The minute Malcolm's eyes opened; he somehow knew that the loops had not magically ended while he was sleeping. This intuition of sorts along with Malcolm's alarm clock going off a few moments later was what confirmed the start of the "new day."

Alright. The most important thing to do here is to not rise to anyone's bait. Don't yell at Reese if he calls you "Stain," don't talk back to Mom and Dad, and don't get mad at Dewey…for doing whatever Dewey thing he does. And be nice to your friends. Even if they start talking about stuff you don't care about. And ESPECIALLY DON'T TALK BACK TO MOM.

"Hey! Stain!" Reese said with a smirk which made Malcolm look up in surprise. "Are you going to get up or are you just going to keep sitting there with that stupid face of yours?"

Well. He had just woken up and already, Reese was testing his patience. Malcolm took a deep breath but said nothing and instead began to get ready for the day.

He got dressed quickly and walked into the kitchen before Lois could yell at him to get out of bed.

She was already packing lunches and Malcolm-trying to be more polite than usual- said, "Hey, Mom—I can help pack lunches today if you want me to."

Lois looked at him suspiciously. "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Malcolm said quickly. His voice was a little too defensive and he quickly calmed down. "I just think it would be helpful."

"Alright," Lois said slowly. "I already made the sandwiches, so just grab a piece of fruit and some water and put them inside." She was still giving him a hard stare, but Malcolm couldn't really blame her. He and his brothers rarely if ever did helpful things around the house for no reason. Heck even now, Malcolm had an ulterior motive for being so helpful.

He put three sandwiches into the lunch boxes and three apples as well along with the waters. The Wilkerson family wasn't exactly known for top notch food and so Malcolm admittedly had to hunt around for a bit to find fruit that wasn't likely to go bad in the next ten seconds. As it was, he even ended up throwing a few pieces of fruit away while he was packing lunch.

"Thank you, Malcolm," Lois said finally. "But I'm still keeping my eye on you."

"Of course," Malcolm said, and he managed to give his mom a—slightly forced— smile.

To his surprise, his mother managed to give him a small smile back.

He managed to get through breakfast without rising to anyone's bait—although Malcolm personally thought Reese was taking that as a challenge— and the ride to school wasn't all that bad.

Once Lois finally dropped him and Reese off, Malcolm decided to try and find his friends first. It took a while, and he had to deal with several more calls of "Stain!" And "Stainmaster!" But eventually he managed to track down Lloyd, Dabney, Stevie, Kevin, and Cynthia downstairs in one of the classrooms. There were a few other kids around and they all were gathered around a chess set. Ah, Malcolm must have stumbled across the "infamous" chess club. He knew that Lloyd and Dabney had joined, but he wasn't sure why Stevie and Cynthia were in the room.

Well, Stevie had a sort of passing interest in chess at times, but as far as Malcolm knew, Cynthia wasn't really that interested in that stuff. He wondered why she would even come, before a surprisingly harsh voice in his head said, Well unlike you, Cynthia is able to care about other people's interests. And now that Malcolm reflected on it more, he was fairly sure he remembered both Stevie and Cynthia joining the chess club as well. Even though they didn't seem to like the game as much as Lloyd and Dabney, they still joined the club. Yeah, because Stevie and Cynthia are nicer than you.

Malcolm frowned and pushed that thought aside. He didn't really know why Cynthia and Steve had popped into his head like that and he needed to focus on his new task rather than his own thoughts.

He opened his mouth to say something to his friends, but Cynthia saw him first. "Malcolm! You're here."

"Uh yeah," Malcolm said slowly. "I…just thought I'd try and see what you all were doing."

"Well, we decided to join the chess club!" Dabney said eagerly. "What about you Malcolm? Do you want to join us?"

Malcolm didn't really want to join. There was still a huge part of him that scoffed at the idea of doing something as nerdy as joining the chess club. And another part of him longed to be with the popular kids. But of course, his new nickname probably prevented that from ever happening and it seemed like Malcolm could only end his current "problem" by being as nice as possible. Joining the chess club seemed like another good step and so he said, "Sure, I'll join."

All his friends looked happy at this piece of news, and Cynthia gave his arm a brief pat and then Malcolm settled himself in for the first chess club meeting of the year.

The rest of the school day really went by smoothly. Well okay, he still had to deal with all the name calling, but this time he didn't try to drive Lois's car and as such his mom didn't have to ground him for all eternity.

By the time evening rolled around, Malcolm had helped set up the dinner table much to the suspicion of his parents and then he even offered to help Dewey with a homework assignment he had—much to the suspicion of Dewey. In all fairness, Malcolm really didn't do either of those things out of the kindness of his heart normally, but he was starting to be a little weirded out by their reactions. Was it really that hard to believe he could be genuinely helpful? He decided to push that thought out of his head for the time being and when he finally went to bed, it was with confidence that tomorrow would indeed be Saturday.

