Sawyer Doon’s face is sprawled across every page—the same picture of him in this gray hoodie, deadpanning the camera. Average white kid, hooked nose. Would’ve probably grown up to wear a pinstriped shirt and some khakis and sit in a cubicle. He’s not nice to look at or bad-looking. He’s kind of just . . . there.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

Where is that coming from?

I always hear sounds, especially when it’s dark, from dead world, even when they’re far away. Sound is not a physical property here. It’s just everywhere, even when you don’t know where it’s coming from. It could be something completely harmless. A woodpecker that wood-pecked itself to death.

S.A.D. . . . the shooter from the news was named Sawyer Doon. He killed people at Matteo’s school and then himself, and now S.A.D. himself could have broken into my house and left his mark on my wall. It could be the long acronym for Sawyer’s name Sawyer . . . something . . . Doon.

I close my laptop, set it on my nightstand, and fall into my pillow.

There are several theories for why death loops happen. Mine is that the people who end up trapped just didn’t see it coming, so their minds got stuck in a glitch. As opposed to some people who did see it coming, because they brought it on themselves. Maybe ghosts who killed themselves get more autonomy when they cross over.

I curl up in the fetal position and try to relax.

The room is dark in all places but two—an orange salt lamp night-light and the red display on my nightstand clock, showing 2:00 a.m.

The tapping sounds like a ticking now, like a broken clock. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. Or someone with long fingernails tapping them to a desk.

Where is that coming from?

I get under the covers just to toss and turn, to be too cold and then too hot, to put the pillow over my head to mask the sound of the clock, or the timer, or whatever’s responsible for that tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

I fall asleep, my mind rationalizing the ticking as a piece of background noise.

BOOM.

I jerk up in bed and pass straight through the covers, my body like a feather floating slowly to the ceiling. My hands are framed in a crystalline blue light. My room is teeming with ecto-mist and peeling mint-green wallpaper. The walls are adorned with oval mirrors and the black-and-white photos of a family that lived here before—white people in high-waisted jackets and sequined dresses.

My light fixture has transformed into a brass ceiling fan, which spins right and then left, shaking ecto-mist like snow from its blades as it glitches in its loop of dysfunction.

I lower myself to the side of my bed, where my feet sink beneath the creeping mist that traces the floor. The carpet is both crimson red and white, the colors shifting in tricks of light.

BOOM!