Chapter 3

The world came back into focus with the piercing wail of a siren.

I was on my knees on the grass, I didn't remember falling. Around me, people were crying, shouting, pointing.

But all I could see was the blue hoodie, now still and broken on the pavement.

I failed.

The thought was a hollow echo in my skull. I came back in time, I had this impossible, miraculous chance, and I failed. What was the point? Why was I sent back just to watch her die again?

Grief and despair washed over me, so total and consuming that I thought it might actually kill me. My body shook with violent, silent sobs. I had failed her. My best friend. I had watched her die.

Police officers were moving the crowd back, setting up a perimeter with yellow tape. It was the exact same scene as before, only this time I was at the center of it.

A campus official, a woman in a crisp suit, knelt beside me. "Young lady, are you alright? Did you know her?"

I couldn't answer. I just stared at the yellow tape, the symbol of my powerlessness.

They led me away, to a small, sterile office in the administration building. They asked me questions I couldn't answer. When was the last time I saw her? Did she seem depressed? Did she say anything?

It was all a blur. The only thing I could think was, I failed.

Then, through the thick fog of my grief, a single, sharp thought cut through.

The journal. The phone.

In the first timeline, I found them two days after her death. The university had already cleaned out her room, but they' d missed the hiding spot.

This time, her death had just happened. No one had been in our room yet. No one had sanitized the scene.

The phone and the journal were still there. Under the floorboard.

A new feeling pushed through the grief, something cold and hard and clear.

It was determination.

I couldn' t save her life. I had to accept that horrible, impossible truth. But I could still get justice for her.

The first time, they took everything. They built a narrative of a troubled girl and closed the case in a day. They erased her, and when I found the evidence, they sent a man to take it from me and bash my head against a bed frame.

Not this time.

This time I knew what they were going to do.

I remembered the efficiency of the cleanup. The way Dean Peterson' s eyes had swept the crowd. He wasn' t a grieving administrator, he was a man managing a crisis. He was complicit. He was part of the cover-up.

I had to get to that room before they did.

I stood up, my legs unsteady. The woman who had been sitting with me looked up in surprise.

"I need to go back to my room," I said, my voice flat.

"Honey, I don' t think that' s a good idea right now..."

"It' s my room too," I said, my voice gaining strength. "I need my things."

She hesitated, then nodded slowly. "Of course. We' ll have someone escort you."

I knew what that meant. They wanted to watch me. They wanted to make sure I didn' t take anything they didn' t want me to have.

The man who had attacked me in the other timeline-the memory of his face, blurry in the dark, flashed in my mind. The feeling of his hand over my mouth. He was real. The threat was real. Getting that journal was not just about finding evidence, it was dangerous. He worked for them. For the university. For the people who wanted Chloe' s death to remain a simple, tragic suicide.

But this time, I was ready. I knew their playbook.

I would get the evidence. I would hide it. And I would burn them to the ground.

The grief was still there, a giant, gaping hole in my chest. But now, it had a purpose. It was fuel.

Chloe was gone. But I was still here. And I would make damn sure they all knew her name.