Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 9

-----BETTY-----

The hallway lights buzz above me, but they feel a little too distant, like they belong to someone else’s morning. My shoes squeak against the tiled floor, but even that sound doesn’t quite tether me to now.

I’m still half-dreaming.

There was a sea. Not the kind that drowns you, but the kind that pulls you in gently, like a lullaby. The waves weren’t wild or loud. They whispered, soft and sure, and I could feel the salt on my skin like I’d lived there before.

He was there again. The boy.

I reached for him, like I always do. His face, still blurry around the edges, but warm under my touch. Familiar. Not just familiar, right. Like my fingers had held him a hundred times before in some other life.

And then I said it, I said I love you. Not like I was confessing. Like I was remembering. And then a name slipped past my lips. A name I can't hold now. It dissolved with the tide when I opened my eyes. Or maybe I left it behind.

Because after I said it, the world let go of me. Gravity unhooked its claws, and I rose. I floated, slowly, gently, upward like a feather in reverse, into the clouds, then past them, into the velvet of the night sky. The sea got smaller. He got smaller. Like a dot left by a pen on a blank white page.

I didn’t want to go. But I didn’t resist either. That’s what haunts me, I think.

And just as his outline began to blur into nothing, I woke up.

Not jolted. Not gasping. Just… slowly. Like even my eyes weren’t ready to return here.

Someone’s locker slams behind me and I blink back into the hallway. Room 109 is just up ahead. My name is probably being called in roll call. Mr. Oxford hates when people are late.

But I’m still stuck somewhere between that ocean and this tile floor.

I miss someone I’ve never met.

Or maybe… I already have.

“Betty!”

It echoes, sharp and bright, like a bell someone struck too close to my ear.

I blink, turning just in time to see a blur of wild curls and chaotic energy barreling toward me.

Inez.

The embodiment of girl boisterous. She’s never walked when she could run, never whispered when she could shout, never existed quietly. Somehow, she makes the world feel like color cranked to maximum saturation.

“Girl,” she grins, breathless and radiant as she hooks her arm through mine like it’s instinct, “you look like you just saw a ghost or had a sex dream. Which was it?”

I laugh, sort of. “Neither. Just a weird dream.”

“Ooh, mysterious,” she sings, twirling dramatically before falling in step beside me again. “Okay, but more importantly, how’s tutoring going with James?”

Her voice rises a little too high on James, and I can feel it stir something in me. I glance away, focusing instead on the posters peeling from the wall. “It’s fine. He actually… showed up this time.”

“That’s progress,” she nods sagely, as if this is a proper academic evaluation. “So, what’s it like? Sitting that close to his cheekbones for an hour straight without combusting? I swear if I had to help him conjugate verbs, I’d accidentally confess my love in three languages.”

I snort. “It’s not like that.”

She wiggles her eyebrows. “Not yet.”

We slip into Room 109 just as Mr. Oxford begins his lecture on Shakespearean sonnets. Inez tugs me into our usual seats near the front, far from where I used to sit beside Matt.