GROUNDHOG DAY mixed with SIXTEEN CANDLES and a splash of DOCTOR WHO. A boy forever reincarnated as himself meets his soulmate for the 200th time, but can she solve the puzzle and break the curse to make herself his last?
*****
Martha Beckett's life...
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October 25, 1994
Martha hated metaphors. She found them condescending. The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Giving Tree, Lord of the Flies – adults hiding medicine in children's pudding, all with a self-satisfied wink.
But she couldn't help herself as she sat at the window sill of a strange bedroom looking out at the falling snow. The flakes were light and wide and fell slower than Martha thought precipitation could. She found one at her level and tracked its descent. It fell without agency, at the mercy of gravity, until landing on concrete and melting away.
From the bottom of the stairs, her father called, "Marty!"
Martha found another snowflake and watched as it suffered the same fate.
"Marty!"
And another. Martha knew she wasn't a snowflake, but she felt as helpless.
"Marty, please! I don't want you to be late on your first day!"
She stood up and plodded through and around scattered, unopened boxes. To avoid 'settling in,' she'd made a silent pledge to take as long as possible to unpack. Blank and stark, the room would never be hers.
With a desperate smile, her father stood at the bottom of the stairs. In his right hand, he held her backpack and in his left, a ridiculously bloated, white winter coat. "I'm sure it's not going to be that bad. You're a friendly girl. You'll make friends. So put this on. We have to go."
Martha took the coat and put it on slowly, maintaining as blank an expression as she could hold. All her father wanted was for her to be happy. She knew this because he loved to say it. And so, for the foreseeable future, Martha was determined to be miserable.
They stepped out into the snow. It was cold, but Martha began to suspect that the coat was an overreaction. Its down was exceptional at trapping her body heat and she could already feel sweat forming.
"Some weather, huh?" her father said as he unlocked the car. "According to the weatherman, it's pretty anomalous. The last time it snowed this early was 1977."
Was he actually talking about the weather? After dragging her half-way across the country, ripping her from her school and her friends in the middle of her junior year with barely a week's notice, he wanted to chit-chat about the weather? Yes, it was snowing in October. Hilarious! It was probably 70 degrees in Pasadena. But she was in Illinois and it was snowing... in October.
Martha wanted to tell him how angry she was – that the move felt like a betrayal. She wanted to tell him how frightening it felt to be dropped in a new school in a strange town that might as well have been an alien planet.
But if I told him any of this... He might get the wrong idea. He might think they were 'working through things' and she didn't want to give him the satisfaction.
