Archive of Our Own

Open heart, old cliché/Two kids in a new town, baby/Killing time every day/Bang-bang, neverending/Is it my luck? Is it my fate?/Not ordinary

“What are you doing? It’s me!”

He’s paralyzed. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what Matt’s going to do. If he can even keep calling him Matt. That was his best friend, his only friend, mere days ago and now all that’s left is the shell of that. Out there, there’s a more intelligent way to analyze this whole ordeal, but Owen cannot think right now, less so even speak.

Matt’s panting and smiling but it’s fading or he's fading, slowly but surely. The insane part is that it fades to genuine confusion. He looks back out the door. Owen can’t see or hear anyone in the hallways anymore and he only now catches sight of Jared, who is still somehow keeping his camera fixed on Matt’s face.

“Look, Owen, there’s– Are you coming with– No, you wouldn’t—”

Matt laughs and then groans and then waves his hand towards Owen, seemingly not noticing it’s the one with which he holds a gun and frowning when Owen contracts in on himself, covering his face. 

“Will you snap out of it? Jesus, man, I’m not—”

A wristwatch beeps. Owen flinches.

“Fuck,” Matt murmurs, turning it off and then hitting himself in the leg in exasperation. “Fuck, I’m– You fucked up my– Everyone’s already—”

He breathes in and out.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay, and you don’t have to apologize for the other day, you’re forgiven. There’s no time for this.”

He looks so hopeful and so disappointed at the same time. Like he cannot fathom Owen’s behavior right now, like it’s more than genuinely incomprehensible to him, but he does still want Owen to say something, but what the fuck could he expect him to do? He wants to tell himself this isn’t Matt anymore, this is some crazy freak that’s taken over his brain but actually the way Matt’s looking at him is so.

“Okay, uh.” Matt shakes his head and does a meaningless gesture. “Then stay here, I need to… Oh, shit, now I can’t even get the Spierings! Fuck!” He scratches his forehead with the barrel of the gun. “Oh, God. To think I wanted to do this because of… because of them, and now… Whatever. I gotta run. Don’t–Don’t move, okay? It’s like the fucking Blob out there.” Cracking up at his own joke, he adds: “They lay eyes on me, they–they go– ‘It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life!’”

“Matt.” Somehow, it fights its way out his mouth.

This gets him to drop character and meet his eyes. And look away. “You’ll be fine. Stay. Jared, come on, we gotta figure this out, like, now.”

And just as fast Owen’s entirely alone, hearing Matt’s shoes scrape along the by now familiarly cold linoleum floor. Presumably, Jared follows suit. Owen’s alone and he still can barely breathe. He puts his hand to his chest and feels his own heartbeat, just to verify it, just to know this is real. He should've done something, should’ve stopped Matt, god fucking damn it, but he can’t think about it right now. Not when two people are dead. He needs to pause. He closes his eyes and leans against the locked door right behind him. He starts to let himself sink to the ground, but it’s more like he stumbles down, no thanks to his wobbling legs.

And then he is on the ground, a little too fast, paired with an ache from falling forward onto his palms instead of backwards and on his ass like he had expected. There's a sudden and stinging pain on the side of his head. His knees are burning, because he just– He definitely fell down, he’s on the ground and there's a pain and there's the grey pavement under him. He's wearing different clothes. He instinctively reaches up to the part where he’s hurting, and he’s already done this before, he feels the slight slickness of blood from a small open wound. The open wound he already got from getting hit with a stone. It’s the same open wound, it’s the same pavement, the same light around him, the same time.

“What the fuck, what the fuck,” he hears Matt yell from behind him, then run towards him, saying words that he’s already said, but this time, when his hands wrap themselves around Owen’s arm, there’s nothing in Owen giving him the strength to shove him off.

Yeah, what the fuck?

TAKE 2.

He just lets it happen. He’s still processing it, but also, he needs to test it out, see if everything’s really the exact same, because this is fucking insanity and real life simply does not function like this. Owen’s not dead, Matt didn’t shoot him like he thought he was going to do, so this isn’t one of those stupid theories Matt would go on about, how your brain keeps producing images when you’re dead, for seven minutes, so you don’t actually know you’re already dead when you’re dead, and wouldn’t it be sick if at the end of those seven minutes it just kept producing seven more minutes, and so on, and so forth, and you could be dead for like, fucking, years, and you wouldn’t know it, wouldn’t that be crazy?

“What we should’ve done is just actually shot those guys. If we’d actually just gone and killed all the Dirties? Imagine that, if we showed that movie to class? Oh my God.”

Besides, the level to which his head fucking hurts is very, very real. He’s alive, it's insane, it's no coincidence, and everything’s happening the exact same.

“Oh, this is so sick.”

Owen’s watched enough movies in this same basement to have a small suspicion. It’s a big suspicion, actually.

“Actually, this is a wicked idea. We gotta write this stuff down.”

He’s been sent back in time. This is time travel.

“The Dirties 2.”

Somehow.

So that night, on the floor of Matt’s basement, he doesn’t sleep easily. They watch The Bourne Identity and Matt must be expecting Owen to fall asleep, because he just looks back at him every few minutes. Owen wants to ask him what his deal is but he doesn’t. He just keeps staring at the screen even after the credits roll. Matt tries to talk to him and he responds a little too shallowly, but hopefully not enough for it to be suspicious.

“Hey, if you can’t sleep, I’ll tell you bits of a movie you haven’t seen, how’s that? That always works.” Matt turns onto his side to fully face him. “So there’s this movie, House of Wax, right? Well, it’s a shit movie, but it was the first 3D movie or something, which is the only fucking reason anyone remembers it. And it got an even shittier remake in 2005. Point is they hired Paris Hilton for it. I have no clue why, but they did! So she’s running around, and oh my God, it’s so stupid. She’s escaping from the serial killer, ah! Ah! Oh, I’m so scared! And he’s just chasing her around from here to there until she hides inside a car. It’s important that it’s so, so stereotypical, dude. She’s Paris Hilton, blonde, scared and shirtless. Why the hell is she shirtless? But, like, whatever, the killer finds her and drives a harpoon through her head.”

“I think I’m gonna sleep now.”

“There’s literally no reason for her to be shirtless. That’s gotta be, like, some sick fantasy, no? Happening to the entire population? Why on Earth… do we need to see the girl that’s gonna die… in a bra?”

“Just tell me more tomorrow.”

“Okay, okay. Think about it, Owen.”

It only starts to dawn on him, when he almost entirely fails to carry out Matt's plan of pretending to be at a party when Chrissy calls him, that, like.

What the actual fuck is he doing all this for? He thought he had to prevent any divergences in the space-time continuum, or something, just to keep everything as it should have been, but he didn’t choose to be here, so he doesn’t know how he would get back to the future (ha-ha,) or if it would be so bad for things to change considering there is an event in his future he is not particularly excited about. He's been given this chance to prevent Matt from doing what he's gonna do and he's already wasted six whole days because he thought he had to change nothing, touch nothing, go nowhere else because what if there's the original Owen walking around and he causes some insane paradox by letting his past self see him and many other paranoid ideas coming from overthinking his situation. Can he be blamed? He's kind of insanely fucking lost here.

So now he's freaking out.

“Stop.” He finally says, when Matt tells him, the next day, that he's gonna go shoot guns with his cousin over the weekend. “Stop. Stop, we’re not doing this.”

“What?”

“You’re not killing anyone. Don’t do it.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I'm just spending the weekend at a cottage. We're not shooting people.”

“No, but you're serious about–about the shooting thing. The whole killing the Dirties plan.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Well, don’t! You’re insane! You're crazy, okay? You're fucking crazy.”

“Owen—”

“Matt, if you go through with this shit, I’m not fucking talking to you anymore.”

A laugh. “What? Come on. You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“Can you calm down? You’re not gonna—”

“I am! I’m–I’m putting my foot down.” Since he isn’t being taken any seriously, Owen takes off his wireless mic and tries to hand it to Matt, seeing his face drop. “I’m not doing this, okay? I’m going home.”

Matt frowns at the ground, trying and failing to keep playing non-chalant. “Fine, just chill the fuck out, dude. You weren’t coming anyway.”

Owen shakes the mic around so Matt will grab it. He rolls his eyes as he reaches forward to oblige, then pulls back before he grabs it.

“Hold on, is this about Chrissy?”

“...I can't believe you.”

“She said ‘hi’ to you, like, thirty minutes ago, and now you're all high and mighty about our movie?”

Owen shoves the mic against Matt's chest and starts walking away, almost bumping into Jared in the process. “Everything’s a stupid mind game to you.”

“You're–You’re not one of them, Owen! Being shitty towards me is not gonna change that!”

He spends that weekend at home, which makes his mother quite happy he's doing this for the first time in forever. She wants some “nice family time”, which makes Owen yearn for having fun with Matt and shooting at unsafe targets and scraping his arm against sand and sleeping in that cottage. But this might be the first weekend he's spent in the last eight years or so of his life where he has stopped considering Matt his friend, and, as Tuesday starts getting closer, the longest time of feeling as such in general.

But then it is Tuesday.

It goes almost exactly like the first time around—Owen hears Matt’s voice in the distance, can’t quite tell what he’s saying, but he hears it, and then there’s a noise, then there’s a second one, then there’s people running and a third shot gets Jackman on the floor. And fuck, fuck, fuck, it was all for nothing, it didn’t matter because Owen simply can’t do anything about Matt just getting himself ruined again, and, and, and.

