"Watch where you're going kid!"
I was thrown off balance by the sight of him. Some guy in a suit who's glaring at me like I just tried to run him over on purpose. I wasn't even close to hitting him. Okay, maybe a little close.
"My bad!" Not like I actually meant it.
He was already storming off anyway, I doubt he heard me or even cared.
I tried to ease up on the pedals, but my legs weren't taking orders from me anymore. They were stuck in high gear, churning through every thought that's been looping through my mind all morning. The ball on the field, Jonah's face, Mara's words. And there's the text. The one I still haven't responded to even now. I still haven't decided if I'm just the victim of a world-class prank. It's still hard to swallow it all. But one thing's for sure, I'm not alone in this.
That's why I'm currently speeding towards The Diary Hut like my life depends on it. Mara and Jonah are already waiting. Well, Mara knows what she's waiting for. I'm not so sure Jonah does. It doesn't matter. Both of them are a part of this too. Two heads are supposed to be better than one, maybe three can keep whatever this is from getting worse.
Assuming it can get worse.
The place is already packed. Weekend crowd in full effect. It's actually perfect. This way we won't be the center of attention. Maybe it's the whole mystique vibe, but I feel a little paranoid.
It takes a little longer than expected to lock up my bike. That's because my hands won't stop shaking. Anxiety. Maybe it's not too late to just turn back and text them faking an emergency. But what would that accomplish? I'm already losing sleep because of all this.
I walk in. The whole place smells like fries and industrial cleaners. A 2010s pop song is playing way too loud for a Saturday afternoon.
Looks like they found the best spot in the house. Mara's choice no doubt. She probably got here first, and even if she didn't, Jonah wouldn't have been able to win the argument.
She's sitting with her arms crossed, eyes locked on the entrance like she's been timing my arrival down to the second.
Jonah's slouched on the seat across from her, practically melting into it. His fingers drumming that bored-annoyed pattern on the table that screams "You better have a good explanation for this."
They're not talking. Not even pretending to. That confirms it—they've figured out I invited them both without warning either one and now they're just waiting for me to give a good reason why.
This is going great already.
I take a deep breath, wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans and head over before I lose my nerve.
Jonah spots me first. His expression instantly shifts from annoyed to confused. "Dude." He twists around in his seat. "Are you okay? You look like you just got chased by a car or something."
"I biked."
Mara didn't mind me sliding next to her, like I wasn't already over 20 minutes late.
"Got held up at home so I had to pedal a bit too hard. I'm fine."
The brown-haired girl in glasses next to me still hasn't said anything. Just sitting there with that look—the one that makes you feel like she's already worked out the entire conversation in her head and is just waiting to see if you'll catch up.
Jonah leans back now, crossing his arms to match Mara's. "So. You gonna explain why she's here?" He jerks his head toward her.
Mara doesn't even blink. She's just staring.
"Because something's happening Jonah." The words come out before I can second-guess them. "And I think it's happening to all of us."
Jonah frowns. "What do you mean, all of us? What's happening?"
That's when Mara speaks.
"You saw it too." Not asking. Reaffirming. Her voice is calm, certain. "At the field. The ball. It glitched."
And just like that, my stomach drops straight through the floor.
Jonah looks between us like he's on the brink of solving the mystery of who took the last pudding cup, then leans back into the chair. "Okay" he's done processing. "So, it wasn't just me."
"That's right" Mara responds.
He nods once. "It didn't make sense then either. I just didn't say much because Elias didn't believe it, or should I say didn't wanna believe it." Judging by the scowl he gave, I could tell he was still upset. "I settled for a reasonable explanation… Brain glitch, sun in my eyes, Elias's terrible aim—"
"Hey!" I had to cut in.
"What? You know it's true, we both know it"
"Focus guys" Mara pulled us back on track. " It didn't feel like that did it Jonah?"
Jonah pauses for a brief beat. Then he shakes his head. "No. It didn't."
The silence stretches. This moment where nobody says anything. Just the three of us sitting there, surrounded by weekend noise and Mike Posner's greatest hit, and somehow the silence between us feels louder than everything else.
Finally, Jonah breaks it.
"So what the hell was it then?" He's looking at me now. "You're the one who called this meeting. You obviously know something."
