The wind that rustles the leaves is more aimless than that. I don’t have patience for things that are aimless. I don’t trust them.

“I’m not sure how to describe the specifics. It’s like one day he was Parker. I mean, you knew Parker. And the next day, he wasn’t,” Quinn says.

At this, I squirm. I thought I knew Parker. He was Quinn’s slightly goofy older brother. He was tall and thin with a hunched-over posture, almost as though he was embarrassed of his height. I try to think of what else I can remember about him. He used to build elaborate Hot Wheels tracks in Quinn’s living room. He watched baseball games with her dad.

I never paid him much attention. I guess when we were younger I saw him a lot around Quinn’s house. And when we got older, he was always in his room. I never thought too much about it, though. I always figured he just wasn’t interested in hanging out with his younger sister and her friend.

My palms are sweaty, and I squeeze my hands together again.

“I guess. But I didn’t really know him. He didn’t talk to us much,” I say.

“Not when he got older. When he changed.”

“But how did he change?” I ask for what feels like the millionth time.

Albert Einstein says that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, but I know I need to keep asking her that question because the answer is important.

“Why does it matter?”

“You know why.” I reach over to my side and grab my notebook. “The better we’re able to visualize him, the more likely we are to be able to access the right wormhole.”

“I can visualize him,” Quinn says.

“Well, I need to be able to visualize him, too. Our visualization will be more powerful if I’m able to participate. And the more powerful it is, the more likely it is to succeed.” I’m not quite sure that’s true. That’s an extrapolation from all the articles I’ve read. Extrapolation is a word Dad taught me. It basically means a guess based on the information you have. Almost all scientists make extrapolations based on the data they have. So that’s what I’m doing, too.

“He started spending all this time by himself in his room. Whenever I’d check on him, he was on his computer. He started getting really mean, too.”

I suck in a breath, reminding myself this is what I want. Information. “Mean how?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I mean, it’s like all of a sudden he decided he didn’t like me. Most of the time, he acted like I didn’t exist.”

Quinn tenses, and I feel like an unstable chemical element whose electrons keep bouncing around. I think of the tube of dark red lip gloss on the nightstand. The unstable feeling inside of me grows.

When Mabel started high school, a distance opened up between us two. She kept telling me I wouldn’t “understand” certain things. But that’s one thing I’ve always been really good at. Knowing things. I didn’t get why she would say that.