“What are you doing? It’s me!”

TAKE 3.

When he realizes he’s back on the pavement again, spot above his head aching and burning, fresh once more, Owen starts to get the idea that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t time travel. At least, it’s not the conventional method of it.

Seems he was looking through the wrong movies in his head. It’s not Terminator, it’s Groundhog Day.

(‘Well, no,’ a Matt-like voice goes off in his head, ‘it wouldn't have been Terminator either, it would've been Terminator 2. That's the time travel one, Owen! And it's the sickest fucking movie on Earth!’ Whatever, this doesn't matter.)

Owen’s gonna be smarter about it by doing the things he’s been trying to do, but earlier on. Learning from experience. Yes. That must be it.

This means doing two things: first, he dismisses the movie from moment one, finds any possible thing he can to justify not making it, and they drop the topic eventually because Owen is just that insistent on this. Matt is weirded out by this attitude from him, but it works for now. Second, he approaches Chrissy more casually, on Monday, and asks her if she’s done her Biology homework yet.

“No, I haven’t. It’s for, like, two weeks from now, isn’t it?”

“Oh. Yeah, I’m totally gonna fail the exam,” lying like never before, “but the homework’s super easy, so I was wondering if you’d want me to help you with it or something?”

She squints at him. “Right. Uh, maybe, yeah.”

“Or I can just tell you the answers, I don’t really care.”

“Oh, cool. That’d be cool.”

“Cool. Okay. Um, do you wanna stay after school today to do that?”

She regards him a bit before answering. “Yeah, alright.”

He takes his and Matt’s clothes with him to the gym so they won’t get wet, and Matt asks him why, and he just says he’s scared his phone’s gonna get stolen if he leaves everything in the changing rooms. Matt doesn’t get it, but he doesn’t have to. He’s successful here. He tries to figure out how he’s gonna mention his plans with Chrissy, but Matt beats him to it by telling him he’s gotta run because he’s going to get some things that will make their movie better. Owen tries to push that he refuses to participate in this movie. Matt doesn’t reply.

Owen and Chrissy sit in the library, and she looks just about ready to go, but Owen wants to seem reliable while not looking like a nerd, so he pretends not to care about what he’s saying while he explains the things that he’s telling her to write down.

“God, this subject sucks,” she says when they’re done, running her hand through her hair.

“I know.”

Her smile is paired with a frown, but it’s playful enough. “I don’t think you think that. You’re good at it.”

“It’s–It’s fine enough, I guess. But it is really boring.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Do you, um, like any other subjects?”

“I love English Lit, but besides that, everything’s just boring as hell. We’ve got like two more years of all this.”

“Yeah. Uh, you’re in Mr. Bird’s Music class too, right? I think Music’s cool. And Mr. Bird never sends any homework or anything.”

“Maybe, but he’s still fucking gross. I don’t know, sometimes I wish I had picked Drama instead.”

He bites his tongue instead of mentioning how Matt and him are making a movie. “You know, I–I play the guitar.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Yeah.”

“I sort of know how to play, but, again, I don’t really get the urge to pay attention in class. Considering.” She gestures meaninglessly. “I mean, I know some easy chords, I guess. And one song.”

“Oh, which one?”

“It’s… I don’t like him, but it’s that Bob Dylan song, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”? It was, like, the easiest one I could find.”

“That song’s cool. But if you’ve got a song you like, maybe, um, I could help you learn it.”

She smiles, twisting her mouth a little to the side. She’s really, really pretty. “Maybe.”

He does spend the rest of that school week with Matt, but they don’t talk about him going away with Nelson, because Chrissy doesn’t come up and Owen doesn’t want to ask about it. 

From the couch in his basement, Matt points a fake gun at Owen’s face. “You know what a snuff film is, right? It’s when you kill someone on camera for real. Do you think this counts as snuff? What we’re gonna do? ‘Cause when Jared edits it, it’s gonna go crazy. We could become famous. Two high-school kids make best snuff film ever. How ‘bout them apples?”

“I told you the movie plan’s stupid. We should just do something else.”

“Okay, that’s still up for debate. Not the point right now.”

“It’s not up for debate. Why would it be up for debate. I told you this from moment one, the idea fucking sucks.”

“Whatever, fine, okay, no movie! Just let me tell you this story! Jesus. So. There’s a movie called Snuff, from, like, the 70s. And it got censored everywhere back then because everyone thought it was a real snuff film. But it’s not, it’s fake as shit! And you wanna know what the worst part is? It’s so damn boring. The entire thing’s so boring and badly-acted and everything. Except. For the last five minutes, where they pretend that the director is about to have sex with one of the actresses, and she’s like, wait, wait, the cameras are still on, and the crew is still here, and whatever, and he just insists they should have sex anyways. And then all the cameras keep getting really close and they keep filming her, while she’s begging them not to do that, and then. He. Stabs her!”

He pretends to shoot Owen.

“And dismembers her and whatever. It’s so… stupidly done and fake. Like, that bit’s fun. They’re still acting, but they’re pretending they’re not! But the blood and the gore is so fake. I have no clue if the people that got it censored even watched it. Good for them, ‘cause it’s a terrible movie.”

He wanted to come up with something to do with Chrissy over the weekend, but the only thing he could think of is “ride a bike” or “watch a movie”, neither of which did he really want to do with her. So now he’s standing at the park, awkwardly holding his guitar and watching Chrissy gently bounce a volleyball in her hands up and down in the air.

“I just didn’t think you’d have it already,” she says. “Did you really figure it out?”

Not really, Chrissy had told him, ‘you know Hum?’ and Owen had lied and spent every day watching a tutorial he found on YouTube until he learned how to play the bridge of a song by them. This made him wish he was in a Groundhog Day loop instead, “Yeah, I can show you how to play “Stars” if you want. You, uh, play volleyball often, I’m assuming. You look like you know what you’re doing.”

“Oh, yeah. Been at it for years… Alan’s always telling me it’s a sport for girls, but I think he’s just a pussy. Volleyball, not for the weak, okay?” She gently aims it towards Owen. He fumbles to catch it with his only free hand. “I’m guessing you don’t play any sports.”

“Uh. No. Nothing.”

She sits on the grass and pats the floor next to her. “Okay, well, maybe you can teach me “Stars” and I’ll show you, at least, a competent volleyball throw and catch. As a reward.”

Owen feels his face heat up. “Okay.”

The first time they argue because Owen gets serious about walking out if Matt won’t drop the movie thing, he asks: “are you dating Chrissy H.?”

“What the hell does she have to do with any of this?”

A laugh. “You are. I fucking knew it.”

“We’re not dating.” (Which they’re very much not. They’re onto something, it’d be nice to get to that soon, and they definitely are closer than they were the first time around and they like each other, but.)

“No, there’s no need to lie about it or anything. It’s fine. Go to your stupid-ass girlfriend,” he says, putting up a photo of Jackman that Owen starts internally questioning the origin of. Under his breath, strangely shakily, he adds: “What you really want is a girl who’ll do all this with you.”

“Oh my God.” He drops the guitar and stands up. “She’s not my girlfriend. The reason I don’t wanna make a movie where we kill a bunch of people is because of the killing a bunch of people part! And you’re lying to yourself if you think this is a normal thing to do. It’s not even interesting or fun, it’s–it’s just some dumb and horrible shit that you think you have to do to prove something, but you don’t have to prove anything, okay? Just stop. We’re not doing this! And it–it wouldn’t change anything if it was a girl.”

“Yes, it would.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“I’m sure you would do anything I fucking said if–if I—”

“I wouldn’t! Shut up! Just shut the fuck up for once, Matt! What the fuck are you even imagining?”

Matt will not look him in the eye.

“Whatever. I don’t… I don’t give a shit about this.” He grabs his backpack and shoves his guitar into its case. “Do not make this movie.”

He’s walking down the hallway and it’s a Wednesday. By now, he’s gotten used to saying “hi” to Chrissy first thing in the morning, so he waits by her locker. She shows up a little late, with Krissy B. by her side, and they both greet him very casually. It’s hard to think about how there was a time he had to fight his way into impressing her, when she’s just as normal and real as he is, and—

“Hey, Chrissy!”

Matt shoots the gun. Owen shuts his eyes tightly.

It’s merciful enough. She’s dead, she’s fucking dead, but Owen’s praying he’s getting the gist of this and this is temporary, and she’s clearly dead as soon as she hits the floor. At least, this is what he tells himself; this’ll stop being real any moment now.

“Try–Try getting a date with him now!”

Everyone except him is running. He’s scared to open his eyes before this starts all over again. He opens them anyway.

God damn it.

TAKE 4.

Okay. Owen decides he’s going to try and tear this down straight from the source. No Dirties getting in their way, no reason for anyone to die. Is there a way to dismantle bullying? That’s the big question. He knows the number one advice is “you have to tell someone.” However, he's never dared to try this. He might as well, considering he’s stuck trying out different things. Who knows, maybe it is that easy, and if this is enough to work, he could end bullying in Westmount High and become a symbol or thematic stand-in for holding hope in spite of it all. 

He spends the weekend rehearsing the words he’s going to use in his head before he heads straight to the teacher he considers himself the closest to. He recalls Chrissy mentioning she didn’t like him, but Owen still can’t see why. With no real reason not to, he chooses to go to Mr. Bird for help.