Do I? Feels like the opposite most days.
"I don't know what it was," I admit. "But I do know it wasn't the first time something like that happened to me."
Mara's eyes instantly meet mine. "What else?"
Where do I even start?
"The clock in my classroom," The words start pouring out. "It went backward. Just for a second. And then there was this text I go—" I stop. Because mentioning the timestamp thing feels like crossing a line, I'm not ready to cross yet.
Mara's watching me. Waiting.
" A text?" she pushes.
"Yeah. From a number I didn't recognize. It was… weird. Like some kind of warning or something."
That's all I'm giving right now.
Jonah frowns. "A warning about what?"
"About going back to the field."
His eyebrows shot up. "And you went anyway?"
"Well, yeah. I mean, it was probably just a prank or—"
"It wasn't a prank," Mara cuts in again. Her voice is flat, certain.
Both of us turn to look at her.
"How do you know?" Jonah asks.
She hesitates for a second. "Because I got one too"
That lands like a brick
At this point, a waitress gets to our table with drinks on a tray claiming that she has our orders ready. I don't remember ordering any drinks.
"Finally," Jonah says "I could really use a cold cola right now"
She drops off the order. Jonah immediately grabs a can and pops it open. I'm just concerned about two things right now. The first. Who's paying for this order. The second. What message did Mara get.
"You got a text?" I ask.
"Not exactly the same. But similar. A warning. From someone I don't know."
Jonah's looking between us now like we've both lost it. "Okay, so let me get this straight. You both got creepy mystery texts telling you not to do something, and then weird shit started happening?"
"It started before the texts," Mara says "At least for me"
"What do you mean?" I ask again. She says a lot without actually saying anything.
She shifts slightly. Adjusts her posture like she's deciding how much to say. "Clocks showing different times. In the same room. My phone said one thing, my desk clock said another. Four minutes apart."
Four minutes. Something about that number sticks in my brain, but I can't figure out why.
"And then there was the mirror," she continues. "My reflection… delayed. Just half a second. But I saw it."
Jonah's staring at her now. "Your reflection what?"
"Lagged," she says simply. "Like there was a gap between me moving and the glass catching up."
The whole table feels smaller all of a sudden. Like the walls are closing in.
"That's…" Jonah trails off. Rubs his face. "That's not normal."
"No," Mara agrees. "It's not."
He looks at me. "What about you? Anything else besides the clock and the text?"
There's so much I haven't told them. The ball. The message timestamp. The way time froze at 3:14 PM the whole day. But I can't say all of that. At least not yet.
"The field thing," I say instead. "That was the biggest one. Everything else felt… smaller. Like glitches, yeah, but not—" I gesture vaguely. "Not solid. You know?"
Jonah nods slowly. Like he gets it even though none of us should.
That's when Mara pulls out her phone. Sets it on the table between us. "We need to compare notes. Properly. Not just what happened, but when. Where. If there's a pattern."
Of course she wants a pattern. That's so Mara.
"You think there's a pattern?" Jonah asks.
"There's always a pattern," she says. "We just have to find it."
Jonah looks skeptical. "Or maybe it's random. Maybe we're just unlucky."
"Three people experiencing the same type of impossible events in the same timeframe isn't random," Mara counters. "It's targeted."
Targeted.
That word sticks. Feels heavier than it should.
"So what," Jonah says. "Someone's doing this to us? On purpose?"
"I don't know," Mara admits. And I can tell that's hard for her to say. "But the messages suggest someone knows what's happening. Maybe even why."
"Then why not just tell us?" I ask. "Why the cryptic warnings?"
She doesn't have an answer for that. None of us do.
Jonah drums his fingers on the table again. Thinking about the whole thing. "Okay. So. What do we do?"
A really good question. Nobody answers him right away. Mara's staring at the table like the answer's already there and she's just deciding how to say it out loud.
Jonah shifts. "I'm serious," he says. "Because if this is just gonna be us trading horror stories every weekend, I'm out."
"It's not," Mara says a little too quickly.
She looks up now. Calm and focused. Not dramatic about it. "We don't guess," she continues. "We don't spiral. We pick the one common thing that actually happened and see if it happens again."
My stomach tightens a little. I already know where this is going.
