He held up the tiny golf club. “What should I do with this?”
Amie shrugged, aimlessly tracing the plastic feathers of the flamingo with her finger. David didn’t usually pay much attention toany input she offered about his machines, much less solicited her for it. She knew he was just feeling bad for her.
“You could attach it to something that rotates,” she offered, remembering this part of the machine from the last time she visited. “Don’t you have that round necklace display that spins? Stick it onto that, then make it spin and hit the ball.”
She’d stay for another twenty minutes, just long enough for David to stop worrying. It was silly of her to have tried to tell him. Sure, she could have probably dragged him out of the apartment and found some way to prove it. It was almost six o’clock, which was around the time that terrier got away from its owner outside of their building. She could call that just seconds before it happened and prove to him that she was telling the truth.
But what was the point, really? He was just going to reset the next day, same as everything else. And she didn’t have it in her to keep going through this.
Besides, now that she was thinking about it, what would happen if shewasable to convince someone of the existence of the time loop? What if it immediately made the day reset? What if it somehow added another millennia to her sentence for breaking some rule she was unaware of? What if it sucked David into the time loop too?
It wasn’t worth it.
The silence became loud enough to pull Amie out of her thoughts. She assumed David would have gone rummaging for the necklace display and continued his tinkering, quickly forgetting about her outburst.
Looking back up, she instead saw him sitting back down on the couch arm with a softthump. His expression had gone from worried to intrigued.
“What?” she asked, frowning self-consciously. “It’s not a bad idea. It’s literally what you were …”
She trailed off, nervously studying his face.
“It’s literally what I was going to do,” David finished, pointing at her with the golf club. “And I knew if you knew what I wasgoing to do with this club, you wouldn’t be able to resist telling me, because you knew I’d like that idea. Because it wasmyidea first.”
“It was a lucky guess,” Amie said, her worries of dragging her neighbor into the loop looming larger by the second. “I’ve seen you make enough of these by now; I know how you like to do things. Attaching it to the necklace display is an obvious answer.”
“Aha!” David leapt up from the couch, startling her into almost dropping the flamingo (which she wasstillholding, for some reason). “But what you didn’t know was that I just bought that necklace display at the yard sale this morning.”
“I … you …” Amie shook her head. “You’re confused. I’ve seen it before.” She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “You’re getting old.”
“Watch it,” David said warningly, circling the couch as he headed for the back of the room. “Don’t be rude.”
“I was quotingyou.” Amie twisted around in her seat to look at him. “How come you can use that excuse, but I can’t?”
“Aha!” David said again, grabbing a reusable grocery bag and holding it up for her to see.
“That’s two ‘ahas,’ ” Amie said, trying to distract him. “You only have one left for the rest of the day. Use it wisely.”
David walked back over to the couch, holding open the bag for her to look inside. “See? My yard sale purchases from today. Toy truck. Bicycle wheel. Took some convincing to get them to sell it separately from the rest of the bike. And …”
“Yeah, I see it,” Amie said softly, untwisting back around before he could pull out the rotating necklace display.
She heard the bag crumple as he set it on the floor.
“You were telling the truth, weren’t you?” He walked around the couch to stand in front of her.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it does.” David was still holding the small plastic golf club. “This is … I mean, it’s remarkable. And you’re going through it alone? No one else has noticed the day repeating?”
“Not that I know of.” Amie had spent the first few days of the time loop closely studying everyone she passed, trying to find the same stifled fear in someone else’s eyes that she knew was visible in her own.
“And I’m just going to forget about it tomorrow.” David scratched his chin, studying the ceiling. “Well, you’re not gonna want to go through this every day.”
Amie shook her head.
“Aha!” David snapped his fingers, pointing at her.
“That’s your last one,” Amie reminded him.
