Page 30 of 16 Forever

“Lincoln is your age,” Mom said. She gestured for me to speak, as if that was going to somehow solve this.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sixteen.”

“You—” Mom tried to speak, but her voice got too wobbly to continue.

“You have a condition, Carter,” Dad said. “You can’t age past sixteen. This is your third loop, your fourth time having this birthday.”

You burst into laughter. You actually threw your head back before slapping the table. “You guys decided to celebrate me turning sixteen with a time-loop prank? Giving Lincoln a new haircut and makinghimlook sixteen? That’s so bad it might actually be good.”

“It really isn’t a prank,” Dad said.

“Ha!”

As you can imagine, things went on like that for a while.

We were both late for school.

Our parents had already prepared for the next part, following the playbook they’d crafted the year before with our principal Mr. Nguyen: You would return to Ms. Destin’s sophomore homeroom in order to have one familiar element in your school life. Lucky for me, I was not in that homeroom. You and I had only one class together that year—geometry—and thank god, because otherwisebothof us may not have made it to age seventeen.

I’d known for a while that I was a better student than you, and I’d known for a while that our parents knew it too. They’d made it annoyingly clear with comments to you about applying yourself like your brother does, about not being so afraid of failure that you didn’t try at all.

I remember the first time that happened. I was in third grade and you were in sixth. I came home with a hundred on a math test, and Mom and Dad were so psyched.

“See?” Mom said to you. “You could do this too, Carter—you study, you do the work, you get a hundred. It’s not hard.”

I was stupidly proud in that moment. Here, finally, was something I did better than you. In my mind, you were untouchable in so many ways—first and foremost by, like, being a charming, funny person who had a fearless ease when interacting with others. I could never even begin to fathom how to do that. So I actually thoughtyoumight be excited about my score too.

“Wow,” you said, sarcasm tendrils creeping like vines into your words. “Way to go, Linky.” Then you flicked my ear really hard and laughed.

So, now, being in the same grade, doing the same work, even sharing the same car—Dad’s old Toyota Corolla, the one you named Rex—I knew it wouldn’t go well.

And it didn’t. You gave up trying in school very early in that loop, instead choosing to channel your energy into being a perpetually annoying brother.

“Cool if I drive?” I asked one night in May when we went together to pick up dinner from this nearby Thai place.

“Nah, sorry,” you said, holding out the key and unlocking the car. “Older brother gets dibs.”

“Right,” I said. “But, I mean, technically, Iamolder now.”

“Dude. Are you seriously gonna play that card? I have a condition.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, even though I didn’t see what the big deal was if I drove the seven minutes to Lucky Thai.

“You drive like a grandma anyway,” you said as we got into the car. “No offense.”

I knew it was true—I was and am an overly cautious driver—but it still felt dickish to call it out like that. And I did take offense.

I silently stared out the window as we pulled out of thedriveway, thinking maybe we could avoid talking.

“Do you have a crush on Teddy Landerham?” you asked, this grin in your voice.

Apparently talking was unavoidable.

“Why?” I asked. “I don’t even know if he’s gay.”

“I know, I know. It just seems like you guys have a good connection. When you’re talking at lunch.”

“Oh.” My neck heated up, secretly thrilled that you had picked up on this. Ididhave a crush on Teddy Landerham, but it was too risky to straight up tell you that. Secret-keeping had never been your thing. “Maybe. He’s cool, but... I don’t know.”