Another week and a half passed without Phoebe Spencer admitting to who had hurt her on the day that her older brother just happened to come home from juvenile detention. Now that she was safely tucked away at her grandparents’ house until Curt’s trial, which was still just over a month away, she seemed content to let Curt be her parents’ problem.

Not that their mother, Lanie Spencer, ever had much to say or do with either of her children. But their father was a different story; at least when it came to one of his children doing something that embarrassed him in some way. And the things Curt had done, up to and including making his other child too afraid to live under the same roof, were beyond embarrassing. Needless to say, that week and a half did not go well for Curt at all. But as his sister had told him on the first night of his house arrest: You know what they say about karma.

Through that twelve days, Curt’s father did seem to keep him in check, in his own special way. But now it was the fifteenth of November, and all of those affected by Curt’s violence were more than aware of what that day was: The day Curt’s cast would finally be removed. And then one couldn’t help wondering how things would go between Curt and his father after that. But more importantly, his victims all couldn’t stop their very real fears about whether the cast being removed would cause Curt to come seeking some sort of retribution; house arrest or not.

That day, Curt was allowed a window of two hours to get to the doctor’s office, get the cast removed, and then return home before triggering the police response to him being off his parents’ property. Moreover, one of his parents were to accompany him on his time away from the house. However, Curt being eighteen, that one may have been a little harder to enforce.

His mother did accompany him though. However, once he was safely in the doctor’s waiting room, Lanie told her son she would be at the cafe across the street and to text her the moment his appointment was over. Curt agreed, though watched her with narrowed eyes as she left the office.

It was less than an hour later when he returned from seeing the doctor, his right arm his own once again. He then retrieved the spare set of car keys from his pocket, and headed out of the doctor’s office wordlessly. He glared at the cafe his mother was spending his appointment in, and then got into the driver’s seat with a slam of the door, pulling away from the curb and the cafe where she waited on that text that he never sent at all.

As he waited at the next intersection, it was Curt who received a text instead. He groaned, assuming it was his mother finally emerging from her brunch and noticing the car was gone. Though when he looked down at the phone, the message was actually from his lawyer. It simply read, “a video has come to light. We need to speak, immediately.”

Meanwhile, at the high school that day, the students were required to attend a mandatory pep rally in the gymnasium; even if they had less than no interest in any sort of school sporting event, and decidedly no school pride or ‘pep.’ And this was of course the category Sky and Star and their friends fell into. But nevertheless, there they were, sitting in the bleachers all looking less than interested in the upcoming rally.

The administrators involved gathered at the front of the room near their chairs and the microphone, waiting for the cheerleaders to enter the gym to start off the event. The athletes involved also readied themselves in the locker rooms while the majority of students who had almost as little interest in the event as the four soul-mates just socialized in the stands, waiting to try to pretend to care once the assembly began. In actuality, all ninety-nine percent of them cared about was not having to be in class, and therein lied their only source of enthusiasm and ‘pep’ for said rally.

Though that assembly never did start on that fifteenth day of November. Instead, the first shots rang out, coming from the girls’ locker room, where the cheerleaders had all been getting ready. And that’s when the panic began in the gymnasium.

Back in the locker room, those first few shots cleared a few random girls out of his way as he made his way toward his actual targets. The first he zeroed in on was Chloe. The bullet that entered her chest ending her life much more efficiently than those pills ever did was quickly followed by the one that found Sarah, who had been next to her, as she usually was.

Through the screams, he found his way to Georgia, smirking at her as the next bullet pierced her skull. And last was Brandi, who had run to hide in the showers, cowering and crying and screaming, just like she and so many other girls had done upon waking up with him on top of them over the last three years. He just gave her a cold glare, as her next scream was cut short as his next bullet shattered her skull then as well, putting an end to all of the girls and their protests, once and for all.

As he moved to leave the locker room, Regan peered out from behind a set of lockers, tears streaming down her face, “please, you don’t have to...” but before the sentence left her lips, the next bullet entered her chest, ending whatever reasoning she thought she could even use with him.

Then he moved out of that locker room and back toward the boys’, reloading as he went. There the scattering, panicked athletes, most of whom were his former friends and teammates, caught the next hail of bullets. The last to go was Scott, who also tried to speak, “man, please...” and then the bullet ended his words as well.

That was when he moved into the gym itself, and began firing shots into the crowd scrambling for the doors. He took another moment to reload again, then fired at the administrators who were also panicking as they tried to herd the students safely out of the gym. The first of his next set of bullets found their targets in Miss Burke, then Assistant Coach Mathis, then the head coach, then Nickels, and the Principal. Then whatever was left in that clip took out any other faculty present before he reloaded again. His eyes then began searching the clamoring, screaming teenagers trying desperately to escape the large room.

That was when he easily found his black-clad final targets, who were still trying to even get out of the stands among the rest of the screaming and crying students. “Freaks!” he shouted as all their terror-filled eyes turned at the sound of his voice.

