Josie met Mr. Baines’s gaze. She’d always suspected he rather passively disliked her, but as he stood there before her, the hint of a grin tugging at the corners of his thin lips, she realized it was a less passive and more active animosity bubbling under the surface.
“We’re attempting to prove the Penrose Interpretation,” Penelope said quickly, her voice rising an octave.
“Really?” Mr. Baines said. His eyes never left Josie’s face.
“Y-yes,” Penelope stuttered. “We just need to build the vacuum to replicate conditions outside the Earth’s atmosphere and—”
Mr. Baines cocked an eyebrow. “A vacuum? That’s it?”
“And mirrors,” Penelope added, somewhat lamely.
“More like smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Baines said with a throaty laugh. He scribbled in his notebook and turned to examine the next table. “Good luck with the unprovable theory.”
“It’s not unprovable,” Josie mumbled.
Mr. Baines paused and turned back to her. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s not unprovable,” Josie repeated. This time, her voice sounded strong and forceful, no hint of tears. It was as if something snapped inside her at Mr. Baines’s condescension, and suddenly all Josie wanted was a fight.
Mr. Baines walked back to their table. “I believe Penrose
Penelope poked Josie violently in the back with her pen, practically begging her to shut the hell up. Too late.
“Well, then Penrose
“Hm.” Mr. Baines sniffed the air as if he detected a rotten odor in the air. He looked Josie directly in the eye and she met his gaze steadily. She wasn’t about to back down. She’d learned more about parallel-universe theories by the time she was ten years old than Mr. Baines knew now. Her parents had spent their entire careers attempting to prove the many-worlds theory to explain quantum irregularities, and names like Niels Bohr and Hugh Everett III were more familiar to her than Harry Potter or Anne Shirley. If Mr. Baines wanted to go toe-to-toe with her on this subject, she was ready for him.
Instead, he looked away and flipped the page on his clipboard in a hurried fashion. “Well, I’m glad to see you haven’t let certain
Josie’s face burned. In an instant, the pain, horror, and indignity of her situation swamped her, made even more painful by the realization that not only did every student at school know what happened to her, but her snooty physics teacher did as well.
Josie desperately tried to fight back the tears that welled up in her eyes, but it was no use. Penelope, the lab table, the entire classroom blurred out of focus. As the first of the heavy droplets spilled down her cheeks, Josie spun around and ran out of the room.
SEVEN
3:35 P.M.
Josie ignored her inner voice of reason and continued to stare out the passenger window of her car. Parked on the hill above the athletic field, the Teal Monster half-hidden behind a Dumpster, she could just see the boys’ track team running pyramid drills. She remembered those practices well. She’d sit in the bleachers, focused on homework, occasionally glancing up to find the tall, muscular form of her boyfriend sprinting around the all- weather track. Even now, stealing a moment with him from her hiding place in the car was oddly comforting.
“Shut up,” Josie said out loud.
A pack of boys in mismatched red-and-white shorts and loose-fitting T-shirts rounded the upper turn. The middle-distance runners were pushing themselves through the last four hundred meters. They ran in a small pack, about eight guys in all, and at that distance they looked two inches tall. The Kaufman twins stuck out like identical sore thumbs, their long, bleached-blond hair flopping with each stride in almost disturbing symmetry. Then Josie’s eyes drifted to the dark-haired runner behind them. Nick.
He ran with a telltale stance—straight up and down with a high kick to the knee. And as the pack cleared the corner, heading down the final straightaway, Nick slipped into an outside lane, whipped around the twins, and pulled ahead. Josie couldn’t see his face but could picture it in her mind. Cool and calm, no display of fatigue or stress. It was his signature finish. While the other runners strained, red-faced, to keep up with him, Nick always had something left in the tank.
As usual, Nick crossed the imaginary finish line several feet ahead of his nearest rival. He threw his arms in the air and jumped around as if he’d just won a gold medal. The other runners dribbled across the line and bent forward, hands on knees, while Nick continued his mock celebration. Then one by one, they all meandered to the inner field for stretches.
Josie sighed and leaned her head back against the headrest. It was almost like old times, if “old times” was just twenty-four hours ago. Nick at practice, Josie watching. She could almost imagine . . .
Josie froze. Below, another figure stepped onto the field: slender, elegant, poised even when picking her way across the spongy surface of the track. Josie could tell right away it was Madison. Her curls rippled in the spring breeze, and before she was halfway to the field, Nick caught sight of her. He stood up slowly, glancing to his right and left as if from embarrassment, and sauntered across the field to meet her.
Madison reached out and grabbed Nick by the waistband of his shorts, pulling her to him. Then right there on the track, she kissed him.
Nick broke off the face sucking after a few seconds, and Josie watched as Madison reached a hand to her neck and lifted something to her lips. She kissed the object before letting it fall back into place. The necklace.
“Fuck you!” Josie shouted. She pounded on the steering wheel with both fists. She hated them both so much. How dare they be so happy? How dare they have done this to her? “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Then she accidentally hit the car horn with her fist.
Madison and Nick instantly looked up toward the Teal Monster’s hiding place. Josie scrunched down in her seat. This was a disaster. How could she have been so stupid? Spying on her ex-boyfriend and ex–best friend. Josie’s blood ran cold. She was going to be the laughingstock of the entire school.
Without sitting up, she turned the ignition over, released the parking brake, and eased her car around the Dumpster. She waited until she was completely out of sight of the track before she sat up in her seat.
She could barely drive home amid the sobs.
EIGHT
3:59 P.M.
JOSIE WOULD HAVE GONE STRAIGHT TO BED THE second she got home, if it weren’t for the explosion.
She was dragging her tired, worn body down the hallway when the foundation of the house rocked as if an earthquake had hit. Josie had to brace herself against the wall to remain upright. At the end of the hall, the basement door flew open, and a bright light flashed through the house, so intense it momentarily blinded her.
It took Josie a few seconds to process what had happened. The flash. The feeling that the house had jumped off of its foundation.
