359 (Gretchen McNeil) by Gretchen McNeil

Author:Gretchen McNeil
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-ONE

4:06 A.M.

JOSIE PACED THE ROOM, JO’S SILK PAJAMAS SWISHING with every manic step. Excitement coursed through her body as the pieces of what happened six months ago began to organize themselves in her mind. Things were starting to make sense. There was an answer to her myriad questions lurking just beyond the horizon. She just had to focus and the solution would present itself.

The first piece was obvious. The connection between her and Jo was still strong. Jo could secure the mirror against the basement wall, but she couldn’t close her mind against Josie. Good to know.

Second, the story Nick told her yesterday fit in perfectly with the changes Josie had noticed in her mom. Six months ago, at the same time as the explosion that killed Nick’s brother and left Dr. Byrne supposedly insane, Josie and her dad noticed the change in her mom. Her personality had become harder, less tolerant, less kind. Things she used to love, she suddenly hated. She pulled away from friends. She pulled away from her marriage.

Because it wasn’t her.

What if the explosion in the lab that day had the same effect as the flash from the passing train? What if Josie’s mom and Dr. Byrne created a portal—an earlier portal—and accidentally switched places?

And the mirror. It had been in her mom’s lab for years. What if it had been the portal then just as it was now? The explosion, the flash—the same event that happened to her at the railroad crossing. Maybe it happened that day because it had happened before, zapping Josie’s mom and Dr. Byrne into different worlds? That exact moment in space-time had been weakened, connected to the mirror itself. The catalyst. And when it came in close proximity to trace amounts of ultradense deuterium on the train—the right place at the right time—BOOM! And in the lab in Josie’s basement—BOOM!

The mirror was the catalyst. It wasn’t affected by those explosions; it had been the cause of them.

Josie’s pace quickened. She had to keep moving or she was going to burst.

The mirror was the portal, unstable at first, then strengthening after each explosion until it stayed open for one full minute every twelve hours at the exact moment space-time had been weakened. A hole through which first her mom and then Josie had traveled.

That would explain why her mom was so desperate to get the mirror back. And that would also explain the X-FEL her mom had been cobbling together in the basement. She was trying to re-create the events that led to her being switched in the first place. Her mom was . . .

Josie paused midstep. Not her mom. Jo’s mom. Dr. Byrne.

Because her mom was trapped in this world, locked away in a mental hospital.

Dr. Byrne had been trying to reopen a portal to bring her daughter—her real daughter—through to Josie’s world. And now they were plotting to stay there forever.

Josie took a deep breath. She had a purpose now. It wasn’t just about finding a way home anymore.

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