3:59 (8 page)

“No.” Josie said.
Brain cancer? Really?

“Okay. Well, that’s good.” He almost sounded disappointed. “Does she ever ask about me? You know, like after you came and picked up the mirror?”

“Sure,” she lied. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that not only did his estranged wife never ask about him, but whenever Josie brought him up, her mom immediately changed the subject.

“Good. Next time she brings me up, tell her that I’m seeing someone, will you?”

Josie’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got a girlfriend?”

“Met her at the gym. She’s a yoga instructor. Tall, blond. Kimber’s the real deal.”

“Kimber?” Josie asked. “Kimber Janikowski?”

Her dad paused. “How did you know that?”

Josie pounded the palm of her hand against her forehead. “Kimber went to my high school, Dad. She was a senior when I was a freshman.” Could her week get any worse?

She heard her dad suck in a breath. “Really?”

“She was prom queen, Dad.”

He fumbled with his phone. “Hey, Jo Jo, I’ve got a meeting. Real quick, was there something you wanted to talk about?”

Real quick. Ugh.
“It can wait.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”
Never more so.

“Okay, I’ll call you later. Love you, Jo Jo.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

Josie sighed. So much for that.

Fine. She could deal with this problem by herself. She was an only child, after all. She’d just attack it scientifically, like her parents had taught her. Josie grabbed a notebook and pen from her backpack, and settled into the pillows on her bed.

    
Step one: formulate a question
.

Easy. What the hell is going on?

    
Step two: research
.

Er, not as easy. Though she did have a few pieces of information at her disposal. The train, for starters. She could assume it was coming from Fort Meade, and therefore had dropped off a shipment of deuterium for her mom. Ultradense deuterium was central to her mom’s research into creating micro black holes. It wasn’t inherently radioactive or particularly dangerous, but Josie would have to research its properties to find out if it could have accounted for the flash.

Then there was the mirror. First the incident at the train, then the explosion in her mom’s lab—the mirror was present both times. And Josie had clearly seen the reflection of the girl—Jo, if her dreams were correct—in the mirror, and in one of those dreams, Jo had seen
her
in the same mirror. Not that it made any sense, but at least there was a connection.

Lastly, the time. 3:59. The flash, the explosion, the dreams. They always happened at the exact same time.

    
Step three: hypothesis
.

Josie absolutely rejected any kind of paranormal explanation. Nope, not possible. Everything that happened had a sound, scientific explanation. So assuming she wasn’t losing her mind, she was left with a scientific possibility. The same girl, the same room, same time. Parallel universe? There she was, back at her parents’ favorite subject. The thesis they’d both spent their careers pursuing: the many-worlds theory. Even Josie’s own attempt to prove the Penrose Interpretation was rooted in the idea that a single particle can exist in two different places at the same time. Penrose theorized that with anything bigger than a dust particle, its multiple states would collapse, so that you only ever saw the particle in one fixed position. Josie loved the simplicity of the Penrose Interpretation—none of the crazy multiple-worlds theories like what her mom had been working on for years. But if Jo was real, and her world was real—two identical particles bigger than a speck of dust existing in different places at the same time—Josie’s science-fair entry was total bunk.

Oops.

    
Step four: test your hypothesis with an experiment
.

That was the step that made Josie’s stomach drop. She looked up at the mirror. There was only one way to find out if that mirror was a portal to a parallel universe.

She’d have to confront the mirror. At exactly 3:59.

Josie sat the floor of her bedroom with her blue-and-white comforter pulled over her shoulders. She’d set her alarm clock for 3:30 a.m. just in case, but it was a needless precaution. There was no way in hell she was getting any sleep that night.

Josie looked at the clock. 3:57.
Come on
. Why was it that whenever you were waiting for something, time seemed to slow down? It was mocking her and her ridiculous theory.

