Chapter 3

Marco

I turned to my best buddy, Jake. "Watch this," I whispered. I sidled over to Rachel, who is Jake's cousin, and Melissa Chapman, the principal's daughter. Rachel is totally hot. And if she got to know me, I'm positive she'd love me. Melissa's cute, too, but can you believe it? Her dad is the principal! There is SO no way that I could go over to her house for dinner and stuff if we went out. Yuck.

"Hey, honeys. I'm leaving it up to you two to decide which one of you goes to the dance to morrow night with me. Go on, have a catfight. I know my lawn chair is around here somewhere. And my sunglasses. Let me just find them." I started opening my backpack.

"Get a life, Marco. Like I would ever willingly go anywhere with you!" Rachel growled.

"Ah. Beautiful and mean. I like you." I turned back to Jake. "When you get a minute, could you help me take this knife out of my chest?"

Whoa, deja vu! It seemed like I had said that somewhere before. That exact same thing.

I shrugged it off. Of course I'd said it before! Rachel's always been mean to me.

I had succeeded in shaking off the strange feeling when a name popped into my head. Jeanne.

"Huh?" I said out loud.

Melissa sighed. "Look, Marco, I tried to put it nicely, but obviously you don't get it. Neither of us are going to the dance with you."

"Aw, come on. I know you secretly think I'm cute!" I whined, distracted from the name Jeanne for the moment.

"No way!" Rachel cried. "I'd sooner go out with Jake, my own COUSIN, than date you!"

Then Rachel turned her attention back to something maybe fifty feet away. No, make that someone. Tobias Fangor! That's who she was looking at. His dad was famous. Actually, I had met him once before. My parents and his went to college together.

I started remembering meeting him. "Oh no, I have to get out of here," he had whispered. "Two hours are almost up." But wait. That had never happened. He'd never said that. I was sure of it. But it seemed like a real memory, like it had actually happened.

I felt a chill down my spine. Something insane was going on here.