Gretchen McNeil: 3:59

A decision she now regretted.

Was it her imagination, or had the classroom fallen eerily silent? She couldn’t look at anyone, didn’t dare lest the precariously controlled sobbing that had overwhelmed her for most of the morning erupt again, but she had the acute sensation that every head in the classroom had turned to face her.

Josie slowly walked across the room to her lab table, eyes fixed on the tiled floor, painfully aware of how tragic she looked. Her unwashed hair had been yanked back into a ponytail and she clearly hadn’t put much thought into the jeans, graphic tee, and stripy grandma sweater she’d pulled on. Her shoes completed the fashion disaster. She’d pulled her closet apart for her favorite pair of pink tweed Converse, but she couldn’t find them, and in the end she just slipped on a pair of beat-up flip-flops that looked as if they’d taken one too many trips through the washing machine. Last, she’d attempted to disguise her dark under-eye circles with a clown-sized dollop of concealer, and to mask her red, bloodshot eyes with a dose of Visine that would have put Niagara to shame.

Yep, she was a disastrophe. Pathetic.

Penelope fidgeted on her stool as Josie sat down next to her. She was agitated, barely able to contain herself, and as Mr. Baines began to explain how he’d be evaluating their proposals, Penelope kept glancing at Josie, taking a breath as if she was going to say something, then looking away. In fact, everyone appeared to be stealing furtive glances at Josie whenever Mr. Baines turned his back. She was clearly the most interesting science experiment in the room.

Her illusion that word of Madison’s and Nick’s affair hadn’t gotten out? Obliterated.

As soon as Mr. Baines started his rounds, Penelope broke her silence. “Oh my God,” she said in a strained whisper. “You’re here. I mean, you’re okay. I mean, I was so worried because you weren’t answering your phone and then everyone was talking about Nick and Madison, and then I saw the necklace at lunch and—”

Josie’s head snapped up. “Necklace?”

Penelope cocked her head to the side. “Yeah. Nick gave Madison a necklace. Entwined hearts.”

“Entwined hearts?” A lump rose in Josie’s throat. “Gold with little red gemstones?”

“Yeah.” Penelope cocked her head to the side. “How did you know?”

Josie groaned. “My anniversary gift.” Nick had given it to Madison.

Penelope’s eyes grew wide. “Wait, you do know that they’ve been getting it on behind your back, right?”

Josie winced. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Oh, good.” Penelope caught her breath. “I mean, no. I mean, I’m so sorry.”

Josie stared at the table.

“So they decided to come clean?” Penelope continued in her high-pitched whisper.

Josie shook her head. “No. I caught them.”

“Shit!”

Zeke and Zeb, the Kaufman twins, turned around at Penelope’s exclamation. They were Nick’s teammates on the varsity track team. Perfect. That was the last thing Josie needed: Nick’s friends reporting back on the pathetic state of his ex-girlfriend.

“Shh!” she hissed at Penelope.

“Sorry.”

She should have stayed home.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Penelope said, her voice low and steady. “I really was worried.”

Josie nodded. She appreciated Penelope’s concern, even if she couldn’t quite process it.

“I wanted to punch Madison in the face when I heard,” Penelope continued, talking nervously. “She was flaunting the necklace around in Humanities. Even Nick looked uncomfortable. Fidgety, and every time she touched him, he kind of stiffened up. It made my skin crawl the way she was acting, like they’d been dating forever and not just screwing behind your back for the last two months.”

“Two months?” Josie’s stomach dropped.

Penelope’s hand flew to her mouth. “I didn’t mean to tell you that.”

“Who’s saying it’s been going on for two months?”

“Um . . .” Penelope lowered her voice. “Everyone?”

“Everyone?”

Penelope slapped her hand over her mouth again and let out a tiny squeak.

Josie lowered her forehead onto the smooth, cold metal of the lab table. Two months? Nick had been lying to her for two months?

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.

3:35 P.M.