Madison narrowed her eyes. “The shelters, duh. Like debtor’s prison for people who can’t afford to pay to keep the lights on.”
“We cut back on everything to keep up our Grid payments,” Penelope said softly. “Sold Mom’s car, shut off the cable, even cut back on food. We’re still barely making it.”
Josie felt sick. “That’s awful. Pen, I’m so sorry.”
“Sure you are.” Madison chortled. “Really sorry you have someone doing all your homework for you.”
Josie set her jaw. “Do I sound like someone who needs help with their homework? Or perhaps you’d like to explain the differences between the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Schr?dinger’s cat? Or riff on quantum field theory and how it might explain quantum gravity and, eventually, how the hell I ended up here in the first place?”
Madison shot to her feet. “I don’t care what words you memorized or how you’ve managed to fool Jackson and Nick and even Penelope over there.”
“Hey,” Penelope said, sounding hurt. “I’m in the room.”
Madison barreled on. “But you aren’t conning me with your sci-fi bullshit, okay? So give it a rest.”
“Just because you can’t wrap your brain around complex physics,” Josie said, “doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
Penelope slapped her hand against the table. “Enough. Both of you.”
Her voice was so forceful it caught Josie off guard. She’d never so much as heard Penelope raise her voice, let alone snap at her. Madison must have had the same reaction. Both of them sat back and stared at Penelope.
“Good,” Penelope said, slightly out of breath. “You didn’t bring me here to referee, did you?” Her voice squeaked and her face was flushed pink.
Josie laughed. She couldn’t help it. “No.”
“That’s what I thought.” Penelope cleared her throat and took a deep breath. Josie watched with some amusement as Penelope muttered under her breath, as if she needed to calm herself down, then lifted her chin and smiled. “Now should we talk about quantum gravity?”
There was something inexplicably hilarious about Penelope’s statement. Just the facts, plain and simple. Josie was trying hard to suppress her laughter, struggling to keep the giggling under wraps. She looked up and saw that Madison was smiling too, her body jerking every second as she tried to keep from erupting into laughter as well.
Madison caught Josie’s eye and as the two girls looked at each other, Josie felt the tension between them ease. She wasn’t sure if she’d earned a smidgen of respect or if Madison was just tired of fighting, but with an almost imperceptible nod of her head—a cease-fire in the heat of battle—Madison swung around and got to her feet.
“I guess quantum gravity it is.”
THIRTY-FIVE
5:47 P.M.
PENELOPE PUSHED THE BOOK AWAY AND SANK her head into her hands. “Which still doesn’t explain exactly how the portal was created.”
Josie and Penelope had been at it for well over an hour, poring over a variety of books as they searched for anything that might explain how the portal had opened between Jo’s and Josie’s worlds. They’d covered everything from theoretical extra dimensions to pseudoparanormal studies, and still nothing quite explained the flash, the mirror, and the portal that opened every twelve hours.
Madison had been quiet, flipping through the discarded books, but she was far from disinterested. She watched Josie closely, listened to every word that came out of her mouth, and Josie couldn’t help but wonder if her reticence to believe Josie’s story had faltered in any way.
“Okay,” Josie said, closing the book in front of her. “Let’s start crossing things off the list, at least.” Her mom always taught her that when faced with a seemingly unanswerable problem, the best tactic was to eliminate impossible answers first, and whatever you were left with, however improbable, had to be the truth. She picked up a book on time travel and chucked it onto the sofa. “It’s not a time loop. Our worlds are too dissimilar to be replaying themselves.”
“Right.” Penelope grabbed two more books and walked them over to the sofa. “I don’t think it’s a holographic multiverse either. Same reason: our worlds are too different.”
“A what-what?” Madison asked.
“It’s a theory of parallel universes,” Josie explained. “Based on the holographic principle. Meaning that every universe has a mirror image, exactly the same in every way.”
Madison stood up and stretched her arms over her head. “I swear you two are speaking a foreign language.”
“We are,” Penelope said. “It’s the language of geek.”
Madison laughed weakly. It was the first time Josie had seen Madison let her guard down since they’d met. The harsh lines around her nose and jaw softened and Josie noticed the heavy circles under her eyes and the deep sagging at the corners of her mouth. The bitch-on-wheels attitude melted away and Josie saw a sad, exhausted girl.