Wednesday

Bea woke up on Wednesday morning and lay very still for a full thirty seconds before she allowed herself to feel relieved.

Wednesday. Genuinely, actually Wednesday. She could tell because she had never experienced this particular Wednesday before, which meant every second of it was new, which was a feeling she had not appreciated nearly enough before spending four days in the same Tuesday.

She had a long shower. She ate whatever cereal she liked. She left the house at a normal time and caught the bus with four minutes to spare and sat in her usual seat and watched the streets go past with the deep contentment of someone for whom ordinary things have recently become extraordinary.

She got to school on time. Mr. Okoro did not give her any looks. She sat down next to Tomasz and Wren.

"Wednesday," she said.

"Wednesday," Tomasz agreed. He had a large grin on his face that suggested he found the whole business more satisfying in retrospect than he had during it.

"I have been thinking," Wren said, her notebook already out. "We should write up what happened. Everything we know about the fountain and how the loop works. So if it ever happens again to someone else they have a better starting point than we did."

"We could leave a note at the fountain," Tomasz said. "In a waterproof box or something."

"Or we could put it in the local archive," Wren said. "Where the old newspaper records are. That is where I found the other dates. Someone who looks hard enough would find it."

"Is anyone going to ask," Tomasz said, "why the fountain does what it does? What it actually is? Because it is a very strange thing for a fountain to be doing."

"Yes," Bea said. "But I do not think we are going to find out the answer today."

"Or possibly ever," Wren said. "Some things are like that. You find out enough to deal with the situation and the deeper question stays a deeper question."

"That is slightly unsatisfying," Tomasz said.

"Yes," Wren said. "But it is honest."

They had double maths first period, which was not ideal, but Bea found she did not mind as much as usual. She sat in her chair and listened to the lesson and got all the questions right, including the one she always got wrong, because she had now heard the answer to that particular question four times and it had finally stuck.

At lunch they went to the park. The fountain sat in the middle of it, empty and quiet, the seven dates carved around its base, the yellow flowers in a neat pile on the grass beside it where they had left them.

Wren had brought a bag. She carefully lifted the flowers back into the basin, roots and all, and packed the soil around them. They were slightly wilted from their night on the grass but they perked up almost immediately in the afternoon sun.

"You are putting them back?" Tomasz said.

"They are nice flowers," Wren said simply. "And now we know what to do if it happens again."

Bea looked at the fountain with its flowers and its seven carved dates and its long strange history of loop after loop after loop, each one solved eventually by someone who looked carefully enough at the right thing.

"I am going to walk a different way home today," she said. "Just in case."

"The loop is broken," Wren said.

"I know," Bea said. "I am still walking a different way."

Tomasz laughed. It was a good laugh, the kind that belonged to a Wednesday, uncomplicated and completely new.

They walked back to school together in the warm afternoon, through the park, past the fountain, and Bea did not look back at it even once.

She was done with Tuesdays for a while.

***The End***