As they tried to force down their own panic long enough to act, the next shot left the gun. The bullet cut through the side of Alana’s head, as blood and skull covered those nearest to her, including Crista. The next shot then entered Crista’s arm and pierced it on it’s way through her ribs and into her chest as she collapsed next to Alana, Star’s scream and sob echoing the shot as Crista’s blood covered her.

The next one he took aim at was Kole, and that bullet cut through his neck, almost severing his head from his shoulders as his own blood splattered Sky, who had been next to him.

Then he took aim at Star, blowing Sky a kiss as he prepared to pull the trigger once more.

That was when Sky’s desperation finally outweighed his panic and shock and grief . His hand already gripping Star’s arm tightly through the chaos, it took a split second before he pulled her with him to that silver room, just as that next bullet had left the gun.

Both of them covered in the blood of their soul-mates, they both collapsed to that silver floor in sobs, not even processing the fact that their own lives were still theirs, for the moment. All they knew was that they had lost the other half of their soul, and that crippled them with that same shock, grief and despair as they continued to sob into each other’s blood covered arms, trying desperately to decide how either of them could ever go back there, and go on after that loss.

It felt like hours that they stayed in that silver room, sobbing into each other’s arms. Though, when they were once again able to form any rational thought at all, they knew that time was currently stopped back there amid that horror that they had barely escaped from. And they knew that if they did what they always did, and returned to the same place and time that they had departed from; that it would only be to return to that same horror, and worse, as that next bullet would be ending Star’s life as well, the second they went back.

Sky’s tear choked voice finally left his throat after those hours of grief, “this can’t be what all this was for! This can’t be what was meant to happen! We can’t be expected to go back to a world where he took all of those lives; their lives” he finished as he bit back another sob, he and Star still holding each other close.

“Our lives” she added in her own hoarse whisper, “if we go back to that moment, it’ll only be to die. To let him kill us too.”

“All of those lives can’t be worth less than Curt’s! It can’t be how it was all supposed to end!” Sky repeated in another emotion-choked whisper as he squeezed her closer still.

Star then looked up into his eyes with another sniffle, “so, this isn’t what you want, then?” she made herself ask.

“What?” he asked her with shock.

“To let it all end, finally” she forced herself to ask through another sob, terrified of his answer.

Sky bit back his own sob at the possibility that she could truly believe that he wanted things to end so badly that he would let all those people’s lives end with his. “Not like this” he told her as he pulled her close again.

Star then squeezed him tight with some small bit of relief at hearing that Sky wasn’t that far gone, and didn’t want to die that badly after all. Never mind how grief-stricken they both were right then; there was that little sliver of hope that she had always wished to see in him, through all three of their shared lives.

The two then took another long moment to try and compose themselves and formulate some sort of plan to deal with all the horror they had just witnessed. Star then spoke again, “so we have to go back, again” she stated softly as she looked up at him once more.

“Back?” Sky asked her warily.

“Back to before what happened in school today. We have to rewind again. We can’t let this be the way it all ends. We just can’t” she confirmed.

“So we’re going back to save Kole and Crista?” Sky stated with a shaky breath.

“And Alana, and all the rest of them. I mean, what other choice do we have? We either go back and save them, or we just go back to die” she repeated once more.

Sky swallowed a bit, “if we succeed, if we do save them...” he just shook his head.

“What?” Star asked worriedly.

“You know what Kole will say if we go back to save him and Crista” Sky told her in a near whisper.

“Thank you?” she offered with a scoff.

Sky sighed heavily, “more like, why didn’t we go back to save Sammi and his baby too? You know that’s exactly what he’ll think. He’ll hate us for not giving him back what he lost too” he whispered.

“You don’t know that” Star stated as she looked down.

“Star” Sky stated.

“We can’t go back and relive those two years again though. We can’t have another two years of memories to try and stay sane through, Sky. We can’t just wait to see how bad we destroy our lives when we relive those two years again. We just can’t go back that far. The three lives we have now are hard enough to keep straight. Hard enough to deal with.”

“I’m not the one you’d have to convince.”

Star sighed again, “if we tried to save Sammi... then who knows what Kole’s life would be then? Who knows what ours would be without him, then? Not to mention, everything else I just said. It would fuck things up even worse. I can just imagine the nightmare we’d turn that next life into. We can’t go back that far, not again, Sky.”

“Again, I’m not the one you need to convince” Sky told her sadly. He then took a breath, “so, we just go back to this morning, not any further. We stop all this from happening, however we can, no matter what it is we have to do to stop it” he confirmed with her.

“Yes, we only change today. Just today. Any way we can. We can’t let them all be dead for the sake of that prick. We just can’t.”

Sky took another breath, “so we save the entire school today, and tomorrow we figure out how to not make Kole hate us for doing so. Sound about right?”

Star simply sniffled and sighed sadly again, but nodded, and took his hand.