Tuesday was not much better than Monday. Curt still had not returned to school, however, the other students were still making life unbearable for any of those responsible for Curt’s arrest; Sky especially. By the time Sky walked Crista to their now shared seventh period study hall, he was at his breaking point. He and Crista stopped at the door of the classroom where Alana gave them a sad, sympathetic smile which Sky did not even acknowledge.

“I’m just gonna go out to the car. I can’t do this anymore” Sky mumbled to Crista as he began to turn away from the classroom doorway.

“What?” Crista asked, “what about always staying in twos?”

“Curt’s not here, and you’re probably better off not being next to me right now, anyway” he returned in the same mumble as he turned again, only to have Crista catch him by the arm.

“I’m defenseless without you or Star, or at least Kole. You know that, Sky” she told him sadly.

“But they’re being worse to me. Most of them don’t even care about what Curt did to the rest of you, now” Sky argued, though weakly.

“If you’re skipping, so am I” Crista told him simply as she turned to follow him.

“You really wanna be next to the one of us who’s getting it the worst of all?” he simply shook his head at the idea, but made no move to stop her from following him out to his car.

After sitting behind those tinted windows for several silent minutes, Crista spoke again, “shouldn’t we be keeping Alana close too? I mean, she did testify also.”

“She’s the one Curt raped in my last life. I tried to save her. I was too late. I ended up locked in a lab where they would beat Star to make me cooperate. Then we went back and re-lived the last three years all over again. And Alana’s not the one who got raped this time. I’ve done my part; more than” he added the last sentence nearly inaudibly, not even turning to see Crista’s shocked expression at him mentioning just a few of the terrible things that happened in he and Star’s last attempt at life.

“He raped Alana in the last life?” she asked after another moment.

“Yes, and he tried to rape Star too. I at least saved her. Though the way I had to is what landed us in that lab, so” he just shrugged and stared out his window, his lack of hope painfully obvious.

“And what did he do in the life before that?” Crista couldn’t stop herself from asking a moment later.

Sky sighed heavily, glad she was only asking about Curt, as he doubted he could bear to explain the rest of that life right now. “In that life, he tried to rape me back when we were your age; but Star managed to save me, that time. But he held a grudge, to put it mildly” he sighed before continuing, “in that life, everyone thought Star and I were actually twins. That time he waited a few months after she stopped him, then he just forced us to have sex at gunpoint while his friends filmed us; so he could show the world the video of me fucking my so-called twin sister. Sad that that was actually less horrible than what he did the next two times around; and we killed he and his friends for it that time” he finished in a near whisper.

“Gunpoint?” Crista whispered back, then added, “and you killed him? Wouldn’t that have made that life nearly perfect then? Aside from the whole gunpoint part I guess.”

“After that, other people, the ones who covered up what we did to Curt and his friends; they did horrible things to us because of what we were. Really horrible. So even in a world without Curt, our lives were still so terrible we had to escape the only way we knew how. Well, one of the only ways we knew how” Sky added the last bit more quietly as he looked down at the wrist that used to hold that scar.

“One of?” Crista whispered as she looked at him sadly as he then went back to just staring out that window.

“In that life, I tried to kill myself when I was fourteen, after I was offered fake proof that Star really was my sister. We eventually found out we weren’t really related, but then everything else happened. So that time, we just erased everyone’s memories of what we were, and started life over again at seventeen” he sighed softly, “only we missed the last three years of that new life, and in it a lot of people still thought we were related, and one of those people caught us making love, our very first time together in that life, when we were fourteen” another sigh, “she told everyone what the alleged twins were doing and that’s the time Star tried to kill herself. I found her, then did the same. Then through some cruel cosmic joke, we both lived, only we never found out about those memories til three years after all the damage had already been done. That’s when he tried to rape Star and did rape Alana. We used our powers to try to stop him, and got caught. Which is how we ended up in the lab that we had to rewind life to escape from. But this time we managed to live those three years, and not make any of those mistakes this time. Then Curt did... what he did; and here we are.”

“And now, instead of just resetting things, you want to kill yourself again?” Crista asked as she sniffled, moving to place a hand on his leg.

“Resetting things doesn’t work. I think we’ve proven that” Sky allowed another pained breath, “of course, it seems like killing ourselves doesn’t either. Three attempts, three fails” he scoffed.

“You didn’t answer me though” Crista pressed through another sniffle.

“If he had raped you, and then people were saying the things to you that they’re saying to me...” Sky just shook his head and left the sentence there.

Crista pushed back a few more tears as she thought on his words. She then finally managed, “I don’t think I could stand being in this world without the three of you. Any of the three of you” she added.

“That’s just our DNA talking” Sky dismissed her words, though couldn’t bear to look back at the sound of her tears, knowing that just seeing someone he cared about crying because of his pain would be enough to start his own tears again, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to stop them.

After a few more moments of trying to stop her own tears, Crista finally dug through her little spike and glitter-covered coffin-purse and retrieved her phone. She sniffled once more before sending off a text and moving her watery eyes to her own window.

“Suicide hot-line take texts now?” Sky scoffed as she finished her text.

“Not exactly” she returned, though with barely any volume.

