Chapter 145 Give her a minute

Chapter 145 Give her a minute
"I thought we got him to the hospital on time."

Irene barely recognized her own voice as she stood in the empty hallway, staring at the floor. Her fingers were still wrapped tightly around the strap of her bag, but she couldn't feel the pressure anymore. Everything around her seemed distant, as though she were hearing the voices of the students through a wall. "I thought so too," she whispered, swallowing hard. "But he didn't make it."

Nelson's expression tightened immediately. He had been watching her ever since they heard the news, and he could tell she was barely holding herself together. "Irene, are you okay?" he asked carefully, taking a step closer to her. She shook her head, but before he could say anything else, she looked up at him with panic in her eyes. "I'm just..." Her voice broke, and she quickly looked away. "I need to be left alone."

"Irene."

"Please." She looked at him again, and this time there was desperation in her eyes. "I really want to be left alone." She didn't wait for him to answer. She turned around and hurried down the hallway, ignoring the curious glances of the students around them.

Nelson stood there for a moment, watching her disappear around the corner. Tori and Miles were still a few feet away, both of them looking just as confused and worried. "Give her a minute," Tori said quietly, though she didn't sound convinced that leaving Irene alone was the right thing to do. Nelson nodded, but his eyes remained fixed on the hallway. He knew Irene better than that. Something was wrong, and whatever it was, the news about Donald had clearly hit her harder than it should have.

Irene didn't stop until she reached the girls' bathroom at the end of the corridor. She pushed the door open, walked inside, and immediately locked herself in one of the stalls. Only then did she allow herself to breathe. Her back pressed against the wall as she slowly slid down until she was sitting on the floor, her knees drawn toward her chest.

Donald was dead.

The words continued repeating themselves inside her head, no matter how many times she tried to push them away. Donald was dead. Two weeks ago, she had watched him get shot. She had watched everyone panic, watched the teachers call for an ambulance, and watched the paramedics rush him away. She had spent the entire two weeks believing that something had changed because, according to the diary, she had been the one who shot him in the future.

But she hadn't shot him this time.

Someone else had.

And yet the ending was exactly the same.

A shaky breath escaped her lips as she covered her face with both hands. "What did I change?" she whispered. "What did I actually change?"

The diary had been the one thing she trusted, even when she didn't understand it. It had shown her what would happen, and she had spent months trying to prevent those things from happening.

Maybe she had been looking at everything the wrong way.

Maybe the diary hadn't been telling her what she could change.

Maybe it had been telling her what she couldn't.

The thought made her stomach twist.

A knock sounded against the bathroom door.

"Irene?" Nelson's voice came from the other side. "It's me."

She closed her eyes.

Of course he followed her.

"I said I wanted to be alone."

"I know." His voice remained calm. "I'm not coming inside. I'm just standing here."

She didn't answer.

For several seconds, neither of them said anything. Irene could hear the faint sounds of students moving through the hallway outside, but Nelson remained on the other side of the door. He didn't leave, and somehow that made her feel even worse.

"Why?" he finally asked.

Irene frowned. "Why what?"

"Why are you acting like this?" he asked. "Things aren't going the way you wanted them to go?"

Her eyes immediately filled with tears.

"Donald is dead." She muttered

"I know."

"No, you don't." Irene's voice rose before she could stop it. She quickly lowered it when she remembered where she was. "You don't understand. I thought we saved him. I thought getting him to the hospital meant he would survive."

Nelson was quiet for a moment. "You couldn't have known."

"I should have." She wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. "I should have known something was wrong. I should have realized that getting him to the hospital wasn't enough."

Thinking back about it, it seemed to good to be true.

"You can't blame yourself for someone else getting shot."

"But what if I can?" Irene asked, and the question came out so quietly that Nelson almost didn't hear it.

He leaned against the wall beside the bathroom door. "What are you talking about?"

Irene stared at the floor.

There were so many things she wanted to tell him, but she didn't know how to explain them. She couldn't tell him that she had seen Donald's death in a diary that had somehow appeared in her life. She couldn't explain that the diary belonged to her future self or that she had been trying to change a future that had already happened once.

And now she didn't even know if any of it had worked.

"What if I didn't change anything?" she whispered.

Nelson's expression changed.

"What?"

"What if everything I did was just a setup?" Irene asked, her voice trembling. "It feels like everything is just turning into the same thing. Maybe I'm not changing the future at all. Maybe I'm just following it."

"You're not making any sense."

"I know." She let out a broken laugh. "I know I don't."

Nelson didn't interrupt her.

Irene finally unlocked the stall door and stepped outside. She looked exhausted, her eyes red from the tears she had been trying to hold back. She walked toward the sinks but didn't look at herself in the mirror. She couldn't stand the thought of seeing how frightened she looked.

"I knew Donald would get shot," she said quietly. "I knew it before it happened. In the future, I was the one who shot him."

Nelson stared at her.

He didn't understand what she was saying, but didn't interrupt as well.

"But this time, I didn't." Irene's fingers tightened around the edge of the sink. "I made sure I wasn't the one holding the gun. I thought that would change everything. I thought if I changed that one thing, maybe he wouldn't die."

Because since Donald died, it meant that bastard was still out there. Waiting for her.

She finally looked at Nelson through the mirror.

"But he still did."

Nelson didn't immediately respond. He was clearly trying to process everything she had said. Irene had told him about the future before, but even he hadn't expected this. Until now, there had always been something they could point to and say, "That's different."

But Donald was still dead.

"What's your main concern?" Nelson asked.

Irene turned around to face him.

"What if I didn't change anything?" she asked again. "What if everything I did was just like a setup? It feels like it would just turn into the same thing no matter what I do."

Nelson took a few steps toward her. "Then we figure out what actually changed."

"How?"

"I don't know yet."

"That's the problem." Irene shook her head. "I don't know either. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking for anymore."

She had spent so much time believing that preventing the events in the diary would be enough. She had never considered what would happen if the future found another way to reach the same ending.

Maybe it wasn't about the person holding the gun.

Maybe it was about Donald dying.

If that was the case, then all her efforts had been meaningless.

"Irene." Nelson reached for her hand, and she didn't pull away. "You saved Tori."

She looked at him.

"You know that, right?"

"I know."

"No." He shook his head. "I don't think you do. You're so focused on Donald that you're forgetting what happened that night. Tori was supposed to die. You knew it, and you stopped it. She's alive because you changed something."

Really? Did she?

Irene blinked and looked up at Nelson. How could she tell him that Tori was never supposed to die?

Forcing a smile to her face, Irene nodded. "Yeah. I did." She couldn't keep explaining. He wouldn't get it. She just placed her head on his chest, listening to his heart beat.

As long as he was still alive.

She was willing to fight