Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 4

It hit me harder than I expected.

I sat there, letting the song spill over me, a slow ache rising under my skin. I didn’t say anything, but something in those lyrics curled itself around my ribs, wrapping tight and familiar. Like they had been written for a version of me I hadn’t met yet. Like maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d ever felt like a question mark in a room full of sentences.

Inez didn’t say anything either. She just leaned back in her seat, eyes closed, mouthing the words under her breath.

And somehow, in that moment, with sunlight on our faces and that song threading through the space between us, I felt a little less alone.

A little more real.

A little more ready for whatever this day would become.

Professor Oxford’s classroom always smelled like old paper and black coffee. Not the sweet kind, but the bitter, over-steeped kind that clung to his tweed jacket and lingered in the air like a warning. His room was dimmer than the rest of the school, dusty blinds half-drawn, the board still stained from last week’s lesson, and yellowed posters curling at the corners. There was something sacred about the stillness in there, like time ran slower just beneath the hum of the overhead lights.

He spoke with a calm authority, like every word had been pre-approved by centuries of literature. And when he read aloud, the world narrowed to his voice and the rustle of pages being turned in quiet, reluctant unison.

But today, I wasn’t really listening.

I tried.

Tried to anchor myself to the rhythm of his words, to the underlines in my worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye. But my thoughts kept wandering, to the dream, to the ache it left in my palms, to that boy’s eyes, to the echo of Taylor’s voice still humming faintly in my ear.

Then the door creaked open.

All eyes turned.

There, the girl with short hair and green bow, the one who is always with James, stood at the threshold, looking slightly winded, slightly smug, like she enjoyed the small chaos of being the bearer of inconvenient news. Her hair was pulled back messily, her backpack slung over one shoulder like it weighed more than it should.

“Betty?” she said, a little too brightly. “You’re wanted at the dean’s office. Mrs. Pamela said it’s urgent.”

Oxford didn’t even look up. “Try not to make it a habit,” he murmured, already turning back to his notes.

I felt the weight of twenty silent stares as I stood and gathered my things. Inez gave me a curious glance, brows raised, but didn’t say anything. I offered a tiny shrug. I didn’t know what it was about either.

My footsteps echoed too loudly against the tiled floor as I walked, passing lockers that seemed suddenly unfamiliar. There was a strange tightness building in my stomach. Not fear, exactly. Not dread. Just... a hum of something coming.

When I reached the door to Mrs. Pamela’s office, it was already cracked open.

I paused.

Inside, voices.

One of them sharp. Firm. Disappointed.

“You’re the captain, James,” Mrs. Pamela was saying. “That title comes with responsibility, not just a jersey.”

I froze, half-hidden behind the doorway, caught in the breathless stillness of overhearing something I shouldn’t.

“You think your grades don’t matter? You think just because you can dunk a ball, that makes you untouchable?”