Sputnik had nothing on quantum entanglement, not even in the winter of 1958. Poodle skirts? The Cold War? Credit cards? Elvis the Pelvis? None were as important as Jump Time—at least, not to Louise Johnson they weren't. Especially not with twenty days until Christmas, the existence of storefronts with flagrant No Colored Allowed signs, and a list of family members as long the Anacostia River.

Even at seventy-four, Louise can very clearly remember this date—December 5, 1958. With the usual wind whipping her distasteful dress around her knees and the gray sky appearing to be as foreboding as any other Friday, it should've been difficult to separate that specific day from the previous and subsequent ones. But how special it was! Of course, this day was never to be spoken of by the masses or read about in history books. It would mark the first event of many that would not make history that December.

It would mark the day Louise met Connie Anne Williams, quantum physicst extraordinaire.

Louise was already familiar with Connie Anne Williams, obsessive bibliophile. Connie Anne Williams, storyteller. Connie Anne Williams, scientific (fiction) journalist. Each of Connie's personas shared the entirety's quality of gorging on words and novels faster than they could be written. She was a ruthless predator for good stories, and her hunting ground was the Honor Public Library for Colored People. That was how Louise had always remembered Connie—an aspiring author-in-training who would grow to break the boundaries of science fiction faster than the speed of light. 

By the winter of eighth grade, Connie Anne had already written and edited two full-length novels with no white leads and plots so elaborate that the fabric of reality seemed like nothing more than a story itself. Even with the ability to jump through space and time, Louise was impressed by her friend's persistence and patience. This fact, however, should not be as surprising as it now seems. Everything Connie did (and still does at the ever youthful age of seventy-three, mind you) was immensely impressive:

(1) Connie Anne Williams, obsessive bibliophile. This one had spent three months repeatedly asking her parents to please, please buy her Have Space Suit— Will Travel, even though those same parents regarded science fiction as pure testosterone. She then proceeded to trade in her hot-off-the-press copy of Breakfast at Tiffany's, which her mother assumed would satisfy her infinitely curious brain, for that same glossy Heinlein paperback to keep in her own private library. Never had Louise seen someone take a beating and still contain such mirth in their eyes.

(2) Connie Anne Williams, storyteller. October 1956, Halloween night. All it took was one artfully crafted story straight from Connie's tongue for Patricia Morris to find herself by Louise's side for the rest of the night. Seeing this, the raconteuse continued to mystify their candy-hunting party with tales of a bone king until Patricia refused to continue any longer unless she was holding someone's hand. Louise often went back to that night just to hear the eerie words flow from Connie's mouth and feel Patricia's sweaty palm in her own. It was electrifying to hear her describe the horrors creativity had carved onto her frontal lobe.

(3) Connie Anne Williams, science (fiction) journalist. September 1954. The very first time Louise met the accomplished Miss Williams was at Honor Library. Connie'd been no more than ten years old, though her long lanky legs and neatly parted hair caused her to appear no younger than twelve. When Louise's mother asked her what she was up to, she'd replied with something about writing dull science essays. But when eleven-year-old Louise herself shyly asked again, Connie'd stared her straight in the eyes over the top of her father's "borrowed" reading glasses and said, "Why I'm writing an argumentative essay on why my parents should let me read that Planet Stories magazine over there, even though I've already read it three times over."

Louise hadn't known what to say. But she came to learn that in the presence of Connie Anne Williams, rarely anyone other than Connie Anne Williams, professional wordsmith, truly understood how to respond.

Yes, God had done Connie good. She was a true masterpiece—loyal, smart, dauntless (in the face of her parents, at least). And she could keep a secret, too. Which was why, Louise decided on that gray December day, she deserved to know about Jump Time.

How to explain Jump Time to anyone at all, much less Connie, had stumped Louise for years. She twisted the Ring on her finger once, twice, three times in a fit of anxiety. The only places she could ever find Connie if she wasn't at home avoiding beatings for blatantly disobeying her parents any chance she got were as follows: school, Honor, and their carefully chosen spot just behind the big oak at Anacostia Park. Throwing her legs over her side of her bike, Louise adjusted her damned skirt over her nylons and hoped to God she wouldn't bore a hole in this pair trying to find Connie. But she could already feel the breeze tickling the back of her right knee as she sped past the darkened windows of Honor Library.

Damn you, Connie Anne Williams, she thought to herself. Damn you for ruining my nylons with your elusiveness.

Anacostia Park was a classic hangout spot for any thirteen- or fourteen-year-old adolescents going on full-time teenagers. There were playgrounds with swing sets and bright blue slides for sudden bouts of childish energy; there were asphalt basketball courts that burned you worse than scraped you when you fell, leaving indelible scars; and there were nature trails that seemed to be designed specifically for drawling conversations on either absolutely nothing or the deepest secrets you hoarded in the corners of your mind. Louise hoped to make it to the river's edge and find a short trail to walk before the sun's already pitiful rays tired out. She could take Connie back to a time when the light was exuberant in the sky, show her how incredible Jump Time truly was. But then she'd only bring her back to today when it was over. To December 5, 1958, at the longitude and latitude of 38.868872, -76.997695. Louise always had to return to her starting point whenever she—

There she is. Connie was sitting very calmly by the side of the river just in front of the park, her boyish pants up at her knees and her long legs dragging in the numbingly cold water. Her coat was balled up in her lap, a bright burst of red contrasting with her generally monochrome-colored clothing. How crazy she must have been! It was as if she welcomed illness with open arms—or cold feet, in this case—as her hair blew wildly around her shivering head.