“Oh, Owen,” he just says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You know that is wrong.”

“Yes. That’s why–why I'm telling you about it.”

They’re standing in the classroom after class, as they’ve done other Wednesdays before, so, after a few typical lessons on the chords he needs for the song he wanted to semi-serenade Chrissy with, it seemed like a good opportunity to bring this up. Mr. Bird sighs, leaning back to rest his weight on the desk and crossing his arms. “Yes. It's quite sad that this is happening to you and Mark. Really sucks.”

“Matt.”

“What?”

“It’s Matt.”

“Oh, of course. How could I forget? You know, I just can't remember the names of all my students.”

“He's not… in your class, no.”

“Right, exactly.” What? “Anyways.”

“Can you– Can you please help me?”

“Well, I’ve heard there’s a really easy protocol. You tell the bullies to stop, you ignore whatever they’re saying to you, and you go tell a trusted adult. Simple as that.”

Owen breathes in and out. He feels like he's going insane. “You're the adult I'm telling.”

“Right, but have you asked them to stop?”

“Sort of? It’s… There’s just no world where that's going to work.”

“Look, Owen, communication’s important. You need to consider that maybe they just don’t understand what they're doing is wrong. You’re very mature, and you’re doing what’s right by trusting me, but that’s not the case for everyone. Teenage boys, like you, can be very…” He does some extremely unclear gestures with his hands. “…fuddled up. It's all in the hormones. Everything's all over the place. I'm sure you know a lot about that. Go be brave and try to talk things out, okay?”

He ruffles Owen’s hair and sends him off before he has a chance to protest about it. Maybe Chrissy’s just right.

“Is it really like that?” asks Mr. Muldoon the next day. To have this conversation, he had to go behind Matt’s back, since they both have class with him. “I sometimes notice others start… getting a little wild with their comments in the classroom, but I haven’t really seen anything too serious happen outside of it.”

“That's the whole reason why we made our movie like that.”

“I understand. But that was… fictional. You presented it as such, and it was a good movie that you made. I didn’t read between the lines. And I apologize for that.” He rubs his temples. “Okay. Uhh. Okay, I’ll try my best to be more strict when on the lookout for these things, Owen. Thank you for being brave and… sharing this, and… yeah.”

It doesn’t really matter who else he dares tell, because the response seems to be generally the same. Matt and just about everyone finds out that he’s been saying things, because a teacher or two make space at the start of their classes to give a short, painfully embarrassing sermon on how bullying is bad and you shouldn’t do that, and Jackman beats him up harder than normal. It brings no benefit and soon enough, they’re back in Matt’s basement, per usual, Matt pressing fingers against the bruises in his arm, just to make it hurt, per usual.

“You see, there’s no other solution. We’re, like, alone-alone in this. Think how crazy it’ll be when we actually go through with it! Talk about foreshadowing, eh?”

No, no. That does nothing to change Matt’s mind, either. And Owen’s attempts to please Chrissy go even worse, considering he’s gaining reputation as a tattletale for doing the only thing anyone’s ever told him he should do.

He finds a hotline on his notebook. He had written this down all the way back in January, for Bell Let’s Talk Day, in spite of him knowing Matt would say it’d be pointless. He’s running out of resources, and even if they showed them the stupidest videos consisting of nothing but people speaking into a mic about how you need to be nice to others, a mental health organization might be his last hope before another reset. He asks questions that feel very stupid in retrospect. Notably, the following: (a) how do I stop people from bullying me? (b) are you actually hearing what I’m saying? (c) am I hallucinating a purgatory for letting my friend drive himself to murder? (Needless to say, he gets no good answer to any of these.)

Matt’s baffled he doesn’t want to do the shooting and sees no faults in his own logic and they argue almost exactly the same as they did the original time. And then it’s his plan, entirely on his own, just like the first time. Well, on his own with Jared, technically. At least, by now, Owen’s just knowing to let it happen and get ready to drop to the floor and start bleeding again.

He’s starting to notice he’s not very good at this.

TAKE 5.

Under that circumstance, he attempts to redirect this again. If he can’t help by himself and can’t get people at school to help, then maybe he was onto something the first time around, and so—

“Mrs. Johnson?”

She looks up from her book and smiles at him. “Oh, yes?”

He’s already wearing his backpack and he’s changed out of Matt’s t-shirt, because taking that is almost a step too far into selfishness.

“I think that I’m… I’m gonna go home now?”

“Oh! Well, that’s fine. Thank you for staying for dinner, at least. Do you need a lift? You’re quite the smart boy, I assume you know your way back home by now.”

“No, and, uh, yeah.”

She frowns, but the politeness in her expression remains in place. “What’s wrong, Owen?”

Right, because Mrs. Johnson is a psychologist. At least this is going to make him spit it out at once. He tells himself that this is fine, that it’s either this or her son becoming a murderer, it’s fine, it’s fine, there’s no pit in his stomach and there’s no guilt and there’s no horrible feeling around the way he’s going to talk about his own best friend.

“I, uh.” Maybe Matt’s not so wrong, because he’s struggling to get this out in any coherent way. The words refuse to come out of him. Or maybe getting hit with a rock every few days is breaking his brain. “I just think Matt’s a–a serious cause for concern right now. For himself and other people. He has some extremely violent ideas.”

“What do you mean?”

“He's making an elaborate plan to kill people?”

“Oh.”

“And he’s for sure going to lie about it when you ask him to explain it himself, but I’m… I swear I’m being honest. I’m–I’m just worried about him and I don’t think I can do anything about it. So. That’s why I’m going home.”

“Huh.”

“But you’re his mom and—”

“No, no, of course. That’s more than enough. I just need a second, I don’t… know what to do with what you’re telling me.” She rubs her face with her hand, stares at the floor for a moment, then regards him again. “Just go home, Owen.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, uh. I’m–I’m really sorry.”

And that’s Friday.

He sleeps like shit the following days. He tries the hotline again, instead approaches it with questions such as: (d) my friend is gonna do something bad and I’m scared I can’t stop him? (e) I’m so helpless and freaked out even when I’m home lately? (f) am I ever getting out of here?

He doesn’t see Matt again until they cross paths on the hallway an entire Friday later. Almost cartoonishly, Matt lays eyes on him, takes a deep breath, and turns his gaze away as Owen approaches him. “What?”

“I'm sorry. I know you’re mad at me. You needed help, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Well, that wasn’t it, alright?” Matt is staring at him now. Owen has rarely seen him straight-up angry before, and basically never angry at him. It's uncomfortable. “You don’t wanna know the conversation I had to have with my parents because of you. And now I’m having to stay every day for counseling after school.”

“That’s meant to help—”

“It doesn’t! It’s useless and it only makes me feel like shit! Oh, Matthew, oh, you need to be more open about these things, no one’s trying to hurt you here. Yeah, right. I hope you remember me when they send me to a fucking psychiatric hospital.” He goes into a laughing fit over his own statement. “I mean, Jesus, I think they’re already throwing ‘borderline’ around. They’re trying to go Girl, Interrupted on me, no doubt about it. You know, that stupid-ass dyke film? Maybe they’ll make a movie out of my memoirs, too. And they’ll call it Columbine, Interrupted, eh? Now, those were psychopaths.”

“Matt, I’m sorry.”

“You’re not. You think I’m crazy. Which I’m… I’m not, I think everyone else is just fucking stupid. My mom, my dad, and–and Hot Chrissy, and the Dirties, and you, and everyone in this school! You’re all stupid.”

“Oh, what’s going on here? Lovers’ quarrel?”

That would be Josh. No, Boozy, that’s what his friends call him, whatever. Owen certainly doesn’t consider him his friend. Boozy and Jackman, per usual, but they’ve never crossed paths in this particular day, in this particular hallway, so it’s a strangely refreshing change, to know he’s gonna be publicly humiliated in brand new circumstances. Even before the loop, it had felt like a repetitive routine he just couldn’t get used to, like he’s a lab rat getting electrocuted over and over, but his reflexes simply didn’t allow him to learn from it. In his defense, the zapping never comes for any good or even particular reason. It's more like his mere existence is enough justification to have him hurt, and Owen’s never been able to do anything else than bow his head.

“Fuck you, dude,” says Matt, inexplicably putting himself in front of Owen.

“Fuck me? It’s okay, we’re all friends here, aren’t we?”

“Just–Just keep walking.”

“I’ll walk when I want to. Hey, is your boyfriend really not gonna say anything?”

Same old technique. Stare at the floor and take it.

Owen doesn’t expect it to happen when it happens, but it does. On a Thursday. Matt shows up and starts it backwards, starts by the Spierings and manages to get Alan and Dylan as well. That’s four Dirties. All in all, it’s Matt’s most successful plan ever and that’s more than horrifying.

When Matt bumps into him in a hallway, Owen fears for his life for the first time in a while. Everyone ran for the emergency exits, but Owen went in the opposite direction, he ran towards the source of the gunshots until he got here, because he’s setting this moral rule for himself that he has to be there every time that it happens, or maybe because that’s just destiny, or maybe because that’s what Matt wants him to be seeing and Owen will have no say on the matter. But they knock into each other and it’s not violent enough for it to be cathartic. The reason Owen fears for his life is because Matt just stares at him, with an undecipherable expression, with the gun in his hand, and they’re neither too far nor too close and, once again, Owen doesn’t run and doesn’t do anything. They both stand in place. Jared’s way, way down the hallway. Uncharacteristically separated from them. Matt’s not wearing an orange t-shirt with a message, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, because Owen doesn’t know if he’s a bad guy in Matt’s movie, or even if he’s a good person in real life at all.

