A few days passed, and I came face-to-face with the revelation that living with myself could have qualified as a medieval punishment.

Being that we were both in the same wing of residence, we shared a bathroom. When the thought crossed my mind that it was the perfect time to take a shower, the same thing had also occurred to Rory. When I abandoned it to use the one downstairs instead, Rory decided on it, too.

Overnight, I had the habit of rolling over and knocking my hand against the wall. It was closer than I remembered it being, and certainly, the bed was smaller than mine at home. Rory must have agreed; I could have sworn a knock emitted from my righthand side.

I groaned as I dragged myself awake. Not having class should have been relaxing, but so far it had been anything but.

Blearily, I crashed out of the room to knock on Rory's. The door shook as I tried to wake her. It took much longer than expected for the lock to flick, and somehow the instant I opened the door, she was already tucking the bedsheets over her neck.

"You've got to go to class," I said. It didn't escape me that I wouldn't have listened to her telling me what to do.

"Close the door. You're letting in the sunlight."

I sighed. Neither of us wanted to yield. What was the point of skipping, anyway? I tried to think. "Avoiding going to class will not prevent you from becoming a villain."

"Maybe it will."

So that was it. I shut the door. Drifted to the desk to place my back against the chair. I let it dig into my muscles. A nice distraction from this whole debacle. "If anything, it'll make it happen faster. When I got my power, it was because technology was... an escape from what happened. I must have locked myself in this room for ages."

That summer, I thought about dropping out. It had never crossed my mind before that moment. But what use was it to return to this campus when it was the place where everything fell apart?

Rory lowered the bedsheets stamped with the image of blackbirds and power lines that, from a distance, resembled tripwires. "What happened?"

I didn't answer. It would defeat the point, but she knew that. We both do.

I stepped past the motherboard to grab her computer bag, decorated with sewn-on patches, and filled with printed-out worksheets. Grades I didn't remember getting. Ninety-eight on a packet that belonged to a history exam. Ninety-two on a double-sided sheet from computational electromagnetics.

It took me a moment before my stiff fingers slid the papers back into place. Since the machine, I hadn't invented much of anything. I didn't even know what the spare parts on the floor were for.

"What if not going changes something? And maybe that's what puts things right again," Rory said as I unplugged her laptop, shoving it inside the bag.

"You're going to class. Everything has to happen exactly the way it did the first time."

"Do you have any idea how improbable that is?"

I shoved the computer bag at her. "About as probable as the chance of me being born. Yeah, yeah. Who cares what the numbers say? I built a time machine. I think we can wave goodbye to probability. Take the bag."

She glared. "You know we're already not following the way everything happened the first time. You know that stopped being possible the moment you showed up here."

"So we're getting back on that path," I said.

She didn't bother to hide her eye-roll. Setting the bag beside her, she stood in a flash as the sheets spilled out around her. "Why don't you go if it's so important?"

"I already went."

"So that means I don't have to. Easy."

I pulled in a breath. This is my life now. I was about two seconds away from pulling her to whatever her next class was by the wrist, dropping her in a seat, and barricading the exits. But that wouldn't be worth the fight, would it?

She had to go willingly, because I had the first time. If I forced her, and she didn't pay attention, it would ruin the future like ditching class would.

I stole a sweater from her clothes rack. I didn't have money on me in the suit, and my bank was inaccessible now that my current account wouldn't exist for another few years. At least that skimmed interest will grow.

Flatly, I said, "We both know that's not true. You understand it, and I understand it. This is the point of me being you. You're on a scholarship. You can't keep skipping class."

"Keep?" She separated the hangers into what I assumed were the group of clothes I was permitted to borrow and what was off-limits. "I didn't have class yesterday. The day before, I was done by the time I went to do my laundry. And my first lecture today isn't for two hours."

"You're doing this to be contrarian."

"I mean... you are me, right? Obviously, I'm messing with you."

Did she have to rub it in? I was intently aware of the crease on my face as I lowered my eyebrows. "I'm taking the sweater."

"Uh-huh." Her head bobbed like mine did when I wasn't listening; a quick dip of her chin that came too fast after I'd spoken for it to have registered.

It would have struck me as dismissive if I wasn't aware that it was the most polite way I had to end a conversation. So I took it for what it was. My sense of time had slowed to a crawl, now that I didn't have the system. The computers around me were a constant input on the hour and minute, and on my best days, I could plan around the milliseconds, dividing my tasks into intervals that took exactly as long as I knew they would.