Only another couple of minutes went by before Star and Kole appeared outside the school. They looked at one another worriedly before making their way to Sky’s car, where Kole tapped at the driver’s side window as Sky gave Crista a slightly accusing look, sighed, and opened the door to allow Kole to get into the back seat as Crista did the same for Star on the passenger side.

Kole spoke first, “so, what exactly did ‘S.O.S - come to Sky’s car’ mean? After all, I should be in gym with an asshole teacher and a bunch of ever so confused homophobic pricks right now. See the kind of shit I’m missing?” he asked Crista with a touch of sarcasm to hide his worry.

“Really, Crista?” Sky looked at her again.

Then Star interjected, “seriously, what’s going on?”

Crista looked back at them sadly, “it’s terrible in there. Sky can’t take another day of this shit. We have to do something” she half-explained to them in a pleading manner.

Kole then looked at Sky, “we talking quitting school or...?”

Then Star, knowing Sky all too well, added, “or quitting life?” she whispered worriedly as they all turned their eyes to Sky then.

Sky then let out a heavy sigh, his dark eyes moving back to the window, “I always say that the only reason I’m not dead is because of what it would do to Star. But seriously, Star, why do we keep doing this at all?”

“Doing what?” Star whispered.

“This. Life. We keep trying and keep failing, and it just gets worse and worse. I mean, why? What’s the point? It just gets more and more horrible every second we keep forcing ourselves to go on. I mean, just...why?” he repeated, voice breaking. Of course, then Star’s tears began, Crista sniffled again, and Kole tried to force his eyes to stay on the floor of the car to hold back his own emotions as well.

As Star couldn’t come up with any response to Sky’s questions but to continue softly crying, with her face in her hands, Kole made himself speak, “Crista, you said we have to do something. What exactly did you have in mind?”

Crista sniffled again, “if I knew that, I wouldn’t have asked you two to come out here” she replied with a sad defeat in her tone, which just turned into another sniffle when Sky scoffed.

Sky then mumbled, “if we haven’t figured it out in over twenty years, I doubt she has in fourteen” though as he spoke, he still could not look back at any of his companions.

Kole allowed his own heavy sigh, “Curt’s destroyed lives in every one of your lives, right? Even the one where you killed him? So it seems that the real problem is Curt. Wouldn’t we all agree?”

“We already tried killing him once” Sky reminded, “and that was back when we were in ninth grade; in our original life. Then other people just did even worse things to us. Curt is just one problem” Sky stated in a tone that lacked much of any emotion except hopelessness.

“But he is the biggest problem in this life, isn’t he?” Kole returned.

“So, you think we should just kill him again, I assume?”

“I’m amazed none of us have yet” Kole returned plainly.

“We can pretend that’ll work. We can pretend that we can do it in a way where we won’t get caught or expose our abilities. Then what happens when we come to the next problem? We just kill anyone who becomes a problem? It’s a slippery slope, Kole. Curt and his friends weren’t the only people we used our powers to kill in our original life. Once we allowed ourselves to cross that line, we never came back. More people died because of us; a lot more” Sky told him pointedly, “and it still resulted in a life that was so horrible we had to erase people’s minds just so we could move to a new one. And that one wasn’t any better. And now there’s this one. Still not any better” Sky then added, “maybe that’s the price we’re paying for letting ourselves cross that line after all.”

Then Crista actually raised her voice, “you said he forced you guys to have sex, on camera, at gunpoint, when everyone thought you were twins!” she repeated the story Sky had told her earlier, “how can killing a prick that does that actually be wrong?”

Sky took another moment to try and compose himself before responding, “we didn’t think it was, then. But look at what we’ve endured since then. I think we’d be pretty blind not to see what the universe is trying to tell us.”

“Wait” Kole interrupted, “did you say Curt had a gun?” That was when all three of them looked back at Kole, all more than a little worried about what exactly he might suggest next.

After another moment, Sky had to say something, “and a gun would be even harder to cover up than psychic powers. Come on. Did you hear any of what I just told you, Kole?”

Then Kole replied, “I’m not saying we should shoot Curt. I mean, really? But, I am saying that if anyone should feel guilty and be killing themselves; it should be an asshole rapist. Not a beautiful boy who has just tried to defend himself and other people for three lives in a row now” he returned pointedly as he reached a hand over the seat to gently caress Sky’s long locks.

Crista then looked back at Kole with widened eyes, “you think we could actually make him feel guilty enough to kill himself?”

Star finally spoke then, though in a whisper, “you honestly think someone like Curt is even capable of feeling guilt about anything he’s ever done or anyone he’s ever hurt? I think we’ve had three lives to prove that even the one soul Sky and I have is one more than Curt has at all.”

Kole then continued, not letting up yet, “so we may not be able to make him feel guilty, but we can sure as fuck make his life so miserable he can’t stand it anymore. He’s the golden boy who’s always gotten exactly what he wanted, all his life, every life. If he lost it all, or maybe just lost his goddamn mind; maybe, just maybe he would just finally fucking give up and remove himself from all of our lives, and the lives of all the others he’s hurt. It’s worth a shot, isn’t it? I mean, if we don’t do anything, he just keeps living another day to ruin someone else’s life. If we fail at making him take his own life, same result. But if we succeed...” he left it at that, as they all just sunk into deep thought then, wondering if maybe, just maybe, this was the one brand of revenge that might actually work for once and for all.