Then, like it’s nothing, all the hints of terror drop from Matt’s face. All at once. He goes completely neutral, like he’s half-there, like he was acting and now he isn’t, or like he wasn’t and now he is. He doesn’t shoot Owen, just shoves him with all his strength. In the seconds he’s falling down, Owen feels the worst he has ever felt for even daring to think Matt would try to kill him.

TAKE 10.

Back on the pavement. Pain on the side of his head. It’s everywhere, really.

One more time. Just one more. This has to be it. It’s one whole month, sticking to the exact same progress that he had originally, doing everything as closely as possible, then switching it up by the end.

It’s one soulless week. He just lets Matt do whatever he wants, here.

It’s two soulless weeks. Shooting guns and missing, and half-hearted conversations with Chrissy. When Matt jokes around and pretends to press a gun to the back of his head, he flinches anyway.

It’s three soulless weeks, and he stops talking to Matt. He argues with Matt on a Sunday and he’s so tired, but the energy surges up from the bottom of his heart for that. He yells at him louder than he has ever done so and Matt tackles him to the ground when he’s still halfway through a sentence. Off go the microphones and he’s out of the picture.

The fourth week he spends almost entirely at home. Every day he gets to school first time of the day and announces himself and then waits to see if Matt’s there too. He did it on a Friday, the first time, but what if, what if.

And thank God, because Matt and Jared are there on a Thursday.

“Owen? What are you– You can't be here.”

He puts himself in Matt's way, blocking the hallway. “Matt, I’m really sorry for what I said to you.”

“Look, there’s no time for you to do this now.”

“No, come on, let me apologize.”

“Okay, you’re forgiven! Just move out of the way.”

“You’re gonna go to jail, okay? You’re gonna go to real life jail, and that won't be funny.”

“What? No, it'll be fine, I'm not– I’m making it clear I’m only here for the—”

“That’s not how it works. That’s not how it fucking works. The–The cops are gonna get here any minute and you’re gonna get arrested. And I don’t want you to get arrested. So please don’t do this.”

“Owen, you can trust me.”

“It's not cinematic enough!” Incredible new approach that descended upon him from somewhere. “It'll be all for nothing. You can't just– have no ending, right? It's bad if you just get arrested. Everyone’s gonna think, well, that’s–that’s stupid, I watched this whole movie for nothing!”

The cogs are working in Matt’s brain. “What’s more cinematic, though?”

“I don’t know. Let’s skip school. For today. Let’s–Let’s give it a few more days to think about it.”

He can’t believe that works.

It takes indulging Matt in a lot of things throughout the entire rest of the week and begging Jared to not come with them for good measure. He tells Matt that Jared’s sick, totally, and Matt’s pissed off about it but it helps postpone things. The topic of the shooting comes up, but Owen gives the most boring answers he can think of until Matt starts considering him a terrible person to talk to about it.

Then, the unimaginable, finally, what he had been praying for: four Fridays have passed, and they’re still there. It’s Saturday morning, and both of them are waking up, on the floor of Matt’s basement. He’s so happy he could cry. He lets Matt pick Armageddon for them to watch, even though they’ve seen it before and the only thing Matt does during it is point out everything he thinks is stupid about it. Owen’s pretty sure he likes it more than he says.

It’s nice. It’s a strong sense of tranquility, of everything being back to normal and knowing he’s gotten past what’s always been the limit and there’s no risk of staying stuck anymore. It takes him some time to accept that he’s expected to shift back into normalcy like this is his first time living through things, and it’s not easy, but he knows he could be doing worse.

Until two weeks later.

It happens. It feels like it’s been forever, but it happens. Boozy, then Jackman, then Alan, and Laren, too, somehow. The times that Matt is semi-successful are the most sickening to him. Not even with his greatest attempts can Matt fulfill an entire plan. 

And it’s just the natural conclusion, then. Owen running, and eventually making his way somewhere, because there’s so much silence in this particular side of school, and there’s Matt. Matt’s always there. So now, Matt is standing in the middle of the hallway. Jared sits far behind him, camera capturing both Matt and Owen. Matt seems overjoyed to see him, because he waves excitedly, then gestures for him to remain where he is.

“Okay, okay! We’ve got it. Thank you for–for the idea. Why wouldn’t I do it like Columbine?”

“What? Matt—”

Then he’s placing the barrel of the gun between his teeth. Oh. God. Oh, no.

“Wait.” He takes a step closer before he knows he’s doing it. Then another, and another. “Stop. Don’t.”

The gun turns on Owen instead. Owen stills.

“This is pointless. We both know I won’t shoot you.” He breathes in and out. “It's okay. Owen, look at me. I'm really okay. Trust me. Everything's gonna be fine.”

Tears flood Owen's eyes. They don't fall just yet, they quiver in place just like the entire rest of him because he can't do anything, no matter what the fuck happens to him Owen freezes and he always just feels like he can never do anything and no, no, no, no.

Matt looks back at Jared for one second, cocks the gun, and grins so, so wide. “You know, this would've worked a million times better if you were holding my hand.”

What is he referencing what is he quoting what the hell is he talking about even now, even like this, what is it that—

“You met me at a very strange time of my life.”

And Owen is so struck. He's so struck that he laughs. He laughs with Matt at the same time he finally starts crying, because Matt puts the gun back in his mouth and fires it. And. And Owen could be running forwards or backwards or whatever or anything or dropping to the floor, that's his way out of this, if he keeps standing so still it's just gonna keep happening so why can't he just get on his knees and be done with it. He almost feels too guilty just getting out of it. 

He gathers all his strength and throws himself to the floor, head first.

TAKE 11.

He lands and he crumbles, covering his eyes with both hands instead of paying any attention to the searing pain somewhere above his ear, and fuck the Spierings and fuck Jared and fuck that old man that’s gonna get out of the car and fuck Matt and fuck him too.

“Owen! Are you bleeding?”

The sobs that rip out of him are not intentional at all, but they wreck every small bit of him and Matt shuts up, doesn’t say or do anything, like he wasn’t expecting Owen to cry openly in front of him in a million years, even though he’s cried every time so far, because getting hit with a rock fucking hurts, now he’s hyperventilating and whimpering and Matt’s finally kneeling next to him to rub his back.

“Hey. Hey, man, fuck those guys, are you– Are you okay? Okay, there’s–there’s blood. It–It looks like it hurts like hell. God, that’s, probably not helpful, but—”

From a little further away: “What happened?”

“My… My friend got hit with a rock. Owen?”

Why does Matt do this every time? Why does he want to hold Owen through it, look at the wound himself? Does he want to make a joke of it like he tried to lick the blood off of his arm? No, he’s concerned, he really is, every single time he’s bearing holes into Owen’s face with his intense eyes and it’s nothing but worry and anger, and Owen didn’t want to get held or coddled or anything at all because he felt fucking pathetic, but when they first got back to Matt’s and every single time since, Matt has tried to clean him off and help him and. It’s the realization that this is something Matt is taking very seriously which is setting Owen off track now that he’s being more vulnerable than he wants to be. Now that he saw Matt dead and he doesn’t think that if they were in this situation, but the other way around, that he could bring himself to do more than walk closer to Matt than usual, awkwardly leading him by the shoulder and trying to distract him by talking to him about something else unrelated. Which he thinks is useful enough, and what he’s always thought Matt should do. But now he’s sort of piecing it together, that Matt just… likes comforting him, enjoys taking care of him.

None of this leaves Owen’s mind when he lets Matt go further this time, lets him make him stand up and lets him analyze the injury, walk him home with a hand lightly scratching up and down his back, press the towel to Owen’s head himself. Lets him ramble about, uh, Jackie Chan.

“It was in 1986, while they were filming this movie, Armour of God? He fell off a wall and fucking fractured his skull. It was like, the bone went into his head and pierced a part of his brain. Isn't that fucking sick? And he still has a hole in his head! Also, 1986, this was still, you know, Yugoslavia."

Owen sits on the floor of Matt’s basement with a blanket over his legs and Matt is laying on his stomach, by his feet, fiddling with his own hands and swinging his raised legs back and forth.

“Hey, you know what we should have done? We should’ve actually killed the Dirties. Just them, no one–no one else. No real people, just Dirties, ahah… That’s like from–from Reservoir Dogs, you know, what Mr. Pink says to—”

“Matt,” he says, and it comes out much weaker than he wants it to. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

A hesitant nod.

Matt picks out something lighter—Harold and Maude—for their movie night. They've barely made it into the movie when Owen drifts off. He’s flattered anyways, because Matt doesn’t like romances.

There's basically no push or pull for the entirety of the following week. There’s nothing Owen wants to do less than have to cross paths with his family and lie through his teeth, so that keeps sleeping at his own place out of the question for maybe a bit too long. His mom and stepfather don’t keep enough track of him and then overcompensate by getting outbursts where they’re calling non-stop to show that they’re definitely concerned for where he is, which has always been such bullshit to him but he can’t be arsed to care about it this time. And his stepbrother couldn’t fit less in that already weird dynamic, so, really, he only makes it worse.

“What’s up with you?” asks Matt one night.

