Tomorrow Is Today by Julie Cross Read Free Book Online

shook her head. “I can’t believe you forgot your promise to spend an entire evening with me reciting Shakespeare…in French…backwards. Then we were supposed to watch Titanic and Notting Hill .”

    “I must have been drunk when I said that.” I glanced over Holly’s shoulder before kissing her quickly on the mouth. “But I’ll agree to Notting Hill .”

    She rolled her eyes. “We’re supposed to go see that band, remember?”

    A little girl from Holly’s group tugged on her arm and pointed toward the bathroom. I darted around her before we could discuss my inability to make plans two weeks in advance and actually remember them two weeks later.

    “Yo, Jackson, over here,” Adam said, nodding toward a tree.

    Time for precise and exact time-travel planning.

    “Are you coming with us to see that band tonight?” I asked.

    What I really wanted to know was if he remembered it.

    “Um…let’s see. Spend an evening with your high school friends who, I’ve heard, are like a real-life version of Gossip Girl ? Not to mention blowing an entire paycheck on an appetizer and a couple drinks?” He shook his head and smiled. “What do you think?”

    “I see your point. How about we hang out in your and Holly’s neighborhood tomorrow?”

    “Sounds good.”

    “All right, on with it. I can’t eat while smelling camel ass, so we might as well experiment now.”

    Adam tossed my journal onto my lap and threw a pen on top. “Write down your goal, because time-travel without a goal is just—“

    “Reckless,” I finished for him, trying not to groan.

    “The gift shop is right behind us. I’ve been watching for the last hour and the same girl’s at the register.”

    “You’ve been checking her out, haven’t you?”

    Adam rolled his eyes and pushed his dark hair from his forehead. “Okay, so, you set your stopwatch and then jump back thirty minutes. You go into the gift shop and do whatever it is you do so a girl remembers your name.”

    “It’s called flirting,” I said quietly so no one else would hear. Then I focused on writing my notes before Holly got back from the bathroom.

    Goal: Test theory on someone who has no knowledge of the experiment.

    Theory: Events and occurrences, including human interaction, while traveling into the past will NOT affect the present.

    Non-geek-speak translation: I jump back thirty minutes in time, flirt with the girl in the shop, jump back to present time, walk back into the store, and see if she knows me.

    She won’t .

    But Adam Silverman, winner of the 2009 National Science Fair and a soon-to-be MIT freshman, won’t confirm this conclusion until we’ve tried it from Every. Single. Angle. Honestly, I don’t really mind. Sometimes it’s fun, and until a few months ago, nobody except me knew what I could do. Now that the number has doubled, I feel a little bit less like a freak.

    And a little less lonely.

    But I’ve never been friends with a science geek before. Although Adam’s more of the bad-boy-hacking-into-government-websites-kinda-geek. Which is beyond cool, in my opinion.

    “Do you know for sure you can jump back exactly thirty minutes?” Adam asked.

    I shrugged. “Yeah, probably.”

    “Just make sure you note the time. I’ll record the seconds you’re sitting here like a vegetable,” Adam said, placing a stopwatch in my hand.

    “Is that really what I look like when I jump? How long do you think I’ll be like that?” I asked.

    “I’m guessing that a twenty-minute excursion, thirty minutes into the past, will leave you catatonic in the present for about two seconds.”

    “Where was I thirty minutes ago, just so I don’t run into myself?”

    Adam clicked his stopwatch on and off about ten times before answering me. He’s so totally OCD. “You were inside, looking at the penguins.”

    “Okay, I’ll try not to end up over there.”

    “We both know you can choose your location if you really concentrate, so don’t give me