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pants still around her ankles, emitted the tiniest of gasps.
The wand was in 3-D
. She couldn’t help thinking that it was reveling in her amazement, pausing to twirl around. At last it tipped back slightly and then snapped forward, pricking the surface of her phone and sending its surface rippling. As the screen settled, these words emerged:
Reminder: Guitar Recital, West End School for Music and Art, 55 Bethune Street, Tuesday, September 22, 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
    As clearly crazy as Dr. Diane Sexton was, Jennifer thought, she had to admire her style.
Guitar Recital.
She closed her eyes, and for a moment she was there, basking in the glow of her beautiful little boy. Once again, with its tasteful reminder—in 3-D, no less!—Wishful Thinking had briefly transported her from the city offices she’d ducked out of, with their stale smell of cheap mustard and decades-old carpet, to the place she dearly wished to be.
    Remember!
the reminder continued, the wand straightening up suddenly and assuming a crisp, authoritative air as it tapped each word of warning.
At the appointed hour, find a place where you can travel unobserved. You must be physically in contact with your phone at both the beginning and the end of the appointment time. When your appointment has concluded, you will be transported back to the place and time where you began it. For further instructions, please contact Dr. Diane Sexton . Safe travels!
    With that, the wand disappeared with a faint
pop
.
    The spell broken, Jennifer let out an irritated sigh. A harrumph, more like it.
Safe travels?
Jennifer thought as she pulled up her pants.
This lady really
is
batty
.
    At 3:58, however, Jennifer was standing with one hand on the bathroom door, staring at her phone.
    She really should get going if she wanted to get coffee before the staff meeting, she thought. But still she stood unmoving. Was it possible? Could she “travel” to the West End School, go to Julien’s recital, then “travel” back to four o’clock in the secret bathroom, and no one would be the wiser?
    Three fifty-nine.
    Only one more minute. She was certainly unobserved. The staff meeting wasn’t for another half an hour. Her hand was on her phone.
    Why not wait?
    Then Jennifer did something silly. Clicking her heels together lightly, she shut her eyes like Dorothy and whispered a single word: “Julien.”
    “Julien, Julien, Julien.”
    Four o’clock.
    Hand on her phone, Jennifer felt a jolt. A powerful jolt. And in an instant, a flash of heat emanated from where her fingertips touched her phone. For a moment her skin seemed to adhere to the surface of the now-superheated screen, as though the pads of her fingertips were welded there, but in the split second it took her mind to register the heat and send her hand the signal to pull away, the current spread and shot through the rest of her body. She was melting. Watching as her phone gave rise to a portal, a whirling tunnel materializing before her eyes like the narrow end of a tornado, Jennifer wanted to scream. But while her mind was one big, guttural cry for help, her mouth could not make a sound. Her hand and her phone were one now, and, even stranger, this was becoming true of the rest of her body too. It was as though she were being collapsed and drawn into a tiny point, sucked into a hole that was expanding, opening to take her in … and the hole was her phone. Her magical, marvelous smartphone, which, she thought, just as everything went black, was about to do her in completely.
    * * *
    I T STOPPED AS QUICKLY as it had begun.
    Jennifer blinked. It was dark. The dark was so complete at first that she wondered, for a minute, if she had gotten lost somewhere in space. Her heart was ramming in her chest, and her armpits and the middle of her back were dripping with sweat. Her fingers were clenched so tightly around her phone, she was amazed that neither it nor her fingers had cracked in two. Despite the phone-related trauma she had just