REPEAT AFTER ME
Entangled Teen, 2024
She’s about to have a serious temporal tantrum.
In retrospect, I probably should have passed on the ceviche.
It was already a weird Friday. My class is stuck on an eerily remote island for our senior trip, I’m pretty sure Mr. D (“call me Max”) is hiding something from us, my ex–best friend turned nemesis keeps stealing my candy, and tonight’s plan for my boyfriend and me to finally lose our virginity to each other is going hellishly.
I mean, ceviche is delicious, don’t get me wrong. But a dish made from a supposedly immortal octopus should really come with a warning label.
Caution: consuming a telepathic sea creature of unknown origin may result in immortality, no consequences to any actions, and getting stuck in a time loop for all of eternity.
Now every morning I wake up, and it’s the same Friday all over again. Same annoying classmates. Same island suspended in time by an evil oyster farmer with a God complex. Same outrageous candy theft. The only person I can count on to keep me from losing my grip on this new reality is Louis, my best friend who knows me better than anyone else in this world.
This should be a cephalopod-induced nightmare but somehow―in some ridiculous way―I feel like I’m experiencing the extraordinary, the gift of endless opportunities to get things right. But when I wake up every morning and it’s Friday again, sometimes it feels more like a never-ending prison sentence.
They say some things are worse than death…
…guess I’m about to find out.