“Umm.” Jack scratches a well-moisturized throat and glances around the office. My colleagues are now watching us intently, having completely abandoned pretending not to. “We’ve ultimately decided to take SharkSkin in...another creative direction.”
“A direction further away from this agency,” I clarify helpfully. “Toward another, different agency.”
“Implied,” sighs Jack. “But yes.”
Without further ado, I pick up the empty cardboard box from behind the gold reception. Last time Jack and Gareth had gone before Barry called me into his office: I’m not sure I want to voluntarily wait for him to insult me again.
Unless...
“Before I leave,” I say, because this is potentially a huge wasted opportunity, “do you think you could tell me why you don’t like me?”
Jack and Gareth stare. “Sorry?”
“It would be helpful if you could just outline the basics.” I grab a pen from the top of the reception desk and prepare to make notes on the box. “Details would be particularly well received.”
“Cassandra,” Barry hisses.
“I’m not being sarcastic,” I say earnestly.
Obviously I’ve felt Jack’s discomfort around me for months now. It’s a sticky, burnt-orange wriggliness, and not unlike the internal squirm you feel when you see a flattened squirrel on the road. Frankly, it’s hard to focus on creative ways to sell moisturizer when you’re being forced to feel like roadkill for hours a day. But I also don’t know what’s going to happen next: whether I’m going to be repeating today again or whether this is just a small blip in my chronology, a scratch in the record of my life, a track played twice in a row.
Either way, this seems like useful information to have.
“Well,” Jack snaps through paper-white teeth, “I’d say it’s mostly doing weird shit like this.”
I look down. “Oh.”
“Cassandra,” Barry says in a low, aggressive voice. “Can I speak to you in my office, please? Now?”
“No, thank you,” I say firmly. “Your constructive feedback has already been extremely thorough.”
With the office still watching, I carry the box to my desk.
“You know,” I hear Jack say not very quietly to Barry, “I’m all for equal opportunities and box-ticking and disability acts and shit, but I feel like you should have told us Cassandra was on the spectrum before we signed with you.”
I briefly picture myself sliding down an iridescent rainbow.
It seems unlikely that’s what they mean.
“Oh shit.” Sophie leans across her desk toward me with wide blue eyes, like a small, sarcastic doll. “They haven’t fired you? That’s awful. I’m sure we will all miss you so much.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that,” I tell her tiredly.
Assessing my desk, I automatically pick up my mug and put it in my cardboard box, turn off my computer and reach for the keyboard wipes, and inexplicably this is what does it, this is what finally tips me over the edge: the moist antibacterial cloth is what sends me spiraling into an existential crisis, because am I actually time traveling right now? Breathing faster, I stagger toward the exit. You know what? This shouldn’t be happening to me. I’m not trained. I’m not a horologist or a physicist, I’m a mediocre PR account manager, and I’ve already been told I have a loose grip on reality without this shit.
Panicking, I start pushing at the pull door.
Because it’s finally starting to hit me: if today keeps looping, this is going to be my life now. I’m going to be eating Beet Root Pan Cakes (four words) forever. I’m going to be informed about the considerable environmental significance of pangolins forever. I’m going to be woken up by my boyfriend, dumped, ripped apart by my boss and fired, forever.
I’m going to be told I’m unlikable and unlovable, over and over again, and there’ll be nothing I can do about it, because even with infinite chances you can’t make someone like you or love you in less than twenty-four hours. There’s a solid chance I could be stuck in the third-worst day of my life for the rest of eternity, much like Prometheus: chained to a rock, doomed to have my liver pecked out by eagles every single day, then waiting for it to grow back every night so it can happen again. Except, instead of eagles, it’s other humans, and instead of beaks, it’s hurtful words, and instead of liver, it’s my entire fucking identity.
So while I’m not averse to repetition—I take enormous pleasure and comfort in it—of all the days to repeat, I would not have picked this one.
“Cassandra!” Barry appears in his office doorway. “What the hell are you doing? I didn’t mean leave right now. Jesus on a yellow bicycle, what is wrong with you? I’d prefer you to work out your notice period, please.”
