again, staring at Cece, desperation in my eyes. I wanted to open up. I wanted to tell her everything. I couldn't even tell my mom I had detention. She might relapse. All this?

Hey mom, I died today, and oh yeah, I’m possessed by my future self and have to save the world… yeah right.

What was I supposed to do?

Heck with it, I thought. If I get it wrong, future me is going to come out and bully me in front of a gun again. I may as well tell somebody.

So I spilled.

The whole horrible day, living it twice, coming back here, her getting us a gig, going to the house, her being on some dark clipboard as DarkAngel, having a prescription pad, me getting shot, being sent back to the beginning again, my future self telling me that I had to stop the end of the world or some ridiculousness…

I trailed off, after having talked for nearly 10 minutes straight, searching her eyes, hoping that on some level, somewhere, I would find understanding. Some sort of sympathy, that she would believe me and not scoff me into silence. I couldn't bear it if I was alone right now. Even if my only companion was someone I barely knew.

Cece looked thoughtful for a long time, staring at me. "All right, Freak. I know a way to test this," Cece said.

I quirked an eyebrow at her.

She pulled up her phone and began to type furiously. "We're going to put the advertisement out on the message board, which you're right about, and that is creepy as fuck, by the way."

Cece casually cursing in conversation with me was new. I must have actually rattled her.

"And we'll see if someone responds just like you said they did. What was the house number again?”

"1342, same number as in the user handle,” I said, “And let me guess: then we go and meet them and see if we get shot."

Cece scoffed. "Pfft, no. Hell no. The next thing we do is go to a priest. You need a fucking exorcist, bud."

I shook my head. "Would you stop cursing so much, please? It's too much right now."

Cece smirked. "What's the matter? That word make you uncomfortable?"

I shook my head at her. "You make me uncomfortable, Creeper," I said. "No, I just want a little bit of normalcy. And you casually cursing in conversation with me is out of character."

"Normalcy?" she shot back, still typing on her phone while talking to me, somehow. "That ship sailed a long time ago, Freak."

She typed for another minute the held her phone up with the same satisfied expression she’d worn before.

“Kay, done!” She said. “Now we just gotta wait and see if this user asks us to work.” She dropped her phone on her stomach and put her hands behind her head.

“User 1342, he’s gonna ask for ten bumps for four hundred dollars,” I said.

Her phone dinged. She held it up, then went pale as she read it. “Holy shit,” she whispered.

She looked at me, her eyes wide, “Freak, just tell me one thing and I’m onboard, ride-or-die.”

“What?” I asked.

“What are the winning power-ball numbers for tonight?”

***