“Sure,” I say, and follow him through the swarms of people.

During PE, the gym always feels so cavernous. PE is the only class I absolutely detest, but now the gym feels less like a place of forced torture and way more like a party. For just a second, I forget all about time travel and wormholes and Mabel. But then I remember. And I feel bad for forgetting for even a moment.

“Cora!” Mia says, waving to me as we approach the booth. She’s standing between Peter Tolbin and Molly Waldheim. All three of them are dressed like robots and they’re standing in front of a neat stack of organized flyers. A diorama with information about Junior Quiz Bowl is propped up behind them. There’s even a clear sparkling bowl filled to the brim with fun-sized candy.

Coach Pearlman gives me a salute. “There you are.”

I try to come up with a believable excuse for why I’ve missed the last two practices, but I can’t. Thankfully, Coach Pearlman doesn’t press me.

But Mia does. She pulls me aside and Owen comes with us.

“Where have you been?” She puts her hands on the sides of her cardboard robot body.

“Since when are you close enough to Peter and Molly to wear matching costumes?”

“How about since you totally blew us all off and stopped even coming to practice?” she snaps back.

I look at Owen, but he doesn’t meet my eye. He’s pretending like the gym floor is the most interesting thing in the whole world.

“I only missed two practices.” I let out a breath. “Besides, I’ve been busy with something.”

Her eyes look like they could shoot lasers. And I don’t think that’s just because she’s dressed up as a robot. “With Quinn?”

“No,” I say sharply. “Not with Quinn.”

“I thought you guys were hanging out.”

I shake my head and curl my hands into fists. I can’t talk about Quinn right now. “I’ve been researching something on my own.”

“And what’s that?”

My throat is dry. I swallow. “The shape of thunder.”

Both Mia and Owen wrinkle their foreheads in thought. Owen massages his temples. “Isn’t thunder shapeless?”

“Yes, technically. But try to think about it theoretically. What do you think it would look like?”

I take in their confused faces.

“Think about it,” I press. “You’re pushing your brain to stretch beyond what it thinks it knows. What I’m trying to say is, don’t you think the shape of thunder might be similar to the shape of time?”

“And why would we want to know the shape of time?” Mia says.

I hesitate and bite the inside of my cheek. “I don’t know. I think that maybe figuring out the shape of time is the key to time travel. And if the shape of thunder is similar to the shape of time, then it is all connected. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“You just made, like, a million leaps. My head is dizzy,” Mia says.