Tomorrow was indeed not a Saturday. Malcolm knew that because his alarm clock started beeping at six-thirty in the morning.

"Okay," Malcolm said slowly. "Okay. I just need to try again."

He got up and quickly got dressed and looked around for more helpful things he could do. There were several dirty clothes lying around the floor and so Malcolm took the time to pick them up and put them in the hamper, while Dewey and Reese began to wake up.

"What are you doing Stain?" Reese asked him in confusion as he rolled out of bed.

"Putting away the clothes," Malcolm said shortly. He was tempted to make a snide remark in response, but he held his tongue. He couldn't risk anything.

He got a couple more weird looks from his brothers, but Malcolm ignored them and walked into the kitchen where his mother was finishing putting out breakfast.

This time Malcolm helped his mom finish setting out breakfast and then he packed the lunches all by himself.

"You know Malcolm, you really should think about doing this more often," his mom said. "It's actually helpful."

Malcolm nodded, but his mind was on something else. Specifically, just how much more polite was he going to have to be today to get his Saturdays back?

For the rest of the day Malcolm attempted to be the politest person there was. He picked up trash when he saw it, he joined the chess club, he was attentive in class, and he once again tried to help his family members whenever he could at home. Lois took advantage of his helpful state by having him clean all the dishes after dinner and he did that with no complaint. Well, he complained a bit inside, but outside he said nothing.

Besides, if tomorrow turned out to be a Saturday—it would be worth it.

It was not Saturday the next day. This time Malcolm was once again starting to panic. Okay. Okay. Clearly, he wasn't doing something right.

Just try again Malcolm, you can do it. And so, he did. He helped set out breakfast and pack the lunches. He sat with his friends whenever possible and was a polite and attentive student. When he got back home, he continued to try and be polite at home too. It wasn't easy. Reese and Dewey were constantly testing his patience and his parents kept making him do various chores, but what other choice did he have?

Come on. Come on. You can do this.

The next day came by, and it was still Friday. By now, Malcolm was basically doing things on a whim. He felt as if he were on autopilot as he went through all the possible polite things he could do.

It kept repeating. Every day felt like the exact same. By now, Malcolm figured that he was on Loop Fourteen, but he was starting to lose track by now. Every time the alarm clock rang, he felt a new pang of despair. At this point, he was starting to become helpless of what he could do.
He barely registered when people were talking to him, which meant he couldn't be as polite and attentive anymore. That in turn also meant that Malcolm couldn't follow through on his plan to get the loops over with. But the more he kept reliving through the loops, the harder it became to follow through on his plan.

If anything, Malcolm was now just determined to give up altogether. Clearly his little plan of sorts was not working in the slightest.
No, he should try a few more times at least. Who knew? Maybe the seventeenth or the eighteenth loops would be the charm.

Malcolm really was not surprised when the seventeenth and eighteenth loops were indeed not the charm. If anything, Malcolm was becoming increasingly sarcastic as he went through the days, and he was sure that it was doing nothing to help him in the end.

However, it was also becoming harder and harder to care anymore. What was the point of trying so hard anyway? No matter what he did, it just wasn't working. If anything, it felt like things were just getting worse and it didn't seem like his efforts were getting him anywhere. He obviously wasn't fixing anything, because in every loop—his family and sometimes his friends—seemed suspicious of his helpful gestures. How could he change his situation if most people in his life did not think he was capable of it?

On the day of the nineteenth loop, Malcolm finally decided that he had enough. He once again pretended to be sick to stay home from school. This time though, he had no intention of watching Groundhog Day again.

No, instead this time, he was going to do whatever he wanted to do. His parents weren't home and so that meant Malcolm could simply just leave the house. He didn't know where he would go. Maybe he'd go down to the arcade, or he'd go and grab some pizza. Or heck, maybe he would even visit Francis.
That is not a good idea, Malcolm told himself. But Malcolm was no longer listening to his conscience. After all, listening to it hadn't exactly done him any favors so far had it? No, it had not. Since he was now on Loop Nineteen out of who knew how many loops, it was becoming apparent that his plan to be "polite and friendly" was far from working.

Besides, if the other loops were any indication—Malcolm was guaranteed a do over, wasn't he? So far, he hadn't experienced real consequences. Yeah but…

Malcolm ignored his conscience once again and instead started searching around the room for any sort of cash he could find. Yeah, it was time for Malcolm Wilkerson's day off.

I...really don't have an excuse for how long it took for me to update this story again lol. In my defense things like real life, writer's block, interest in other fandoms, etc took over and I wasn't able to work on this story as much as I would have liked. That being said, I wrote a couple more chapters during my hiatus, so this fic is technically written up through Chapter Ten. However, I will need to take some more time to properly outline the final chapters(this story will likely be 14-15 chapters) before I start posting anymore chapters. I have no idea when the next update will be, but I am determined to see this fic to its conclusion xD.

Thank you to everybody who has read this story so far. As always, reviews are appreciated :)