On my way out, I grabbed the only clock in Rory's room, an old invention I'd forgotten about. Was that stealing? It formed the shape of a heart, with a rectangular base that lit up in a fleck of cold blue when I pressed the top. The purple plastic faded to near-brown at the edges. The electronic clock flickered as I stared at it.

Sliding the loop of my key hook over my thumb, I set out to campus, where I stole minute rice and granola bars from their snack shelf. At least campus store kept their toothpaste and brushes in easy reaching distance. It's justified. I bought enough from here once already.

After my rice warmed, it was time for Rory's class. The sound of her door unlocking travelled through the common room seconds before I considered breaking through it. Computer bag slung over her shoulder, she glared at me as I hopped down from my perch on the circular table.

"You're not coming," she said.

"I'm coming." Our paces matched, so her bag scratched my sleeve. I slowed down a touch. "I have to make sure you go to class, and then I'll leave the room. Got it?"

Rory didn't answer. This was the step up from the first kind of dismissal when I forced myself not to say anything to see how long I could shut the other person off before they got the hint. My record with Tandem was over four hours, and he'd only broken it by asking a hypothetical about using carcinogens against June.

So we walked. Across campus, through the basement door. Lecture hall filled with the pinball back-and-forth of voices, and the rustle of zippers on backpacks and charging cords against plugins. Rory swung into the plastic blue seat two rows from the front. I waited for her to take out the laptop and open her notes before deeming that satisfactory. I had a limit to this, and that was attending a class I'd already passed.

Anyway, now that I wasn't chained to lectures and exams, I could focus on getting back home. Which started with the broken dryer machine. As I trekked through the halls, catching snippets of professors speaking and pencils scratching out exams, I spotted a timetable against the door of the science department head.

Quantum physics. Of course. If I figured out how to get the machine running, I'd have to reestablish the link to the future, the way Tanner had the first time.

Maybe it would be enough to sit in on the class. After all, sleeping in residence wouldn't solve much.

Inside the room, which was a lot less populated than the one from which I'd come, the conversation was more of a low hush. Uneasy laughs filled the space between rows. I took a seat at the back and watched the clock tick. The professor, Dr. Pitre, entered the second the minute hand clicked to three o'clock, setting a stack of papers against her desk. A few taps against the screen got her to the vision board. Every scratch of her pen turned into a parabola, alongside calculus I'd long tried to suppress.

"Okay, before we go any further on harmonic oscillators, let's pass by classical and quantum systems first. Particle in a box, anyone? Places where a particle is most likely to be found. Here, the energy levels are actually evenly spaced, and therefore can be found where the energy is low, such that one can expect..."

The scribbles turned to lines. I watched her pen the diagrams before doing equations. I probably should have brought a notebook—the silence hung in the room like a thick web, and I could do nothing but check the faces alongside the rows.

My eyes narrowed at a familiar figure.

June sat in the back, one hand on her chin as she listened, the loose curls of her dark hair swept into waves over her ears despite every attempt to tuck it down. One leg over the other, almost rebelliously. Her chair pushed out at an angle.

What is she... doing? More importantly, how fast can I get out of here?

I flattened my hands on my lap, leaping from my seat. My heart thundered in my ears as I reached the door. I pressed my back flat against it, shutting it as quietly as I could manage. A tingle shot across my shoulders.

June. In the past. Meaning she had used the machine? Meaning Tanner had sent her here, too?

I picked up my pace. Set my sight on my residence building like a target tightening in—everything else faded. I was going to get home. That machine had gotten me here, and it would get me back. I would get my toolbox and repair it myself. Right now.

Passing the shrubbery, I forced myself to move faster. I was going to get home. Before anything else changed. Before—

"Ridge!"

I kicked myself into high gear. Kept my breathing even. I heard nothing. I saw nobody.

"Rory."

My whole body skidded to a halt. My throat caught on nothing in particular. I didn't turn around for a moment while I fixed my wide eyes, and the panic lurching to my expression. I wasn't panicking. Not at all.

Slowly, I turned around to face June. Her suit was gone, replaced by daisy-printed overalls and a long-sleeved shirt that stretched around her broad shoulders. Her brown eyes searched me. Did she have to look so disappointed, like I'd done something wrong?

I gulped.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. Her voice was lighter than mine, the way she said here as if it carried a certain weight. She pronounced certain words—here, washed, pen—with a stressed final syllable. Had learned English after Brazilian Portuguese, her first language. She was smarter than me; always had been.

"What are you doing here?"

