That’s how I feel about this plan. You see, whenever I think about Parker, I end up missing him so much I feel sick. I feel sick because what kind of person misses someone who did what Parker did? And then my sickness turns to anger, an anger so hot that I feel like I could spit lava. When my anger gets that hot, I go back to thinking about my plan. And boom. Bright spot. The lava cools down.

It’s actually better than a bright spot. It’s a changer of spots. It’s a fixer, my plan.

I call it my plan, but really it’s Cora’s. She’s the one who has always been interested in time travel. That’s how I came up with this whole thing.

One night, I was sitting at the computer, listening to Mom and Dad argue about the things that they keep promising to one another that they won’t argue about in front of me (money, the guns, everything with Parker) and I didn’t want to listen to them anymore, so I distracted myself by clicking on random article after random article.

Mom teases me that I turn into a zombie when I’m on the computer, clicking from one thing to another. I used to find that joke funny, but then Parker actually did become infected by things on the internet, and when I think about that, I get that lava-vomiting feeling again.

Anyway, I don’t really know how I found the article. Maybe I was missing Cora, and somehow that led me there. I saw the headline, and it seemed like something she might be interested in, so I clicked on it, even though I knew I wouldn’t understand all the science-y language. I clicked on it because I hoped that reading it would make me feel like I was talking to her again.

Even with all the science-y language, I was able to understand a few things. I was able to understand that a very smart scientist who worked at one of those super-famous schools, the type of school that Cora talks about wanting to go to for college, was saying that time travel was possible. He used all these other strange words like wormholes and fabric of our universe and light speed, but what stuck with me was the word possible.

Even a girl like me who doesn’t understand a lot of science-y terms knows what possible means.

Possible means it’s real.

Possible means it could happen.

I remember in fourth grade, my teacher, Mrs. Banks, told us about this old guy in ancient Greece named Archimedes who shouted “Eureka!” in the bathtub when he figured out the answer to a really tough math problem. Since I’m never the one who figures out the really tough math problem, that story was sort of lost on me, but as I read this interview with this very smart scientist, I whispered, “Eureka.”

This was it.

This was the solution.

Time travel was possible, and I was going to do it. I wish I could say that I started my research that night. But I didn’t. That all came later.