They’re sitting at a fireplace. They do this often, for no good reason, really. They go behind Matt’s house, find a big enough expanse that they won’t cause anything dangerous, and they make a small fire, same spot every time. A big, circular patch of singed, brown grass has been forming around it for years now. It’s their spot, at least.

“What’s up with me?”

“You’re all sad lately,” he clarifies, but he’s grinning when he says it, because he really can’t be serious about anything. “Is it about the Dirties again?”

“No.”

“No? I thought you’ve been just… sick of them.”

“Uh. Yeah, that’s it.”

Matt’s all up in his face now, head tilted, so Owen sees a perpendicular version of him, eye to eye with that mole that’s on his right cheek more than anything else. The light of the flames is the only thing keeping him visible, coming from the left. He looks like he belongs in a movie now more than ever. “There’s something you’re not saying.”

Despite everything, Owen always has to fight his own skin to stop Matt’s smile from becoming contagious. He gives in this time. “Maybe.”

Just as quick, though, Matt’s smile loses its stability, and he sits up straight, raising his knees to his chest.

“Well, that’s fine, because there’s things I don’t tell you,” he blurts out, glaring at the fireplace.

Owen tries to look at him. Matt tips his head away. “What things?”

He shakes his head, and Owen can’t quite see his face, but there’s the tip of a nervous smile tugging at his lips, pushing his cheeks up. “You’re not getting it out of me. It's the type of thing that will make you stop talking to me.”

“Okay, you don’t know that.”

“Oh, I know.”

“You don’t.”

“Yup.”

“Matt.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“You say insane shit to me every day. You're planning a school shooting. How is this worse.”

“It just is!”

The fire fills the silence.

Fuck it, what does he have to lose by telling him about the current circumstances of their existence?

“How’s this. I'll tell you what I’m not telling you. If you tell me this first.”

Matt meets his eyes for a second. His are watery, but Owen won't say anything. He opens his mouth and closes it and then just laughs again. Matt always just laughs. He stands up and nudges Owen with his foot.

“Let’s go home and watch something.”

There’s no winning this, huh. “We have to put the fire out first.”

“Oh, shit, right.”

And honestly, it had been coming for a while. Maybe this time, Owen just didn’t feel like he had the energy to try. He sort of lost count of the days until it happened, anyway. All he can recognize is that it happens on a Tuesday, that Matt is more determined than ever, and when they chase each other into a classroom where they’re alone, Matt gets close enough that he reaches forward and hugs him and only then does he keep going. 

TAKE 16.

He’s starting to get sick of this really fast.

“But if we actually did it. If we actually went with real guns and actually killed only the bad guys. But we just blew them away, all on camera—”

“This is the greatest idea you’ve ever had.”

Matt hesitates for the smallest moment, then his whole face just, lights up, and. “Yeah! Yeah, I know! You like it?”

“I love it, actually. Let’s do it. Let’s make a real movie where we kill the Dirties,” he says. He can’t help it coming out in a monotone because he doesn’t mean it honestly.

But Matt doesn’t seem to care, jumps up and down and starts erasing the whiteboard again and Owen goads him into not letting the idea go. They stay up until 3 in the morning planning things instead of watching a movie, and Matt praises him for his wicked ideas that he doesn’t know are originally from him.

They get the guns, spend this entire weekend with Matt’s cousin, not the next one. There’s no party plan, there’s no cake plan, Matt tries to get him to talk to Chrissy and Owen turns the concept down. Matt is beyond perplexed by that sudden lack of interest in anything regarding her, but he doesn’t complain.

When they’re at Matt's, they plan. Matt goes on about Columbine. Owen honestly does not want to hear any of it, but he's starting to catch on to the fact that Matt's fascination is so filtered through some lenses that he's lost the plot a long time ago. Owen doesn’t know what these lenses are, and he's too scared to look at the source properly to verify if any of it is true, if when Matt talks about recognition and understanding there is, in fact, nothing but their reflections in there.

They decide to do it the following Monday. It has only happened on a Monday once before, Owen notices. It's been mostly Fridays, then Wednesdays, then Tuesdays, Thursdays and this is the second Monday. It's just an interesting development. Matt made him an orange t-shirt to match his.

Owen tries his hardest to turn his mind off for all of the actual process of it. Which, ignoring the noises and full-body shakes and When you’re firing a gun at a person and you have to see them drop dead, it proves to be less cathartic than you had hoped or imagined in your head. And that’s all that there is to say on the matter. He turns out to be really good at turning his mind off, actually. Matt’s really proud. Praise is not what Owen wants, however.

They cross paths with Chrissy at one point. The look in her eyes makes him want to throw up.

Before he knows it they're out, he doesn't know how many people they've shot, but Jared goes his own way. And they run and they run and they run, hand in hand, with Matt leading, like he always does, holding guns in the others. Owen’s heart is just about to form a hole in his chest and Matt is smiling more genuinely than he's smiled in any of these loops. Owen's legs go faster than his mind, a little too strongly, like if Matt slips away to go further ahead Owen will trip over himself and get hurt, and now his only thought is he’s suddenly scared Matt will let go first, and isn’t that so typical, just like Matt to insist Owen needs him, until it becomes true? So he holds on tighter.

Matt makes them stop at the graveyard. Last shot of the movie and all that. It’s especially morbid in this circumstance. There’s no Best Coast to save the tonal shift now.

“So,” says Matt, trying to catch his breath and failing to do some cool and harmless trick with his gun. In the distance, there’s the faint noise of police sirens. “What do you wanna do now?”

Owen wants to rest his legs, actually. He drops to the floor before he thinks about it.

TAKE 19.

Honestly, he doesn’t know what he expected. About Matt believing him, that is.

He disregards his wound again, refuses to change out of his bloody clothes, then, when Matt starts talking about his plan, Owen makes him sit down on the floor with him. He says: “Promise you won’t interrupt me.”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

Pause, so he can get his shit together. Then: “I’m stuck in a timeloop. Yes, just like in Groundhog Day. No, it’s not one single day. I think it resets when you go and kill the Dirties. Sometimes you kill them, like, way earlier than I’m expecting you to. You go to school and you start– shooting and then everyone freaks out and it’s a mess and I find you and. Then I drop to the floor or something, and I blink, and I’m back here.”

Matt says: “Holy fucking shit.”

“It sounds crazy.”

“It doesn't! I mean, it does, it is crazy, but you would never lie about this. Oh my God…”

“You need to help me stop it.”

“What?! No way!”

“Okay, don’t… start joking around because—”

“No, I’m serious! Owen! We gotta exploit this!” He stands up and starts walking in circles, making and unmaking fists with his hands. “You’re some kind of genius, discovering this. There has to be a way to use it. We need to explore all the, like, possibilities.”

“I’ve explored them! Trust me, I’ve fucking explored them! It–It doesn’t matter what I do, you keep going to school with a gun and killing people. And then I’m back here. Rock to my head. I–I can’t stop you from doing it. You need to not do it this time around.”

Matt isn’t listening. He looks downright enthused that this is a reality. “Have I died in any of them?”

Sharp inhale. “Once.”

“Holy shit!” He claps his hands together. “How was it? Did I bleed out in your arms? Did the cops kill me?!”

“You killed yourself in front of me.”

The smile faints a little. “Oh. Well, huh. That doesn’t sound like me. Like, I wouldn’t… That’s such a pussy way out of it.” He scratches his head. “Jesus, in front of you? What the hell did you do to me, Owen?”

“I didn’t do anything to you. I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Wait, what about Jared? Is Jared always there?”

They both look at him. Jared doesn’t seem to expect being talked to. He gives a small, big-eyed nod, pauses, then shakes his head.

“He is. But everyone's always there,” says Owen.

“No, no. What I mean is… what if… What if Jared has it all on camera? Wouldn’t that be fucking crazy? Like oh my God, Jared's behind all of it! He's the one putting you in the time loop! Huge fucking plot twist!”

“That's stupid. That sounds stupid.”

Matt has run behind Jared on the couch, and is gesturing around him wildly.

“Just look at him. No one would suspect a thing.”

“Matt.”

“Hold on, listen to me. What if, when I do the shooting, you take the camera with you? That way you can prove this to another us, and get you out.”

“Why would I need to show this to another Matt when you’re here with me?”

“No, no, no, no.” From behind, he grabs Jared by the shoulders. “If you manage to take the camera with you to this new timeline, then we can push the boundaries of all of this. You’re the only unchanging constant, right? So what if you take that with you? That’s a good idea, right? We’ll know how much you can do, and! We can have something fucking crazy on film!”

“I’m not… teleporting, though. One time I had a gun in my hands, and the gun didn’t come with me.”

Matt stops shaking a befuddled Jared from side to side to stare straight at Owen. “A gun when you went back? We did the shooting, then? How–How did it go?”

“It went badly! Otherwise I wouldn’t be here!”

“Right. Right, that makes sense. Wait, then let’s– Let’s use that to make the shooting go the best it could!” He makes his way towards the whiteboard and begins erasing their movie plans with his hand. “How did we mess up, Owen?”

“By doing it. Can you just get that? The time loop will stop happening when you stop doing the shooting. All you need to do is give up on the plan now. Otherwise, we’ll… we’ll distort reality, and none of this will matter.”

“But, no, Owen—”

“Matt, we’re not doing the shooting.”

This is the first time he feels those words have any value or effect on Matt. 

