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Josie Byrne's life is spiraling out of control. Her parents are divorcing, her boyfriend Nick has grown distant, and her physics teacher has it in for her. When she's betrayed by the two people she trusts most, Josie thinks things can't get worse.
Until she starts having dreams about a girl named Jo. Every night at the same time—3:59 a.m.
Jo's life is everything Josie wants: she's popular, her parents are happily married, and Nick adores her. It all seems real, but they're just dreams, right? Josie thinks so, until she wakes one night to a shadowy image of herself in the bedroom mirror – Jo.
Josie and Jo realize that they are doppelg?ngers living in parallel universes that overlap every twelve hours at exactly 3:59. Fascinated by Jo's perfect world, Josie jumps at the chance to jump through the portal and switch places for a day.
But Jo’s world is far from perfect. Not only is Nick not Jo's boyfriend, he hates her. Jo's mom is missing, possibly insane. And at night, shadowy creatures feed on human flesh.
By the end of the day, Josie is desperate to return to her own life. But there’s a problem: Jo has sealed the portal, trapping Josie in this dangerous world. Can she figure out a way home before it’s too late?
From master of suspense Gretchen McNeil comes a riveting and deliciously eerie story about the lives we wish we had – and how they just might kill you.
3:59
by
Gretchen McNeil
For my boys: John, Roy, and Wolfgang
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
—from “The Lady of Shalott”
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
ONE
2:20 P.M.
JOSIE CROUCHED BEHIND THE PHOTON LASER module and aligned it with the beam splitter at the other end of the lab table. “Once we build the vacuum dome,” she said, making a minor adjustment to the laser’s trajectory, “this should work.”
“Should?” Penelope said.
Josie glanced at her lab partner. “There’s a reason no one’s been able to prove the Penrose Interpretation.”
Penelope snorted. “Because it’s unprovable?”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Josie said, with an arch of her brow. “Would you also like to tell me why the sky is blue and the Earth is round?”
“Ha-ha.” Penelope bumped Josie out of the way with her hip and took her place behind the laser. “I don’t know how you talked me into doing this as our science-fair entry. What if it doesn’t work? I’ll never get into Stanford if I fail AP Physics.”
“We’re not going to fail.” Josie looked around the room at the array of textbook experiments their classmates were working on: balloons and static electricity, wave pools, concave mirrors. Total amateur hour, whereas she and Penelope were tackling Penrose’s wave-collapse theory of quantum gravity. It was like bringing a major leaguer to a T-ball game. “Mr. Baines grades on a curve. We’ll be fine.”
“We’d better be.” Penelope moved around the table. For the bazillionth time, she began carefully measuring out the positions of the one hundred or so mirrors they’d use in the experiment, noting their exact locations in her spiral notebook. Her straight black hair swished back and forth in front of her face as she scribbled furiously. “Are you sure you’re not just doing this as an FU to your mom?”
Josie stiffened. “Of course not.”
Penelope didn’t look up. “I don’t know. Seems like trying to prove an almost impossible theory that’s in direct conflict with the hypothesis your mom’s spent her entire career exploring is kind of a slap in the face.”
It was, of course. Josie knew it. Penelope knew it. If Josie’s mom had bothered to initiate an actual conversation with her daughter in the last six months, she’d probably know it too. But Josie wasn’t about to admit that in fourth-period physics.
“I’m worried about the laser,” she said, changing the subject. “I’m not sure it’s strong enough.”
Penelope calmly looked up at Josie with her almond-shaped eyes. A grin crept across her face. “We could always borrow the experimental laser your mom has up at her lab.”
“No way,” Josie said.
“Oh, come on! It’s perfect.”
Josie held firm. “We cannot use the hundred-kilovolt X-ray free-electron prototype from my mom’s lab, okay? Get over it.”
Penelope wasn’t about to give up. “Maybe you could have your dad borrow it? For legitimate work purposes? And then if it just happened to end up in our demonstration the night of the science fair no one—”
“My dad moved out last weekend,” Josie interrupted in a clipped tone.
She hadn’t told anyone yet, except Nick, and only because he’d picked her up for a date ten minutes after Josie’s dad had broken the news that he’d rented an apartment in Landover.
“Oh,” Penelope said, her eyes wide. “Shit, I’m sorry.”