She sets it down. “Look. I told you back at the doc’s house. I believe you believe it. I know we came up with this little plan so you could prove your story, but I don’t need you to do that. You’re my friend, I told you.”

I get up and let out a frustrated groan. “Why did they have to rewrite it? I mean, I said the gun! The piano! The fact that the last scene is Kim and Velma?”

She makes a face.

“What?” I ask.

“I don’t want to do this! It makes me feel like I’m quizzing you.”

“Tell me why that isn’t proof enough,” I say, pointing at the journal where I wrote my lines.

“Well, you’ve hate-watched every episode with me, and frankly a monkey with her own G2 pen and a Moleskine could have predicted all that. It’s my favorite show, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. No offense to the other you, ’course.”

“None—none possibly taken, because it would be way too confusing a rabbit hole to take that personally.” I let out a sigh. “I really wanted to prove it to you.”

“Well, to be honest, that’s exactly what you said would happen in the finale when we watched last week’s episode. What you wrote there? That was almost word for word your prediction.”

CHAPTER NINE

I have a restless night’s sleep that night. It’s somewhere between the wakeful Christmas Eve feeling I used to have as a kid and the panicked, anxious feeling I get before an early flight or an audition. Any dreams I do have are about missing my alarm clock, but mostly it’s the sort of semiconscious rest where I spend the entire night aware of the passing time.

It’s not the worry over accidentally sleeping through our meeting time—even I can’t sleep past noon, and I haven’t since I had mono as a teenager. It’s the fact, of course, that I’m going to see Aimee. I honestly don’t believe it will happen. But the proof will be in the intergalactic pudding.

It’s hard enough to believe I heard her voice. It keeps ringing in my head. Impatient and irritated, so the romance is a little marred by that. But still. It’s her.

When I do wake up, I expect to see Kiera, who slept on the pullout mattress in the sofa with Maureen. She said usually we bunk in my room together, but since I’m having the world’s longest moment of confusion, she decided to sleep out there.

Instead, there’s a note on the table.

G’mornin’ Crazy! Visiting round my mam’s today, but I’ll be back tonight. Doctor’s orders. Maybe some Indian takeaway for dinner? Xx, Kiera