They spend every moment together this time around. Matt wants to be there for each second, making him play out every movie trope, and Owen obliges because he does not want to let Matt out of his sight. The knowledge is proving to be more dangerous than helpful. Matt wants to shoot Owen, shoot himself, watch every movie ever, not sleep, for Owen to get better at guitar, everything. So Owen’s constantly trying to appeal to Matt, saying that if he wants to exploit it so badly, then he should stay away from the guns.

It doesn’t fucking matter anyway, because, on the third Friday, Matt arrives to school way peppier than usual, sits next to Owen’s desk and everything seems to be fine, but he’s pretty sure they’re supposed to be in the arguing stage of their fallout by now and it’s some comfort that everything seems mostly okay right now. He misses things being mostly okay with Matt. Then he stands up from the chair in the middle of Trigonometry, causing some murmurs and teasing and for Owen to freeze up.

“Everyone, here’s my announcement,” he starts, placing his left hand on Owen’s shoulder. Owen looks around, what, what is it, he looks at Matt’s face, at the desk, at the backpack, at Matt’s other— “Do not panic, okay? I’m only here for the bad guys!”

“No, no, Matt, wait—”

Whipping towards the space between him and Owen, Matt twists around so he can point at Alan with the gun in his right hand and shoots him in the chest before anyone has the time to react. The gunshot is loud and not nearly as staggering as it has been every other time, but Owen feels it far more strongly with Matt’s hand squeezing his shoulder so tightly. Throughout all of this, of course: the screams, the standing up and throwing around chairs, all already happening. People running and bumping into each other. It doesn’t matter. The hand squeezes impossibly harder as Matt smiles down at Owen.

“Oh, man, people really don’t listen when they’re scared, huh?” Matt yells at him over the cacophony. “Listen, Owen, I’m doing this to show you that you were right! This doesn’t matter! You need to keep taking the chance, okay? Do that for me!”

And he pushes Owen to the floor. Until it’s the pavement again.

TAKE 20.

They have that conversation again. He rewords the situation to make it sound less fun.

“I’m stuck in a time loop and you need to help me out.”

“No way.” Before Owen gets to ask himself if this time he’s somehow not believing him, he continues: “I had this dream where you were stuck in a time loop. Last night. I'm not kidding.”

Owen freezes, lowering the arm that was pressing the damp towel to the wound on his head. “What–What happened?”

“I mean, you were stuck in the time loop, and then, obviously, I believed you.” Matt takes the cloth from his hand and does the job himself. Owen tries to turn away from him, but Matt's insistent. “And you were like, it's not like Groundhog Day, Matt, it sucks, but I was like, woah, we gotta do shit about it. I don't remember much. You were both there, though,” he adds.

Right, because, once again, Jared's been sitting on the couch the entire time, camera in hand, and knees raised to his chest. Owen shoots him a glare. Jared just blinks.

“Well, it’s been a million loops already, but you haven’t ever… known.”

“Speaking of you, Jared,” Matt continues, “can you go up and get a glass of water? No, put the camera down. Don’t turn it off.”

Jared looks a bit confused by the request, but he does exactly as he’s told. Owen just meets eyes with the lens, where it’s still pointed at him. He wants to keep details from Matt this time around, because letting his film-obsessed imagination run wild is what's making their conversations pointless.

Matt stands up and begins walking aimlessly. “What happens when you're gone?”

There’s a very uncharacteristic uncertainty in his tone. Owen looks up. “What?”

“I was wondering this in the dream, but now that you’re telling me this, I’m a little more pressed about it. Do I, like, stop existing? Or do we all go back to where you get looped, with our memories erased?”

It’s a question that makes Owen shift in place. Does it end when he closes his eyes? Is he accidentally splitting different timelines where things go on without him? Is there a reality, right now, where Matt’s still dead and it’s because he messed up? Is this the same exact Matt that died? Is everyone who dies just getting revived? Does Matt exist when he's not being watched?

“I… I don’t know.”

Matt rolls his eyes.

“What?”

“Well, why do you keep failing, then? Why aren’t you telling me what it is that’s keeping you in a loop?”

“Because… it… doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does.” A pause. “I know it’s about me. So why can’t I know?”

“‘Cause every time I elaborate, you keep not taking it seriously. Meanwhile, I’m trying to fix this whole thing.”

“You’re being made to fix me, is that it?”

“What?”

“You're being forced to fix me.”

“Look, let's just–just stop talking about this.”

“No, I wanna talk about this now. Let me remind you, I’ve done nothing but try to make things easier for you.” He throws the stained towel at Owen’s feet. “There’s–There’s nothing that you can do for me on your own. So that’s why you keep telling me, isn’t it? And you just keep leaving me all alone after I messed up at doing what’s clearly your job for you, so you must be really fucking bad at it, eh?”

“Matt, shut up, okay?”

“No, come on, tell me!” He’s dropped to his knees in front of him now and he’s grabbing him by the neck of his shirt and Owen’s trying to shove him off and— “What is it? What–What is it you think you know that you think I don’t?”

“Get the fuck off of me!”

“You started it! I can bully you too, you know!”

“Why can’t you just make this easy?!”

“Easy for who?”

“For me, Matt, whatever! I’m just trying to help you!”

“You’re not trying. You’re stuck. You’re stuck with me, eh? Go on, say it!”

“Well, if you’re gonna be wallowing in your own filth and misery for the rest of your life, at least let me get out and grow the fuck up!”

Matt starts laughing because he’s a massive piece of shit. He’s laughing in Owen’s face, because he’s so up close, because he’s still pulling the hem of that shirt up, because he’s a piece of shit. Owen finally pushes him off, making him stumble until he falls back, and Owen hits his head against the counter behind him. They both shut up, breathing heavily as they clearly try not to look hurt by honest words or real surfaces. Nobody says anything for a while. Owen stares down at the t-shirt that Matt’s lended him and feels his eyes burn and his guts twist inside of him.

“Why don’t you go ahead and give up on me, Owen. I know you want to, anyways.”

He sighs as he stands up, slowly, failing to exude any sort of confidence, moving like a foal during its first minutes of existence. He peers over the stairs and, seeing no sign of Jared, walks over to the couch and picks the camera up. He points it straight at Owen.

“But if… if me being ‘fixed’ is the condition for you to be free from me? That’s… neeever going to happen. So… just get used to this.”

“You don’t genuinely believe that. That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

There’s a quiet buzz from the camera that’d be imperceptible if it weren’t for their silence. He’s zooming in on Owen’s face. “You’re the one that’s still stuck in a time loop, though, aren’t you? So you’ve yet to prove me wrong.”

Owen grips the blanket with trembling fists. He wants to argue. They’ve been talking for a while now, but there’s still something in Matt’s words that doesn’t correlate with his actions. He feels like dismissing it, because do they ever, but no, after hearing the same specific conversations on the same topics over and over, Owen’s getting an inkling of Matt’s motivations that he hasn’t ever considered.

He takes too long to ruminate on how to express this in an effective way. He lifts himself with his hands, to sit down properly again, because his struggle with Matt has left him in a weird, half-laying down position that’s not comfortable, but really it’s because the camera is burning a hole in him like a—

TAKE 21.

—stone to the head, ow, ow, ow, he still has his heart in his throat from moments ago and now this. 

Hold the fucking line, Matt hasn’t done anything yet. It's way too early.

“What the fuck, what the fuck.”

Matt hasn’t shot anyone. Actually, Matt hasn’t even mentioned the plan. Why the fuck is Owen back here?

He makes himself stand up on weak legs, silently extending an arm to keep Matt at a distance, and ignoring him when he warns him to be careful. Or at least he sort of attempts to keep himself together with that intention, just so he can try and understand what the hell is going on. He’s being thrown for a loop in the opposite direction. But Matt’s getting in his field of vision to examine his wound, and there’s that worry again.

He asks, “what are you mad at me for?”

Owen sighs. “I don’t even know.”

“Come on, let me help you.”

TAKES 22-27.

He thinks, fine, if Matt wants to be given up on, then that’s what he’ll do. Matt always gets what he wants, doesn’t he? Who cares. Nothing’s gonna change, he’s not getting out, he’s stuck here forever.

The conditions are these: there's no limit or scheduled time for the loop to happen again; if Matt does the shooting, the loop restarts; if Matt can't be saved for any other reason, the loop also restarts; so Owen could spend years of his life preventing Matt from killing someone, but if it were to happen in the year 2026 or whatever, they'll probably be back here and that's the scariest thing he has ever thought of in his life; he doesn’t know why he's here.

But not working with everything on his shoulders makes it, overall, feel like it’s getting a little bit better to deal with. At least, in Owen’s perspective, it certainly is—he starts avoiding this place or other, dodging obstacles and choosing different hallways, all to avoid crossing paths with Jackman or Dylan or whoever. He does this no matter the amount of repeats and, even if his attempts to stop Matt simultaneously become less creative and less effective, then whatever, it at least makes the time of waiting less miserable. 

It’s weird to think about how it feels less horrible to see people die after a certain point. It didn’t take this long, actually, it stopped mattering by the tenth time. It’s not like he ever really pitied the Dirties and he’d be too hopeful believing they’d care if either Matt or him died in the first place. But he's turning apathetic.

At least he's inevitably becoming great at guitar.

TAKE 28.

One time, Matt crouches next to him without saying anything, grabs the rock that got thrown at Owen’s head and throws it straight back at Sean. It doesn’t hit him, but there’s some noises of complaint and faster running away.

