Page 2 of Back to You
Another pitch deck,is my first panicked thought, my chest constricting with dread.Am I at a business conference?
“... will be worth fifty percent of your final mark. It will cover all the content for the first semester and include essay-style questions, and it will be—I truly cannot stress thisenough, because every year I say this and still every year someone forgets and shows up with a binder—a closed bookexam,” a man standing at the lectern says, his voice projecting through the brightly lit space.
I recognize him. He’s my professor from my junior year economics course. He docked two marks off my midsemester test and I attempted to comfort myself by looking up his bad reviews on Rate My Professors, though I felt too guilty to leave one of my own.
This isn’t a conference—it’s alecture.
I look around slowly, at all the students taking notes, at my own laptop lying open to a fresh document with the date typed out neatly in the corner ... I blink. Read the date again. It’s the same day as today, but it’s fromthree years ago.
A low buzzing builds inside my head.
Am I in purgatory? Good god, is purgatory really just an economics lecture?
My breathing quickens with panic—
My breathing.
I pause. I draw in a deep breath. Release. Feel the pull of oxygen, the way it fills my lungs, my throat, completely unobstructed. My last few moments rush back to me, the terrifying sensation of choking, helpless, the heave of my ribs. I can’t be dead if I’m breathing like a normal, living person, can I?
As the professor goes on about the rubric and the attendance requirements, everything starts to feel eerily familiar. Somehow, I’ve traveled back in time. Back to the beginning of my first semester of junior year.
“Now, to give you a short preview of the topics this semester—you would have come across many of these in previous years, I’d be worried if you hadn’t, but we’ll be delving a little deeper.” The professor taps somethingon the keyboard; when the projected PowerPoint doesn’t react right away, he taps it again, twice, and ends up skipping the slide. He quickly doubles back. “Ah, yes—so here we have RBC versus Keynesian models, labor market dynamics, supply-side economics, and nonmonetary models of macroeconomics ...”
The buzzing noise builds.
It’s ridiculous that what felt like minutes ago, I was choking to death on a chocolate almond, and now, impossibly, I’m stuck in a class I barely survived the first time around to learn macroeconomics yet again. The slides blur in and out of focus, the graphs and tiny numbers swimming together. All my adrenaline leaves in a rush, and without warning, a loud sob breaks through my throat. Loud enough to be heard throughout the entire lecture hall.
The professor stops talking.
Everyone else swivels around in their seats to stare at me.
My face feels very hot and raw, but I can’t stop crying. The tears just keep trickling down my cheeks, even as I try to wipe them away, to hide behind my hair.
“Are you all right back there?” the professor asks. He sounds more irritated about being interrupted than concerned about my well-being.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I choke out. I make the mistake of glancing at the slides again, the words “mechanics of central bank operations” hanging there like a threat, and another sob bubbles up from my lips. I have this feeling of surreality, like a hyper-vivid dream. It isn’t just the overwhelming sense of déjà vu; it’s like I’m being reacquainted with reality itself, with my own body. Idied. I swear I died back in that office, and yet here I sit, my heart thumping, impossibly alive, all while my old professor turns his attention back to the slide.
“All right, quiet down then. Make sure you take notes on consumer spending—you’ll be doing a group assignment ...”
By instinct or muscle memory, I actually start copying down the slides before I stop and realize I’ve taken these notes before. Three years ago, I took the notes in careful detail and did the group assignment and got an A-plus and it led me to—what? To my Big Four job, to giving up sleep, to updating the same pitch deck over and over again, to choking to death on a chocolate almond with nobody around to watch me die.
Maybe I’ve gone back in time for a reason.
Maybe this is my second chance. A chance to do things differently.
“Okay, I can’t do this,” I blurt out.
The professor blinks. “I beg your pardon?” he says.
“It’s just—it’ssoboring.”
Someone sitting in the row behind me lets out a muffled breath of laughter, and somehow, before I even turn around, I know who it is. I would know that sound anywhere.
Luke Blythe.
He’s there, right there. His dark, rumpled hair, his striking profile, the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. Dimples, flashing. Our eyes lock and recognition flickers over his face. He’s still laughing. There’s no mockery in it, though; he looks amused by my outburst, while everyone else looks horrified.
The last time I saw him before I died, he was, unsurprisingly, on the cover of a sports magazine.One of the Fastest Rising Stars in Track and Field, the headline read. Anyone would’ve thought the photo was enhanced, but honestly, I thought the photo didn’t do him justice. Nothing compares to seeing him in real life, in motion.
