Gretchen McNeil - 3:59

“I haven’t had plastic surgery to look like Jo, okay? I am her.” As soon as Josie said the words, she felt her face flush bright red. It was true, sort of, and even with Nick sitting on top of her holding a gun to her head, she felt a rush of excitement at saying those words.

Wow. That was completely fucked up.

“You’re not Jo,” Nick said, turning ever so slightly pink.

Josie ignored him. “We’re the same person. Sort of.”

Nick barked a disbelieving laugh. “Are you trying to tell me you’re long-lost twins or something?”

“No.”

“Then?”

Crap, what was she trying to tell him? “We’re like the same person. The exact same person. Only not.”

“A clone?” Nick sat back on the bed.

“No, not a clone.” Josie pushed herself up to a sitting position. Nick still held the gun pointed in her general direction, but he seemed to have forgotten it was even in his hand.

“Because I wouldn’t put it past the Grid to start cloning us.” Nick looked out the window, clearly lost in his own thoughts.

Again, the idea of making a break for it crossed Josie’s mind, but something held her there. Maybe . . . maybe he could help her? She was going to need an ally if she was ever going to get home.

“I don’t know anything about clones,” Josie said truthfully. “But what I’m about to tell you is going to sound strange.”

“Stranger than clones?”

“Actually? Yeah.”

Nick half smiled. He was still tense, but there was an instant lightness to his face. “This had better be an awesome story.”

Josie glanced at the clock. Five minutes to four. Well, that was the first thing that had gone right for her in the last twenty-four hours. At least she would have concrete, irrefutable proof of the completely insane story she was about to tell her gun-toting not-boyfriend.

“Well?” Nick asked.

It was now or never. Josie pointed to the mirror. “I came through there.”

3:56 P.M.

NICK ARCHED AN EYEBROW. “YOU CAME THROUGH the mirror?” he asked skeptically.

“I know, it’s crazy. But something happened last week and suddenly there was this connection between my world and yours and then—”

Nick snapped to attention. “Hold up. Your world?”

“Yeah. I—I don’t come from here. I’m Josephine Byrne, but in another world.”

“You mean in another dimension.” Nick didn’t sound incredulous. In fact, he said the words like they were common knowledge.

“Exactly.”

“How?”

“Um . . .” Yeah, wasn’t that the million-dollar question. Would he have any idea what she was talking about if she mentioned her theory about the ultradense deuterium? Doubtful. “I’m not really sure,” she said instead. “Something happened and then I started having these dreams, like I was me but not me. Every night at the same time. Then I started seeing things in the mirror. Jo. This room. Every twelve hours at the exact same time. I realized I was seeing Jo’s life, like through her eyes. Just for a minute. Every twelve hours.”

“At what time?”

“Three fifty-nine.”

Nick’s eyes grew wide. “Three fifty-nine? You’re sure?”

Josie nodded. “Positive.”

Nick fell silent. He stared at the bed and bobbed his head up and down slightly. Was he trying to remember a month’s worth of 3:59s? Josie looked away. Hopefully he wouldn’t remember exactly what he’d been doing at those times. What snippets of his life Josie had been eavesdropping on.

“So if you’re not bullshitting me . . . ,” Nick started.

“I’m not. I swear.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nick nodded. He was staring at the clock on the nightstand. “If you’re not bullshitting me then in about thirty seconds there’s going to be an image in that mirror that is not a reflection of this room, right?”

“Right.”

“It’ll be your room in another dimension.”

Ugh. Josie shook her head. “Not exactly.” Nick arched an eyebrow.

Josie was about to explain, when she caught sight of the mirror. It was starting.

“See for yourself,” she said, nodding at the mirror.

Nick turned his head and, Josie saw with some satisfaction, his jaw dropped. He stared for a few seconds as the glass undulated, distorting the reflection of Jo’s room. Nick slowly rose to his feet, the arm with the gun hanging limply at his side.

The concrete wall was still there, stark, gray, impenetrable. Nick reached his hand out to touch it, pausing just before his palm grazed the surface as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing and feeling was real. He gingerly brushed his fingertips against the mirror, breaking the surface of what, just seconds ago, had been solid glass. Josie watched as he swished his fingers around in the murky middle of the portal. He pulled his hand away and held it up before his face as he wiggled his fingers. Then he thrust his hand forward into the portal and pressed it flat against the wall.

Nick paused, then he leaned his body into the portal, testing his weight against the wall. He stood up straight, and with his fingers, traced the inside of the mirror frame looking for a break or a gap, just as Josie had done in the early hours of the morning, then he pushed his face into the wall, peering closely at the corner of the mirror, and poked at it with his finger.

Even though his body was blocking the mirror, Josie caught sight of the surface as it started to morph back into shape.

“Nick,” she said. “Back up.”

His head was completely submerged. Duh, he couldn’t hear her.

The mirror began to resolidify. It washed over Nick’s face and hands, still pressed into the concrete wall, viscous and shimmery, like liquid metal. Josie leaped forward and grabbed Nick by the back of his sweatshirt, then heaved with all her strength. He was choking now, suffocating on whatever made up the portal. It was like trying to pull someone out of quicksand. Nick felt stuck to the mirror. Horrific gurgling noises poured out of his mouth. Josie wrapped both of her arms around his waist, braced her foot against the frame, and pulled with all her strength.

With a sharp sucking sound, Nick’s body was released from the mirror, and he and Josie tumbled backward onto the bed.

They lay there for a second, his body on top of hers. He was panting heavily, just as Josie had been a few moments before when he was choking her.

That’s right. Nick had just tried to kill her.

She pushed his body to the side and shimmied out from under him. “See?” she said. “I told you it was crazy.”

Nick passed a hand over his face. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Josie sat down in the chair and folded her arms across her chest. She didn’t know what else to say. At last someone other than Jo knew her secret. At least it was out, the burden of secrecy removed. Whether or not Nick could help her was another matter entirely.

Nick slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, then stood up and walked over to the window. He left the gun on the bed, discarded, unheeded. As he stared outside in the late afternoon sunshine, Josie made a mental note that she was about three feet closer to the gun than he was.

“So you and Jo switched places.”

“Yep.”

“Her idea?”

“Actually, yeah.” Josie conveniently left out the part about how she’d desperately hoped Jo would want to switch places. That wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with Nick.

“Okay.” He still didn’t look at her. “And then when you went to switch back out, you found the wall.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s so like her,” Nick said, more to himself than to Josie.