The reason Owen suddenly goes dizzy is that that has never happened before.

And then Matt is running back to him like nothing, and he’s saying the usual, he says, “what the fuck was that?”

Bile is rising up Owen’s throat. He struggles to replace it with words. “Why–Why did you do that?”

“Are you okay?”

“Why did you throw the rock at him?”

“What?” He sounds honestly distressed, and the look in his eyes agrees, like the words that just left Owen’s mouth are insane. But even if this seems ridiculous to him, and righteously so, because he’s never lived this before, his reaction is coming across as way too extreme for that. “Your head is bleeding, what kind of question is that?”

“But you don’t do that. You’re not supposed to do that.”

“I’m not–” He covers his face, takes a deep breath in, and just groans. “Owen, they’re not supposed to throw shit at your head! Did you want me to just stand there?”

“No. No, sorry, I just—”

“Are you fucking stupid?”

Owen frowns. What the fuck? “Matt, I’m–I’m sorry. Jesus.”

Matt rolls his eyes and takes him to his house.

Everything's a little bit off.

Matt goes on and on about the plan in greater detail. He's more certain and even more explicit about how serious he is about it. At first, Owen wonders if he was just that stupid the first time around, not picking up on the fact that Matt was going to do it with or without him, but there's definitely something different. Every other sentence he says is clearly a quote or a reference. He gives Owen less space to talk and even less eye contact, talking more to Jared than to anything else.

“Okay, uh, stop. You're weirding the fuck out of me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can't–I can't do this like this. Am I asleep?”

“What? Are you okay?”

“Are you okay? Because holy shit, Matt.” He kicks the blanket off and doesn't bother putting his shoes back on as he wanders around, setting for the stairs that give to the living room above them. “How do I restart this. I'm not doing this.”

“Owen!”

He races up and opens the door with his eyes closed, taking a deep breath in and dropping to his knees.

TAKE 29.

“We have to just kill them. Oh my God, Owen, it’ll be so good if we kill them.”

It works. He didn’t expect it to.

Because again, Matt didn’t even go through with the shooting yet. They’re not even on the porch of his house when he says that. So this is bad. Bad bad. The bar’s getting pulled impossibly lower, the limit’s drawing nearer and there’s less that’s in his control. If anything ever was.

Matt drags him by the arm to the basement. He does the whole thing, gives him new clothes, gets a towel to clean the wound. But he sits him down on the couch instead, gets extremely close to him, and holds his face in place while he helps him. Does not let Owen protest or even say anything for a while, shushing him each time he tries to.

“Do you want me to talk to you until you fall asleep?”

It's like time is flying past him. They're laying as if to sleep on the floor, now. No time is given for Owen to answer.

“You know, there’s a myth, from fucking ancient times, where there’s this man called Sisyphus. And Sisyphus pushes a big rock up a hill, and then it rolls back down when it reaches the top. This is a punishment from the gods. It’s miserable. Can you imagine doing nothing but pushing a rock over and over, for nothing? The thing is it stops being a punishment when he stops seeing it as something bad. The end justifies the means, and all that. Except there is no end, it’s just the brief satisfaction of walking down a hill, you know? What matters isn’t his misery. What matters is that he won’t ever reach it. He’s happy. Because there's no reason to life or existence, and the struggle will be endless. But it’s his rock that he’s struggling to push up the hill. Can you believe that he’s happy?”

Owen stares at the ceiling. He swallows thickly and his throat hurts like he’s got a cold.

Matt puts himself in his line of vision anyway. “How far into the allegory are you, Owen?”

If Owen moves, he’ll die, this is what he thinks. Even breathing would be too loud of an answer.

A wide grin on Matt’s face. The honest kind that makes his large eyes small.

“I’m just fucking with you,” he says, and then he lays down next to him again. “I’m going to tell you the story of a movie you haven’t seen. There’s a psychopath, right? He kills people. He’s, like, the best serial killer in the fucking country. He gets out of jail with his friend and they move in together. They’re very happy together and live off of the stuff of the people they kill. They even film some of those deaths, too, isn’t that funny? But one day, the friend wants to pick up his sister from the airport so she can stay with them.”

“Matt—”

“Her name is Becky.”

“I’m–I’m trying to sleep.”

“This is like a bedtime story. We always do this.” He sits up. “Becky’s in love with the psychopath. And you’d think the psychopath’s the bad person, but not really. The friend is the real fucking asshole. He’s disgusting. A fucking pervert. He’s a serial rapist and the—”

“Stop, I don’t want to hear this.”

“—the psychopath’s always begging him to stop this and that. He just has no issue killing people, he doesn't want to do all that! Like, geez, man, what's the point. But the rapist doesn’t care. And the psychopath finally draws the line when he tries to rape Becky. They kill him. She doesn’t want to kill anyone, but this guy deserves it. The psychopath’s a psychopath, so he does it, because he was defending her. He does it for her, Owen.”

If he’s awaiting a response, he doesn’t know what it is. Owen’s trying to bury his face into the pillow underneath him, and he’s shaking just enough that he can pass it off for being cold.

No one says anything.

There’s the rustling and movement beside him around a minute later when Matt lays down to sleep.

Morning. Matt's upstairs.

Beside Owen, Jared is fidgeting with the camera and then looks up at him. “This wasn’t happening before.”

Owen's lost for words. He's almost forgotten Jared can talk. “Uh– Yeah, he got weird all of a sudden, huh?” Right, even before the loops, clearly, to everyone else Matt snapped today and—

"It's been…” He stares at the ceiling in thought, then he's back to toying with his camera. “…twenty-nine times now.”

“What?”

“Twenty-nine times.”

“I–I can't—” He covers his face and tries not to blow up on this fourteen-year-old. “You’ve known?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“And you didn’t consider saying anything.”

“Um. No.”

“Fine. You know what. Whatever. Wouldn’t have changed a single thing.”

“Not really.”

“Thanks, Jared.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I–I don’t know what to do. Why the hell is it getting worse?”

“Maybe it’s like a mirror.”

Owen turns towards him. Jared takes a moment before he registers this as a sign to elaborate.

“Um, if you put two mirrors in front of one another, it starts getting distorted. And green. It starts getting green.” He rubs his nose. “But you have one mirror. In this allegory, I mean. Um… I think it's more like if you filmed a camera with another camera, then used it to record the recording and so on. The original image is getting smaller and smaller… And it doesn’t get green, it gets blue or white ‘cause that’s how screens work. But also I think mirrors get green because of particles of light or something like that. I saw that on YouTube, so, um, I don’t know, but I know it happens. And the cameras, I know that too. But, basically, you’ve stopped doing things. So the change you’re not making is being… reflected into a… never-changing Matt that is changing.”

“That's–That's just what he wanted.”

“Well, Matt doesn’t like change.”

“You’re right.”

“He also doesn’t like it when I talk.”

As if prompted, Matt walks back into the scene. He holds a gun, a real life one, in his hands. Where the fuck did he get that from.

“Let's go film shit at that cliff that's nearby.”

Owen needs to sit down. He tries to.

TAKE 30.

Pavement. Again.

“Fuck you, Dirties! Hey, listen, we're going to school on Monday with guns to kill you!”

This is getting insanely out of hand.

Owen doesn’t know what to do. He's supposed to spend this entire weekend with Matt, and he doesn't know what will happen if he separates from him for even a second. But he tries to have conversations with Matt and he just doesn’t respond. He's fidgety and spends most of every day simply mumbling to himself, glaring at Jared if he's not holding up his camera the entire time, not wanting Owen out of his sight. Matt is becoming a pacing caged animal. Owen doesn’t know where the key is.

On Monday, as promised, Matt wakes him up early in the morning and grips him by the wrist and drags him to school with him. Owen doesn't know why he lets him. Maybe it's because it's the first time in a while where this part “gets to” happen. It's probably because he's finally accepted he doesn't have any sort of power over Matt's actions, can't direct him even briefly and Matt is stubborn enough to stick to his own script. He presumes this is what Matt looked like the first time, disheveled and wearing that stupid bright orange t-shirt, and his hair's messed up but it doesn't seem true, it's clean and all over the place in a memorized way, so maybe Jared's right, this isn't Matt, this is a memory or a reflection or a caricature of him. He carries an unusually small bag for the guns.

Matt pushes both of them into an empty classroom and closes the door behind him. Owen's never entered this one before. He guesses it's for some class they'll have next year.

“Here's what I wrote for us,” starts Matt.

“I don't—”

“Don't talk. We're doing this.”

“I'm not. And neither are you.”

“We'll kill the Dirties one by one. We don't stop until we're done with them. If you stop looking at me like a lost puppy and do what I tell you, we can make it work, alright? No one else dies. No one innocent. Just the Dirties. It's exactly like the movie. It's genius. And I can make it work. And we'll film it. And it'll look so good. It'll be so good. It's the best revenge plan ever carried out. Do you like it?”

“No.”

Matt pulls a pistol out of his bag, then drops the bag on the floor unceremoniously. “You get four, I get four. Simple. If you slow down, I’ll get the rest. You’re not making this fail, alright? You’re not leaving me hanging. You hear that?”

“I said no, Matt.”

“Well, I'm saying yes. And this is for you, by the way. So do it.”

“It's not for me. I don’t want you to do it and I'm certainly not asking you to. Who the fuck are you doing this for?”

“For–For you! For us!”