"The field," Jonah says slowly.
Mara nods. "The field."
I lean back in my seat. "That's… not exactly comforting guys."
"It's not supposed to be," she says. "It's the only place where all three of us were present. Same location. Same general time. Same anomaly."
Jonah rubs his jaw, looking like he's catching on to her brand of crazy. "You're saying we recreate it."
"I'm saying we try," she replies. "Same spot. Same time. We don't mess with anything else."
"And if it happens again?" I ask.
"Then it's repeatable."
"And if it doesn't?" Jonah asks.
"Then we learn something else," It's scary how she just casually has a reasonable answer for every part of her crazy idea. "Either way, it gives us data."
Data. Of course she'd call it that.
I glance down at the table, noticing a small scratch I never would've noticed if I didn't pay close enough attention. I don't like how steady she sounds. I especially don't like how much sense it makes.
"And what," I say, "we just stand there waiting for time to freak out?"
"No," again with the quick response. "We watch. We document. Phones on. Videos running. No improvising."
Jonah snorts. "You say that like improvising isn't kind of our thing."
She looks at him. "It can't be." That shuts him up.
I exhale slowly. "When?"
Mara doesn't hesitate. "Same time it happened before." That response made my pulse jump.
"You mean—"
"Yes," she says. "That exact window."
Jonah frowns. "You know the time?"
I open my mouth. Close it. Mara notices. Of course she does. But she doesn't push. Not yet.
"We don't have to do it today," Jonah says. "We could think about it. Make sure we're not—"
"Waiting won't make this smaller," Mara cuts in. "If something's broken, it's not going to politely pause while we get comfortable."
Silence settles again. I hate that she's right.
Jonah looks at me. "You in?" The question lands heavier than it should.
A part of me wants to say no. To suggest literally anything else. Go home. Pretend this is just stress, coincidence, and bad luck lining up in a row. But the image of the ball stuttering midair flashes back, clear as ever.
"Yeah," I finally let it out. "I'm in." I attach a condition to it. "On Monday, After school"
Mara picks up her phone. Starts typing. "I'm making a group chat. We share anything that happens. Any messages, any glitches, anything weird. No more handling this alone."
She sends the invite. My phone buzzes. Jonah's does too.
"No secrets," she says, looking at both of us. "Agreed?"
Jonah nods immediately. "Agreed."
Mara's eyes shift to me.
"Agreed," I say. Even though I'm already breaking that promise in my head. She doesn't need to know about the timestamp. Not yet. Not until I understand what it means.
"Good," Mara says. Stands up. "Monday then. 3:00 PM. Don't be late."
That's when she leaves without waiting for a response from either of us. Completely disregarding her beverage.
Jonah watches her go, then turns to me. "She's intense."
"Yeah."
"You trust her?"
Do I?
Up until this week, Mara was just that girl in the back of Mr. Hammond's class who actually cared about reaction rates. We'd never spoken. Didn't need to. And now, in the span of thirty minutes, she's somehow pulled more pieces together than Jonah and I managed in days. So yeah. Maybe I do trust her. Or maybe I just don't have a better option.
"I think she's trying to figure this out," that's the truth. "Same as us." Jonah doesn't look convinced. But he doesn't push it.
"Alright man. Tomorrow." He stands. Claps me on the shoulder. "Try not to bike into anyone on the way home."
I chuckle under my breath "No promises."
He too leaves and I'm left alone.
I pull out my phone and I get a notification from the group chat Mara just created.
Field Investigation – Monday 3:14 PM.
No new messages yet. Just the three of us, connected now. No secrets. Just like we agreed. I'll have to tell them everything come Monday.
Just as I'm about to put my phone away, it buzzes. Could be Jonah in the group chat responding to the opening text
Unknown number.
Of course it is. This time, I'm not spiraling like I did when the first message came through. No rationalizing. No pretending it's a prank I can ignore.
I open the message and my throat goes dry before I even read it.
Don't go back to the field tomorrow.
The words just sit there. Simple. Direct. Like they've been waiting for me to make exactly this mistake. Same warning. Same impossible sender.
Except this time, I can't ignore it. Because this time, I've already said yes. Already committed. Already made a promise to Mara and Jonah that we'd go back together and figure this out.