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born here, and we should stay here. Humans weren’t meant to time travel to other universes. It’s unnatural. If time is up, time is up.”
    I can’t eat. “You mean to tell me that if there was a comet, you’d expect us to sit here and die?”
    Dad slams down his fork. “No, I expect the UN to get involved and stop the damn thing. I expect us to wait as a family while the government does what it does best.”
    As a family. Mom and I look at each other. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. Does she think we should wait and die together, too? Bullshit . I’ll be gone. They can kumbaya together all they want.
    At the sound of the doorbell, I escape the conversation to let Dominick into the house. He embraces me in a soft hug and follows with a long kiss. How we were ever just friends for so long is beyond me.
    “You okay?” he asks. “You look tired.”
    “I’m fine.” If he had seen my condition hours ago, he would’ve called an ambulance.
    “Strange date last night,” he says.
    “That’s an understatement,” I add, swinging my ponytail off my shoulder. “It’s even stranger in here.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’ll see. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
    We pass into the dining room, and Mom smiles at Dominick. Dad stabs at his salad.
    “Nick, let’s settle something,” Dad begins.
    “Shoot,” Dominick says, holding the back of a dining room chair for support.
    “What do you think about the whole vortex thing?”
    “Vertex thing,” Mom corrects him, clearing her plate.
    “Vortex, vertex, same thing,” he adds. “You staying or going?”
    “Dad, leave Dominick alone,” I say.
    “Let the man speak,” Dad comments. “I want to hear what he has to say for himself.”
    Dominick laughs uncomfortably. He rocks the chair back and forth. “I have no idea. I think the whole thing is crazy.”
    “You got that right. It’s goddamn lunacy.”
    Dominick grins, but I see him stick his hands in both pockets. He does that when he’s uncomfortable but wants to seem nonchalant. Like when he talks about his father.
    “A vertex and a vortex are not the same,” Mom interrupts. “Didn’t you see the explanation on the news?”
    Dad blows her off and goes into the kitchen with his empty plate. Dominick turns to my mother instead. “No, what’d they say?”
    Mom’s eyes light up since she actually has the stage. “Well, a hologram explained it to some scientists, and the scientists tried to explain it to us. They even drew a diagram, but I didn’t understand that part. Maybe you will since you like math.”
    “Of course he likes math,” I say. “He’s planning on majoring in math at college.”
    My mother’s face glows. “Really? That’s wonderful. Well, the holograms explained that traveling to parallel universes and through time both work on the . . . it sounded important so I wrote it down. Where did I put it?”
    She searches through a pile of papers on the side table and grabs a yellow sticky note.
    “Here we go—the ‘parabolic principle.’ It sounded fascinating, but I couldn’t really follow it. Part of it involves something called a vertex.”
    Dominick rubs the stubble on his chin. “It must work on parabolas then.” I can see his brain turning. “Do you know what a parabola is?”
    “No,” she says.
    So Dominick draws one.

    “That’s a parabola. It works on, like, a mirroring philosophy. See the dot I drew? That’s a vertex. It’s the point of intersection where the two sides meet.”
    “So that must be why they call it a vertex. It’s where our two worlds meet. See, Ben. Vertex, not vortex,” she shouts into the kitchen.
    Dominick studies the shape for a few minutes. I can tell his head is spinning with possibilities. If only parallel universe time travel were a language-based phenomenon and not a mathematical one, maybe I’d follow along.
    Dad returns, and Dominick pockets the paper before there’s an opportunity for criticism. Dad judges what he