“Do you even want to do this? You're acting like you do but that's all, you're acting. Stop acting.”

“I'm not acting!”

“This isn't an accusation! I'm asking you to please stop acting! Because you're scaring the shit out of me! It's real life, okay? It's not a movie.”

Matt drops to his knees in front of him, hitting the ground straight with the skin exposed by the holes in his jeans, and getting closer until both his hands find Owen's own clothes, pulling on them. His eyes are wide and crazed and serious.

“I don't want to scare you, I'm sorry. Don't be scared. I'd never do anything to you.”

“I–I know. I just—”

“Owen.” He widens his eyes even more. “Don't think about it. Let’s kill them, and then let’s both die. Let’s do it. It'll be us until death do us part. It’s just the plot progression in stories like this, isn’t it? The deaths of everyone involved, that’s the part people want to see. You gave me the idea in a dream.”

“Can you—”

“Why are you in my dreams every day now? Am I in yours? It’s like–like ever since I came up with this plan, you’re the only thing I think about. And I dream you tell me not to do this, most of the time. Or you do stuff that really pisses me off, you know? You leave me alone. Which just makes me understand that I have to do it. One time I dreamed we–we went ahead and then we did it together, and I think I liked that one the best. Why… Why are you in my dreams, Owen?”

He's trembling so hard. “I–I don’t know.”

“Come on, we can– I shoot you and you shoot me. I have more guns.” He looks behind him and snaps his fingers. “Jared, get me one.”

This is the first time Owen realizes that Jared isn’t there. Matt is kneeling on the floor with his arm extended towards the closed door, towards no one at all, while his other hand is gripping Owen's t-shirt like it's his last lifeline. There's no camera and Matt's still acting. Owen doesn't know if he'll come back if he dies now. They’re both breathing in and out shallowly and Matt isn’t moving at all.

“Matt—”

He stands up. “I'd do enough for both of us, if I could, I'd–I'd love to do it for you, Owen, but I couldn't kill you. You’re so handsome, I couldn't bear it even if I killed myself immediately after, too. Is me admitting that enough for you to go through with it? Like, wow, what a faggy fucking thing to say, I'm so glad you’re asking me to murder you. Because I mean it, you are handsome and– Jesus Christ, I sound so fucking dumb right now.”

“Stop. Stop talking. Listen to me.” He grabs Matt by the shoulders. He takes a shaky breath in that matches the way Matt’s entire body is shaking. “I’m sorry. Because this–this is my best shot. This is the best that I can do. Which is to try to make you listen to me.”

“Please do it with me.”

“Matt, I–I don’t want to do that.”

“Why,” he laughs and it’s forced and it sounds horrible, “why won’t you? I’ll make it fun for you.”

“Will you please listen.”

“No, you listen to me. You don't get it. You don't get it at all. All I want is to make us happy. But we can’t be happy if the world works the way it does.”

“I think I can.”

“You’re right. I can’t. I can’t. And don’t–don’t try. I really can’t. I’ve tried– There’s a— I’ve been trying to prove that I’m real. But I’m not, and you're gonna leave me because you are, and,” he says, and Owen wasn’t expecting him to cry, wasn’t expecting himself to cry, either, but they’re both standing there and kind of grabbing at each other and where Matt’s hand grips his skin, it hurts like hell, and he can only expect that the way he’s digging his nails into Matt’s shoulders hurts just the same, but they can’t separate for anything in the world, so his arm is Matt’s and Matt’s hand is his, and so, and so, and so, those don't even feel like words anymore.

And so, Matt’s sobbing. And it’s ironic that when he says this, he sounds more like himself than ever, sounds like the friend he made back in fourth grade and sounds like he did before all this: “Owen, I’m not real.”

And Owen is sick of the irony that permeates every single word to come out of Matt’s mouth, but this is ironic enough that it circles back to being funny, and lately, he’s become acutely aware that anything that’s ever been funny about Matt and him is just as sad.

He pulls himself closer, all in one, rip the bandaid off. The hands gripping Matt’s shoulders don’t ever separate from his body, they just slide down that orange t-shirt, wrap themselves around Matt’s back. His chin rests in the place where Matt’s shoulder meets his neck (here, this is the place where Matt used to rest his own chin when they were kids, whenever he wanted to peek at the books Owen was reading.) Matt makes a thin, strangled noise and holds onto Owen’s arm even tighter, trembling from the sheer force of that, but Owen refuses to let how much it hurts show (this is how Owen held onto him once when his dad was disinfecting a scraped knee he got from playing with Matt and Matt insisted on sitting besides him to “see what would happen”) because Matt is crying openly into him and he finally has the sort of confidence that will let him be the one to carry Matt for a little while.

They’re not wearing ties, so they need to stop playing the adulthood they see in the movies. Owen snakes his left arm back around until he makes Matt drop the gun. Then Matt fully envelopes him in the hug, and Owen decides to take the risk, just in case, of holding onto Matt enough to make sure the universe doesn’t split them into timelines separate from this, before he sinks to the floor with him until they can both sit. They’re still there when his knees touch the floor and he opens his eyes.

“You are real, you're right here in front of me.”

“This is so fucking embarrassing.”

“Who cares, man.”

Matt pulls away first, hiccuping and hiding his face in the crook of his elbow anyways. Owen tries to gather himself.

“Look, I… I don’t want to live in a world that’s gonna treat me like shit. But I can't fight that one, I guess. Still, like… I don’t know. Just because it’s hard for it to get any better doesn’t mean you have to let it run you over, or something. I think there has to be an alternative.”

Matt lets out a wet laugh, finally looking at him. “This shit is so corny, man.”

“Well, fuck you, okay? ‘Cause I’m trying to believe it. I… I don’t want you to think you can’t trust me. And maybe the reason it doesn’t get better is because we’re stuck here, but that’s–that’s temporary. At least I hope it’s temporary. I mean, high school is temporary, but I think if I don’t move out soon I'm gonna go fucking crazy. I don’t want to… live here and like this forever. And with that I do mean… everything. I want to like the life I'm living. So I can't… I can't promise you I'm gonna be by your side forever. But I'm here now. We're friends now. So right now, I won't leave you. And when I leave, it won't be because I hate you or anything, it's because we're, like… We're going to grow up some day. But I don’t want you to think that you can just make a bubble for yourself to live in with your own thoughts. Because then this stuff happens.”

“It’s not fair, though.”

He shrugs. “You don't have to like it. What, you’re gonna start killing people who have it easier? And go to jail? Because you will,” he adds, “you’re–you’re gonna get legal consequences. And I can't stress this enough, but I really, really don’t want you to kill yourself.”

Matt's face is quivering between a smile and a pout. He screws his eyes shut. “I need to stop crying. I'm such a little bitch, holy shit.”

Owen tries to blink his own tears away. “I’m bad at, uh, comforting.”

“It's just if I do all this on camera, I can make it mean something.” That sentence comes out fast. “No one gives a shit if they can't see it. And it feels like no one's seeing it anyways. It’s the only thing I can do.”

“I see it.”

“Hah. You don’t.”

Owen frowns. His first impulse is to defend himself, but Matt is glaring at the floor. Like at the fireplace so many times ago. So maybe there is something he doesn’t know and running his mouth would be stupid.

“Well, uh. Sorry.” Friend of the year award for Mr. Williams over here. He shoves that thought away. “Um. Maybe we can start being more honest with each other.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You can, okay? You don't have to do it now, I just… There's nothing you can say that's gonna make me ditch you from one day to the other and for no reason. We can argue and get mad, but that's–that's normal. I think it's good that we disagree. We're really different people. I just mean we should start taking each other more seriously.”

Matt just fidgets with the hem of his t-shirt.

“I have, uh, dumber complaints I can start saying. If it helps ease it out.”

He snorts. “Like what?”

“Uh, I don't know. For starters, we could, like, play videogames more often, or something.”

“We're always playing videogames, Owen.”

“No, we're always watching movies. I get a little sick of watching movies all the time.”

“How can you get sick of watching movies?”

“I like movies—”

“Cinema is the seventh art!”

“I like movies! You like them way more!”

“You’ve been keeping this from me. That your mind is simply not ready to take films as how they should be appreciated ‘cause you wanna play Mario Kart instead.”

“Whatever, dude.”

“No, no, I see how it is, now! My own best friend, sadly and deeply unprepared to undertake—”

Matt's wristwatch starts beeping. They both quiet down.

He sniffles and then turns it off. “Uh. Can we skip today?”

Owen smiles, starting to stand up. “Sure. Who cares.”

“Who cares! It'll be Matt and Owen's Day Off… I can't promise you any Bueller shit, but– I mean, he lived in a massive city. Try doing all that here, Ferris. Uh, let's just get our bikes or something. I'll get rid of these guns… somewhere.”

Mostly subconsciously, Owen extends his hand for Matt to take and lift himself up. “I don't think you've shown me that one.”

“What?!” Matt takes his hand, seemingly without even thinking about it. Owen notices, though. They make their way towards the exit of the school. “What the fuck! You’ve gone seventeen years of your life without watching it and I’ve done nothing to change this?”

“I’m still sixteen!”

“I'm rounding it up for heightened effect.”

“Oh my God.”

“Let's–Let's make a list. Of the last movies I get to show you before you ban movies from our activities.”

“I'm not banning movies!”

“You can just admit to it, Owen. I'm not killing myself over it. Not anymore.”

In spite of himself, Owen laughs out loud.