Unless—
With a sharp turn, I charge back toward my desk. Because if I’ve learned anything from Greek mythology—and I’ve learned everything—it’s that our fates may be spun, measured and cut, but they can also be altered. In all the stories, time after time, humans and demigods defy the Moirai and take their destinies back from the gods on their terms.
I am stealing this bloody rubber plant.
Ensuring that Ronald is focused on his spreadsheet—headphones on, the only person in the office not now watching me with their mouth open—I grab the clay pot firmly with both hands and run back through the agency door.
Go go go go—
My phone beeps:
Dankworth please clean your shit up
Hitting the lift button, I hold my breath and count: five, four, three, two—
The office door swings open.
“Cassandra?” Ronald has the same incalculable expression on his face, and no no no, this doesn’t bode well for me and my pecked-out liver at all.
He clears his throat. “That’s mine.”
I can’t do this.
I cannot.
I refuse to.
I’m point-blank stating right now that I will not be participating in a repeat of this bloody awful day again.
“The plant.” Ronald points at the shrubbery. “It’s mine and I’d like to keep it.”
“Of course,” I say flatly. “Sorry.”
Ronald reaches out a hand and I move quickly away so his fingers won’t touch mine, except this time I don’t move quite fast enough: his fingertips graze mine, pain shoots through my entire body, and I instinctively flinch and pull away. We watch as the rubber plant somersaults through the air and hits the ground. Pot broken. Leaves snapped. Dirt everywhere.
“Oh, thank the gods,” I say, putting a hand over my face.
“Did you...mean to do that?” Ronald says, crouching on the floor and staring sadly at the carnage.
“No,” I say, suddenly dizzy with relief.
Because if things can be broken, then things can be changed; and if things can be changed, then it stands to good and logical reason that they can also be fixed.
That’s all I need to know.
7
The lift pings open.
“Cassandra? Miss Dankworth? Hang on a second—I’ve got Mr. Fawcett on line nine, and—”
“Can’t stop,” I say, racing past her. “No time.”
Or way too much of it: at this point, it’s difficult to tell. All I know for sure is I need to rerun exactly what happened last time. That’s how you replicate an experiment, right? You repeat the conditions as closely as possible. Although, if I’d known I’d end up with this kind of undocumented ability, I’d have paid a lot more attention in GCSE physics, purchased my own Bunsen burner.
Panicked, I body-slam the exit repeatedly because I still do not know how to open doors. The receptionist lets me out with a sigh and a click.
Breathing slowly, I stand on the street.
What was my next move? I remember pretty much everything that has ever happened to me as if it’s still happening: my memories are so accurate and so vivid I can watch them like films whenever I want to, searching for details like a detective. Unfortunately, I was so overwhelmed yesterday, the image is blurry, as if somebody has rubbed olive oil all over the screen.
“Excuse me.” The woman in the orange bomber jacket taps me lightly on the shoulder and I jump yet again. “You’re kind of blocking the entrance to the—Are you okay?”
I blink at her. “Banana muffin.”
“I’m sorry?”
A giddy wave of relief. “I need a banana muffin.”
With my cardboard box gripped tightly, I charge with growing excitement toward the café. Banana muffins are comforting. Banana muffins are reassuring and familiar. Banana muffins might be part of a fundamental glitch in the universe that allows me to travel through time and space, according to my now spurious calculations.
The café doorbell tinkles behind me, and this time I think of Peter Pan and how fairies die unless you believe in them. Maybe this is just how magic works: like a melodramatic and attention-seeking Tinker Bell, you have to clap for it as hard as you can or it simply can’t be bothered to keep going.
“Hello, young lady! Goodness, is it one o’clock already? Or are you early?”
I stare at the place where banana muffins should be.
“Oh!” The café owner smiles. “I’m afraid we had a—”
“—delivery issue,” I fill in for him. “No banana today, but you do have some delicious chocolate muffins and a lovely salted caramel, which you can personally attest is an adjective I’ll never know because I interrupted.”