Was it so ridiculous? If the many-worlds theory was correct, if an infinite number of parallel universes existed, was it such a stretch to assume that at some point in the space-time continuum, two of them would intersect? Josie wasn’t ready to explain exactly
how
that might happen, but she was certainly prepared to consider it a possibility.

3:58. Josie stood up and let the comforter fall to the floor. If she was right, there was actually another world on the other side of this mirror. A world that she’d been seeing in her dreams each night. A world where a girl who was her but not her lived a life that was hers but not hers.

And if it was true, the theoretical concepts of parallel universes were about to be blown wide open.

Josie could see the reflection of her alarm clock. Any moment now. She held her breath, unable to peel her eyes away from the mirror, as the time hit 3:59.

The image blurred. Josie’s reflection distorted as if she were staring at it through a pool of water. Ripples cascaded across the surface of the mirror, obscuring her reflection entirely, then dissipated. The image resharpened and Josie found that she was staring at her own face, her own eyes once more. Only the girl in the reflection had blond highlights, bright and shiny where Josie’s hair was a duller blond, and the girl in the reflection wore a denim pencil skirt and a red gingham tank top, while Josie was in her shortie pajamas.

Not a reflection.

Josie stared at the girl. The girl stared back.

This was Jo. The girl from Josie’s dreams.

Neither said a word but Josie could tell by the look on Jo’s face that she was excited too. They’d seen the same thing, come to the same conclusion, on opposite sides of the mirror. The girl held up her hand, reaching out to touch the mirror, and Josie did the same. The surface rippled like a pebble dropping into a pond, and instead of a hard surface, the glass was soft and liquid. It was denser than water, though, and as Josie pushed her hand into the substance beyond the edge of the mirror frame, it felt like she was pressing her hand into a tub of pudding. Josie wiggled her fingers in the substance and the image distorted. It wasn’t warm or cold, just spongy and thick. Jo did the same, reaching her hand into the expanse of the mirror.

Then Josie felt it. She was touching Jo’s flesh. Palm to palm.

Josie stared at her hand. She could feel the warmth of Jo’s palm. She was awake, no bones about it. This was real. This was really happening.

She looked up and met the other girl’s eyes. “Jo?”

Jo cocked her head to the side, as if she couldn’t quite understand what Josie said, then her eyes widened. She nodded. Then her lips moved, slowly. Josie couldn’t hear her words; her voice was just a muffled sound through the mirror. Jo repeated it, speaking even slower. Josie could just read her lips.

“Who are you?”

Josie opened her mouth to respond, but the image blurred again. Jo pulled her hand away. Josie did the same, just in time. The image in the mirror rippled, distorting Jo’s face in a squiggly mass of waves, then resolidified until all Josie could see was the pale, panting image of her own face in the mirror.

ONLY AN ACT OF GOD WOULD HAVE KEPT JOSIE away from the mirror at 3:59 the next afternoon. She’d been restless all day at school, barely able to focus on her classes and, for the first time that week, blissfully unaware of the whispers that erupted every time she walked into a room. She didn’t care, not about Madison or Nick or her physics project or her parents’ divorce. She only cared about Jo.

A girl who lived a life that was sort of like hers, but different. Better. A girl who was still Nick Fiorino’s girlfriend.

An idea had taken hold in Josie’s mind. Ever since she’d learned about Nick’s brother, she’d been eaten up with remorse over the way she’d treated Nick the last few months. What if she could go back and change things? What if she could go back and be there for Nick, listen to him when he needed her?

Maybe time travel was out of the realm of possibility, but now there was another Nick. A Nick who still loved her. Maybe she could still be there for him. Fix her mistakes with Nick, even if it was just for one day.

Josie shook her head. She was being totally ridiculous. To do that, she and Jo would have to switch places. Was that even possible?