She took a step towards residence. The same place I was going, but I held my ground. She had no reason to be here.

"Rory," she said, her eyebrows lowering, "you can't mess with time. That's what this plan has been building to?"

"Surprise," I replied in my best monotone.

June sighed. Wind rustled through her hair. She didn't seem to notice that a few strands framed her eyes, something that surely would have itched if she didn't have the shell. She still had her power, of course. Had gotten it at age thirteen, so being in the past wouldn't affect it unless Tandem sent us both back to middle school.

Small mercies.

"You can't." Her voice was small, surprisingly convincing despite the fact that I had no clue what she was talking about. "I get that it's tempting, but the timeline can't change. You get that. I know you do. So why?"

Tandem had told her... what, exactly? This time, I couldn't hide my face. I tilted my head. We weren't planning to tell her about the machine, ever. The fact he'd let her use it meant nothing good.

"You used it?"

"Of course," she said as the leaves rustled around us. June had a habit that she hadn't shaken, even now. Instead of saying yes, she said, of course. Every single time. "Tandem came to Parkland's office, threatened me into a meeting with him, then told me you'd gone back to the past to prevent us from..."

She trailed off, as though the words were too much. Made a gesture between us to illustrate. From dating?

"No." I raised my voice a bit, more than necessary, and regretted the impulse. June didn't know why I'd gotten my power. She didn't know what she'd done caused it, and I wasn't about to tell her. It was far too much. "I mean... he lied to me. He's the one who put me here, against my will, might I add."

Wait. She was who used the machine after me? Did that mean there was a period while it was running, and I could still have gotten back? If so, there was no problem. And she was the reason it wasn't working.

"You're stuck here," I said. "Congratulations, June. We're both stuck here."

"Tandem—"

"Who cares? It's your fault for being so gullible." The lie didn't sound half as sweet once it slipped.

She averted her gaze from mine, blinking as she advanced. "So you want to fight? That's what you want, Rory?" Both hands extended outward in a challenge, eclipsing the light, diverting it at the last second to cast a patch of black on the path between us. "Go ahead. Hit me. Let's get this over with."

I stepped back again, this time with the grass brushing my ankles through my socks. "I'm not going to do that."

"Hit me."

I groaned. She wasn't even trying. She wanted me to punch her. Her powers were defender class, but even a fighter couldn't instigate battles; another useless handler rule. Parkland's influence presided over her even when he couldn't see her commit the infraction, and somehow, that was worse. "What's the point? I don't even get to have fun and monologue."

She shook her head, a brisk movement that tossed the hair from her face. "Fun? You take pleasure in threatening office workers with death?"

"Maybe they should think about trying to understand what a hyperbole is. In general?"

A troupe of students dodged around her outstretched hands. "Hit me, Rory."

No matter how hard I tried, she knew who I was. Our first fight, she'd recognized me as Rory. Being Ridge had never tricked her. No amount of colour contacts and dyed wigs could hide it, and I had a whole collection of the latter. It was as if she possessed the ability to see through the façade, but only used it to rub off the lacquer coating of my identity.

But it had been a while since she'd seen me out of the suit, since she'd called me Rory.

"I will when you care enough to fight back," I said, charging forward to dodge beneath her palms. It was a matter of principle.

"Don't. For the timeline's sake."

"Like it changes anything for you."

She started to follow but stopped. Her hands lowered, letting me go. I turned to face campus, and the track field wrapping around it in an infinity loop. My feet pounded against the grass as I crossed into the flat synthetic rubber of the maroon field. The residence buildings sat in a neat row, landmarks that tracked every round of the grounds.

Running was June's thing. My old room faced the field, and I always wanted to conquer it, so I'd been more than happy to join. For her, it was a morning routine that became ours, like so many shared activities, until it was over. All I had was the ingrained habit. The imprint of June, slowly fading, slowly a marker of the time that had passed between us—I could go three days now without running.

My rebellion came from sitting on the sidelines, my back to the field, watching her leave. Some kind of plastered-on statement: we cannot have the same refuge.

I stayed in protest for a while, my veins hot. Of course, when we were dating, we never ran into each other. But now that we were both untethered to our schedules, I doubted my luck would last.

An almost portentous thought. When she was the one I wanted to find, I couldn't. But when she was the last person I wanted to be here, she was.

The first place I stepped into, and there she was, as if there were a target affixed to me that only she could see. Some kind of karmic justice to be stuck with her when it was her fault I'd chosen this future, and all I needed was to handle this without her trying to stop me.