he repeated, and my heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, and frontal lobe joined the strike. “I like you, Ellie.”
I bit my lip to keep the grin from leaping off my face.
“Although,” he added a moment later, “you do have dreadful taste in music.”
THE THIRD MONDAY
The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes
7:03 a.m.
I wake with a start and dive for my phone, knocking over a cup of water on my nightstand. It spills all over the pile of textbooks and paper next to my bed.
Full cup of water.
Textbooks and English paper next to my bed.
Did it happen? Did the day start over again?
I open Instagram and check for my picture. The selfie I posted just before I went to sleep last night.
It’s not there.
I check the clock. One minute until 7:04 a.m. That’s when the text messages come. That’s when Tristan tells me he can’t stop thinking about last night and wants to talk today. That’s when I know for sure that I’ve been given a third chance to fix this.
I count the seconds, feeling my grasp around the phone tighten with each passing moment. There’s a swarm of agitated butterflies flitting around in my stomach. There’s a thousand-pound gorilla sitting on my chest. There’s—
Bloop-dee-dee-bloop-bloop-bing!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
I spring out of bed, holding the phone high over my head as I do a victory lap around my bedroom.
I click on the message and everything around me gets a hundred shades brighter.
Tristan: I can’t stop thinking about last night.
Wait for it. Wait for … it.
Bloop-dee-dee-bloop-bloop-bing!
Tristan: Let’s talk today.
There it is! It’s real. This is actually really truly definitely happening. For once, me, Ellison Sparks, and the epic, ever-expanding universe are officially on the same side. Our agendas are aligned. Our visions are one and the same.
Today is victory day. Today is where it all turns around. If I succeed today—which I fully intend on doing—tomorrow will be Tuesday. I’m sure of it. I made the wish. I asked for another chance to set things right. So once I succeed in doing that, life will go on and Tristan and I will be together forever.
Whoa, what a story to tell our grandchildren.
Well, I almost messed it all up and Grandpa almost left me. If I hadn’t been given a magical opportunity to set things right, you guys never would have been born!
Now, I just need a plan. A solid, bulletproof plan.
And when all else fails, there’s only one place to turn.
I sit down at my laptop and type “How to stop a boy from breaking up with you” into a Google search.
The first result is a YouTube video of an interview with someone named Dr. Louise Levine. I click the link. It’s a segment from some morning show a few months ago.
“Welcome back!” the interviewer trills to the camera. “Today on the show, we have author and male behavior psychologist Dr. Louise Levine.”
I lean forward in my chair.
Male behavior psychologist?
I didn’t even know they had those! This is exactly what I need.
“Dr. Levine has written a very popular book called The Girl Commandments, which teaches women how to hold on to a man. Dr. Levine, won’t you tell us a little bit about your new book?”
The camera pans to the author in the adjacent chair. She’s a polished woman in her early forties, dressed in a red skirt suit with matching lipstick and high heels. Her hair is so big, it looks like it’s been glued on.
“Of course,” Dr. Levine says, “and thanks for having me on the show. The idea behind The Girl Commandments is very simple. Women, as a gender, have lost sight of our femininity, our special womanly flower. The very thing that makes us desirable to men. Women in the fifties and sixties—our grandmothers and great-aunts—they knew what it took to keep a man. They knew it wasn’t easy and that it required effort every single day.”
I nod emphatically, drinking in this woman’s words like I haven’t had a drop of water in weeks.
“The Girl Commandments teaches young women through basic, easy-to-follow, step-by-step rules—or commandments—that utilize the very same tactics women have been relying on successfully for centuries. You know, in our grandmothers’ generation, divorce wasn’t an option. You fell in love with a man and you lived happily ever after. There was none of this back-and-forth, push-and-pull, on-again, off-again, power-struggle relationship drama. Women knew where their true power lay and they used it to their advantage.”
This is sheer brilliance. Why am I just learning about this now?
“So tell us,” the interviewer says, “what makes