Split Seconds

Split Seconds is a young adult novel about the fragile space between memory and reality, love and loss, time and the moments that slip away too quickly to hold.

Dahlia Vance leaves behind the quiet familiarity of her childhood-the comfort of her mother and grandparents, the winding streets near the university she grew up around, the place where every corner felt like it belonged to her. She trades it for the unfamiliar pulse of the city, where high school is louder, sharper, and full of strangers who don't know her name. At least, they shouldn't.

Then she meets a girl who feels like both a stranger and someone she's always known. Their first encounter is nothing more than a small argument, a harmless banter over something trivial. But it leaves a mark-one that lingers, tugging at Dahlia's thoughts, at her dreams, and at the strange ticking in her chest that won't go away.

The more time they spend together, the more Dahlia notices the unsettling overlaps: words spoken that she swears she's heard before, moments replaying like memories she never lived, details too sharp to dismiss. Music tastes align, favorite books overlap, shared sketches and broken clocks surface between them like breadcrumbs from a path that existed long before they met.

Caught between the echoes of the past and the uncertainty of the present, Dahlia begins to wonder if her story with this girl began long before high school-or if time itself is folding in on her, rewriting the moments she thought she knew.

Blurring the lines between first love and déjà vu, Split Seconds is about memory, longing, and the haunting possibility that some connections are too deep for time to separate. It is a story of growing up, of saying goodbye to the places that shape us, and of trying to understand the thin, delicate thread between what happened, what might have happened, and what never did.