I woke up the next morning feeling heavy. I laid down for minute, staring at the ceiling and for my brain to tell me that yesterday was just a really vivid fever dream.
It would've been nice if I could just go back to being the guy whose biggest problem was overthinking Mr. Hammond's math homework.
Instead, my thoughts kept circling the same place, no matter how hard I tried to push them away.
I rolled over and grabbed my phone. I just wanted to see how much time I had before I had to haul myself out of bed since my alarm hadn't gone off yet.
3:14 PM
I frowned, thumb hovering over the screen. Déjà vu couldn't actually get this bad, could it?
I sat up to look at the cheap alarm clock on my desk. The red numbers were dusty, but they said the same thing.
3:14 PM. My mind froze for a minute.
The sun was already hitting the floor at that specific morning angle which meant I was already about 10 minutes late for breakfast. It was definitely morning. But according to every clock in my room, I was still stuck on the soccer field from yesterday.
I swung my legs out of bed and yanked the curtains open, letting the light flood like it might snap things back into place.
It didn't
I didn't check my phone again. I didn't need to. The message from last night wasn't a prank or a joke. I'd blown off the warning, and now my day was starting at the exact moment I was told to avoid.
The walk to school did absolutely nothing to calm me. Every step felt like anxiety sharpening its knives pointing it directly at my throat while everyone else just breezed past me.
By the time I reached the front doors of school, my legs actually ached.
The hallway was the usual mess of people and noise, but the math was all wrong. I looked up at the big analog clock over the trophy case. The hands were locked.
3:14 PM
I glanced at a kid's watch as he walked by… 3:14 PM
Trying to ignore the it all, I went straight to my locker. But things got even crazier the more I pretended they weren't. I watched a girl slam her locker shut but the second she turned her back, the door snapped open and slammed again on its own. Then a third time. She didn't even flinch. She just kept walking like it hadn't happened. That's when I realized this was all me. My price of presence.
I stopped dead, watching the door until it finally stayed shut. My stomach did a slow roll. It wasn't just the clocks; things were starting to stutter exactly like the ball did the other day.
I shut my locker and started moving, weaving through the halls faster than I meant to. There was only one person I knew who could tell me whether I was losing it or not.
I needed to find Jonah.
He was pretty easy to spot thankfully.
It was hard to miss him resting against the wall, giggling at his phone like the morning hadn't come with ay hidden conditions for us. He looked exactly the way he always did. Unbothered.
Relief hit first. Then confusion.
"Jonah" I called out to him.
He looked up and smirked "There he is. You skip homeroom this morning?"
I stopped a few feet in front of him, trying to steady my breath and conceal my anxiety.
"What's your time say?"
He frowned "What?"
"Your phone!" I said a little louder. "What time does it say?"
He glanced down without thinking. "Uh — 9:23 man"
I waited. Nothing happened.
His took on a serious expression now "Why?"
I looked past him, down the hall. People were moving. Talking. Living inside a version of the morning that clearly wasn't frozen.
"You haven't noticed anything weird today?" I asked.
He squinted at me. "Define weird."
"The clocks, the hallway, anything!"
He shook his head slowly. "No man. You good?" He pushed off the wall. "You're acting strange. You sick or something?"
"Something like that" I held back my original thought.
The bell ran before either of us could dig any deeper. Jonah winced. "We'll talk later, yeah? I gotta get to class."
"After school," I quickly suggested. "Meet me."
He hesitated, studying my face for a second, then nodded. "Okay. After school."
He walked off, already burying his head back into his phone like the moment had resolved itself. It hadn't.
The rest of the morning seemed obscure. Classes and lesson happened around me instead of with me. I copied notes I knew I wouldn't remember writing. Every few minutes, my eyes drifted to the clock uncontrollably.
3:14 PM. Always.
By the time the final bell rang, I was already standing. I didn't know where I was going yet. I just knew I couldn't stay where I was.
Everyone was heading out the main hall, but I was going in the opposite direction convinced that I knew exactly where Jonah was going to be.
Mara caught up to me near the back stairwell, the one hardly anyone uses unless they were trying not to be seen. I was so narrowminded I didn't even notice she was tailing me.
"Elias"
I stopped walking. Not because she said my name, but because she said it like she already knew I was going to stop without looking back.
"Where you heading off to?" she asked, falling into step beside me. "This isn't your usual route on a normal after school. You usually head to the field"
"Uh—I wanna go…" My head went black. "I'm just… walking."
She hummed like she didn't believe, then glanced at the clock above the exit door. "Do you have the time?" she asked casually.
I swallowed. Pulse rising. My hand twitched before I could stop it. I checked my phone.
3:14 PM.
I didn't say anything. But Mara did.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "That's what I thought."
I looked at her right then. Really looked. She wasn't smug. She wasn't excited. She looked focused, like this was something she'd already been tracking and I'd just confirmed the last variable.
"You've been seeing it all day, haven't you" she said. "Not just the number. The pauses. The skips. The way things feel like they're waiting on you."
"That's not—" I paused. Was there really any point in lying? She'd already stepped past the boundaries of disbelief. Maybe listening to her was really the best thing for me right now.
"It's not happening to everyone," she went on. "That's why Jonah looks fine. That's why no one else is freaking out."
I swallowed again, "So why my?"
She didn't answer right away. Instead, she studied my face like she was checking her work.
"Because warnings don't go to crowds," she said finally. "They usually go to mistakes or faults." That hit me harder than anything else had all day
"You did something," she added. "Or you're about to. And whatever's coming doesn't trust you to stop on your own."
My chest felt really tight now. "How would you know that?"
She met my gaze. "I know you didn't sleep. I know you went looking for Jonah instead of waiting. And I know you've checked the time fourteen times since second period."
I really couldn't wrap my head around it. On one hand I'm sure she can give me answers to all the weird coincidences up until now. And on the other, I really don't know if I can trust someone who knows this much about the crazy stuff that's been going in my life.
Mara stepped back, giving me space I hadn't asked for. "You don't have to tell me everything," she said. "But you should stop pretending that these are all coincidences."
She stepped closer again "They're not Elias"
At that point her phone rang in her pocket. "It's my mum, I have to go now" she turned to leave, then paused.
"Oh—and Elias?"
I looked up.
"If the future's talking to you," she said, "It's not because it cares how scared you are"
"Whatever happens… It doesn't want you dead."
"It wants you… different."
I stood right where I was as she walked away, breathing shallow, trying to convince myself that I hadn't just been singled out for something I didn't even understand yet.
Somewhere between that field incident and now, I'd stopped being a bystander. And standing here alone, I knew whatever came next wouldn't ask if I was ready.