How had she not seen this? Not known? How could she have been so stupid?
“Miss Wang. Miss Byrne.” Mr. Baines strolled up to their lab table, clipboard in hand. His lips were pursed, and his wide-set eyes crinkled just at the corners as if he was secretly amused by their setup. “A standard beam-splitter experiment? I expected something less boilerplate from the daughter of Dr. Elizabeth Byrne.”
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 himself would disagree with you.”
Penelope poked Josie violently in the back with her pen, practically begging her to shut the hell up. Too late.
“Well, then Penrose himself is an idiot.” Josie said it louder than she’d intended. Penelope gasped, and all around her, Josie could hear the rustling of bodies as people focused on the escalating confrontation.
“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 personal events distract you from your work.”
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.
YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE.
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.
That’s so pathetic.
“Shut up,” Josie said out loud.
Awesome, Josie. Talking to yourself while you stalk your ex-boyfriend. Quite a life you’ve carved out for yourself.