Tuesday, the Second and Third Times

The second Tuesday went almost exactly the same as the first one except that Bea tried very hard to change things and mostly failed.

She set her alarm twenty minutes earlier. She was first in the shower. She ate the dried fruit cereal without complaining because at least it was food. She left the house with eight full minutes to spare and walked to the bus stop at a pace her mother would have called purposeful and her brother would have called frantic.

The bus was still two minutes early. She missed it by twelve seconds this time, which was an improvement but not a useful one.

She arrived at school seven minutes late. Mr. Okoro gave her the look.

"You missed the bus again," Tomasz said.

"I know," Bea said, sitting down heavily. "I left eight minutes early. The bus was two minutes early. This is not my fault."

"The bus is never early," Tomasz said.

"It is on Tuesdays," Bea said. "This Tuesday specifically. I have now missed it twice."

Tomasz and Wren exchanged a look that meant they were trying to decide whether to be concerned or amused. Wren was leaning toward concerned. Tomasz was leaning toward amused.

"Tell us everything," Wren said, pulling out her notebook, because Wren always had a notebook and always used it, which was one of the best things about her.

Bea told them about the fountain and the hum and waking up in her bed with the alarm going off. She told them about the first Tuesday in as much detail as she could remember. Wren wrote everything down. Tomasz stopped looking amused somewhere around the part about the fountain and started looking interested, which was a better response.

"Time loop," he said when she finished.

"Obviously," Bea said.

"Caused by the fountain," Wren said, reading from her notes.

"Apparently," Bea said.

"So we need to get to the fountain and do something different to what you did last time," Tomasz said. "To break the loop."

"What did I do last time?" Bea said. "I walked past it. That is all."

"Maybe we should not walk past it," Wren said. "Maybe we should walk a different way."

That afternoon they walked home through the high street instead of the park. They did not go near the fountain. They said goodbye at the corner and Bea went home and had dinner and went to bed feeling cautiously hopeful.

She woke up on Tuesday morning.

"Oh, come on," she said to the ceiling.

The third Tuesday was when Tomasz started finding the whole thing funny, which Bea found unreasonably irritating given that he got to experience each Tuesday fresh while she was collecting them like very boring stamps.

"On the bright side," Tomasz said at lunch on the third Tuesday, having been filled in for the second time that morning, "at least it is not a Wednesday. Wednesdays are worse."

"How are Wednesdays worse?" Bea demanded.

"Double PE," he said.

This was a fair point but she was not going to tell him that.

"We need a proper plan," Wren said, her notebook already open. "Not just avoiding the fountain. We need to understand what the fountain is doing and why it is doing it and what we need to do differently to make it stop."

"It is a broken fountain in a park," Tomasz said. "I did not know broken fountains could cause time loops."

"They usually cannot," Wren said. "Which means this one is unusual. Which means we should look at it more carefully."

"Instead of avoiding it," Bea said, seeing where this was going.

"Instead of avoiding it," Wren confirmed.

Bea looked at the ceiling of the cafeteria. She had now had this exact Tuesday three times. She had missed the bus twice, dropped her lunch tray twice, torn her trousers twice, and discovered her history project was late twice. She was extremely tired of Tuesday.

"Fine," she said. "We go to the fountain."