Josie glanced at the clock.
Hurry up!
In her hand she held a letter, the contents of which she knew by heart. Since they couldn’t talk through the portal, Josie thought she’d write Jo a note outlining what she knew about the mirror, the flash, and the connection between their worlds. She’d spent her entire lunch hour slaving over it, rewriting it at least three times, to make sure she didn’t sound totally and utterly insane.

Dear Jo
,

    
Since we can’t really talk, or in case you aren’t in the mirror today, I thought I’d write to you and let you know that I’m real, that this—whatever this is—is real.

    
I’m not sure where to start but here are the basics. I’m Josephine Byrne but everyone calls me Josie. I live in Bowie, Maryland, I’m a junior at Bowie Prep, and it’s 2013.

    
I’m not really sure what’s happening to us, but I know it started last week. I was in my car waiting for a train to pass. There was a flash and I think I blacked out or something. Next thing I knew I started seeing you in the mirror and . . . yeah. Then yesterday.

Josie had originally written
I started having dreams like I was seeing life through your eyes
but she’d deleted that part. She didn’t know if Jo was experiencing the same phenomenon or not, and thought it might be better to leave out the creepy details for now.

    
Something is connecting us, every twelve hours at 3:59. It’s a portal between our universes, maybe caused by the flash at the train tracks? That’s the only theory I have right now. I don’t know how it happened, but I know that this is real.

    
I’ll be in the mirror tonight.

Sincerely
,

Josie didn’t even need to look at the clock to know it was 3:59. As if on cue, the surface of the mirror rippled and rolled across the pane like the tide washing up onto the shore, then retreating into the sea. When the image came back into focus, Jo stood facing Josie.

She wore powder-blue silk pajamas and embroidered blue slippers. Her hair was brushed up into a high ponytail, and clasped in her hands was a small, white envelope.

A letter.

They’d had the same idea.

Josie smiled. She and her doppelgänger were thinking the same thing at the same time. Jo gazed at the envelope Josie held in her hand, then her eyes met Josie’s and she smiled as well.

Okay
, Josie said to herself. Time to see if her theory was sound. She plunged her arm into the gelatinous substance of the portal. She reached all the way through, up to her shoulder, and felt her hand break through to the clean, light air of Jo’s room.

Jo gingerly lifted the letter from Josie’s hand, allowing her fingers to graze Josie’s wrist. She’d done it intentionally, somehow Josie just knew, to make sure the hand was real: flesh and bone. Josie would have done the same. There was a piece of her that still thought maybe this was all a dream. Or a hallucination.

But the sensation of Jo’s fingers touching her skin dispelled any doubts. Josie might not have been able to explain why it was happening, but Jo was real and the portal was real, and the letter that Jo gently placed in Josie’s outstretched hand was certainly, most definitely real.

Josie drew her hand back through the portal into her own world, clasping Jo’s letter so tightly her knuckles ached.

It was a white, rectangular envelope almost exactly like the one Josie had used. Her hands shook as she turned the envelope over and read the clear, steady handwriting on the front:

Josie looked up in time to see Jo’s image begin to blur. She was waving and she mouthed
bye
as her face faded away and was gone.

Immediately, Josie flopped down on her bed, tore open the envelope, and pulled a handwritten letter from inside.

    
That’s such a ridiculous way to start, isn’t it? I mean, it’s like I’m writing a letter to myself. Only I’m not, am I? Because that would be crazy.

    
Like this isn’t crazy.

    
I’m hoping you’ll be there in the mirror again tonight. If for no other reason than to prove to me that I’m not crazy. But just in case you’re not, I’m writing this letter.

    
I’ll start with the obvious, I guess: Who are you? Where are you? And why is it that I can see you in my bedroom mirror every twelve hours at the exact same time?

    
I’m Josephine Byrne but most people call me Jo. I live in Bowie, Maryland, I’m a junior at Bowie Prep, and it’s 2013.

    
If you get this, please write back. That way, I’ll know. Know I’m not crazy, that is.

    
Though I suppose if you do write back, that’s almost as bad.