Teaser Tuesday: 3:59

mood: rockstar

pandora/ipod: "so what" by p!nk

I think I've done a teaser of this before, but I'm suddenly super freaking excited about this book (thanks to a BREAKTHROUGH suggestion by the amazeballs Carrie Harris) so when my friend Bryn Greenwood suggested a round of Teaser Tuesdays I was like... I'M IN!

3:59 is my work in progress.  Calling it "sci fi horror" with a doppelganger twist.  Just a short tease but...yeah.  I think you'll get where this is going!

Fuck. Josie tossed the cell phone on her bed. On the one hand, it felt good to say what was on her mind, to finally tell Madison exactly what she thought of her. On the other hand, Josie recognized the tone in Madison's voice at the end. Only too well. If Madison had been offering an olive branch, Josie had just lit the thing on fire. Now it would be war.

Josie leaned against the window sill and stared out into the backyard. The yew bushes that lined the fence on all three sides were ridiculously overgrown. The lawn was mostly weeds, dotted with barren patches of dirt and a minefield of gophers holes.  Her mom had really let the yard go to seed since Dad moved out.  It seemed like everything was falling apart: yard, house, life...

War with Madison wouldn't be pretty, but it wasn't as if Josie had that much left to lose. It was April, so only two months left of school. Then maybe she could transfer for senior year? Use her dad's mailing address and finish out high school at Hampton? It might be better than watching the MadNick romance unfold on a daily basis.

Or maybe just get her GED and go move to Timbukto where no one would know she was the most pathetic seventeen-year-old in the entire freaking world. Josie turned away from the window. Yeah, that might—

Josie's internal monologue was running toward "Yeah, that might work," but her brain never finished the sentence. As she turned around, she saw something reflected in her bedroom mirror that literally froze time.

From where she stood at the window, the antique mirror perfectly reflected her bed. And there, snuggled under the same blue and white floral comforter cover, was her. Josie. Sound asleep.

Josie glanced at her bed. Nope, it was empty, the covers and pillows a disshelved mess, just the way she'd left them that morning. But there, in the mirror, she could clearly see the image of herself sound asleep in her room.

Wait, was it her room? The girl, the bedclothes, even the nightstand were the same, the room in the reflection clearly wasn't Josie's. The carpet was different – lush and cream colored where the hardwood floors in Josie's room were covered in worn striped throw rugs. The giant print of Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Gran Jatte" that hung above Josie's bed wasn't in the reflection, replaced by a black and white panorama of the Paris skyline. And the alarm clock on the nightstand in the reflection wasn't Josie's old hand me down from her mom, but a sleek, modern clock with bright blue numbers that cut through the brightly lit room.

Numbers? Josie took a step closer to the mirror and squinted at the clock. The numbers were backward, so it took her brain a moment time it showed. It dawned on her slowly.

3:59.

It couldn't be. Josie whipped her head around to look at her own alarm clock and caught the read out just as it clicked over to four o'clock. 3:59? Again?

Josie turned back to the mirror.

The girl in the bed was gone.