"Connie, what's gotten into you!" Louise called as she skidded to a violent stop. She hurried over to the sand, pulling her friend out of the water despite her stuttering cries of protest.

"H-h-hey there! What do you th-think you're d—?"

"I'm saving you from a nasty bout of hypothermia, that's what! Has your brain hopped outta your skull?"

Connie pushed Louise's hands away, brushing the ice-cold water droplets from her dark calves. "No! I was—my goooodness, Louise—I w-was doing research!"

"Research?" Louise asked, her lips parting in incredulous shock. "On what? How long it'll take for your legs to freeze off? It's December, Connie Anne!"

Connie paused to shake the remaining water from her trembling legs. Muttering under her breath about how she would've frozen to death had she not found her, Louise took her coat and undersweater off and handed the thinner fabric to her supposed masterpiece of a friend. Connie stuttered halfway through a thank you before she gave up on being polite. "Why are you he-here anyway? What do you w-want?"

Louise shrugged. "I wanted to make sure you were alright after the whole suspenders...incident."

"Well of course I-I'm alright." Connie scoffed as she began to pull her socks over her blue toes. She made no move to mention the so-called suspenders incident, so Louise decided it'd be best to ignore the rumored events of the school day and stop beating around the bush. "Be honest with me. Why are you he-here?"

Louise frowned. "So being worried for you isn't honest enough? Good Heavens!"

"Louise," Connie warned, rolling her pants leg down. "I'm leaving th-then!"

"Alright, alright!" Louise spun the Ring once, twice, three times and bit her chapped lip. "Walk with me? I have something to tell you. And no," she added, viewing the look on Connie's face with suspicion, "it's not about Patricia."

"Really? You only ever t-t-talk to me about Patricia." With a sidelong grin, Connie Anne elongated the vowels in the aforementioned girl's name so that Patricia became Paaa-tri-shuuu.

Her smile was not returned. "Shut your mouth! This is not about Patricia! Now, are your feet numb or can you stand?"

"I can stand, I can stand." Shakily, the shivering girl rose to her feet and draped herself over Louise's warm shoulder. The two began their slow, uneven trek into the frost-tipped weeds. Connie Anne finally went, "Okay, you can tell m-me whatever now. And considering the f-fact that you found me halfway in the Anacostia River, I swear not to t-tell anyone," before falling silent.

Louise took a sharp breath in, filling her lungs with cold air, before exhaling, "Um.... I'm not quite sure how to put this into words, Connie. Here! You see this ring here, this silver band? Yes? Well, and I know it sounds crazy here, but I can use this thing to jump. Not like jump off the ground— would you stop laughing? I mean, jump from here to across the river. I can show you, too, if you just stop giggling, my goodness!"

"You can...you can—?" Connie Anne's body was shivering with laughter now, and laughter at Louise's expense. Louise had to have thought she was a nutcase to believe a story like that! 

"It's implausible. I know." And then just like that, Louise's presence beside Connie had disappeared.

Any and all laughter died as quickly as an underfoot cigarette butt. The ever-shaking girl whipped her body around, her eyes searching the surrounding terrain for her friend. Louise was really just gone, as if all the solid matter that made her up had sublimed and assimilated into the air.

"Are you laughing now?" a small voice shouted from across the slow-moving water. "I can't hear you from over here! Let me come back!"

And there she was, the disappearing Louise Johnson now standing right beside Connie. There was no poof or zap as she returned to her rightful place on the physical plane. There wasn't even a wrinkle in her red-and-white-checked dress or a black strand on her head out of place to hint at the slightest bit of exertion. Connie's knees wobbled, and she thought she was going to faint, right then and there, in Louise's arms.

Instead, she asked faintly, "How did you...? What...? No, that's not what I want to ask.... Why? Why did you feel the n-n-need to show me that?"

Louise attempted a nonchalant shrug to appear as if she hadn't just demonstrated one of her greatest secrets for her best friend. "I just don't want to keep things from you any longer. It's not fair for me to keep secrets. I mean, I told you about Patricia, and you tell me everything about your life, right? I just wanted to show you this...thing. I call it—"

"Spooky action at a distance," Connie's voice interrupted, faint as ever. "Spukhafte Fernwirkung. You've just shown me how entanglement can work, completely disregarding general relativity in the process." Then, her eyes wide with earnest fright, she said, "By God—by Einstein, by Schrodinger—that ring is a weapon! Think of what the Reds could do with a thing like that!"

Louise was the one stuttering now. "W-what?"

"The ring, Louise! We're in the middle of a war! We've got to take this to someone, make sure no one ever finds it! Is that the only one of its kind?"

"Well, I-I'd suppose so. But...what's quantum entanglement? I call this.... This thing it lets me do, I call it Jump Time."

"Haven't you read the scientific papers down at...?" Connie's brows came together in a gnarled line over her troubled eyes. "In fact, no. I'm the only one who reads the scientific papers. My mistake. Entanglement is a quantum mechanic."

"And quantum mechanics are?" Louise urged. Her eyes scoured the dimming sky for the bright ball of gas and plasma that was no longer sitting on the horizon.

"Oh, please. We'll be here all night. You can just keep calling it Jump Time." The end of Connie's sentence came abruptly as her shoulders slumped in realization. "Damn. Nighttime. I should start to head home. But...oh, I'm curious now! Would I be able to...watch you do it? Watch you go through the Jump Time process, I mean. To try to understand it so we can figure out if it poses a danger to anyone." At Louise's hesitation, she added, "Just to study it, really. It won't take very long!"

Her Ring? Pose as a danger? Louise slowly began to nod her head. "Sure. I honestly think it's harmless, but sure. I have to go Christmas shopping soon anyways, and I use Jump Time to help sometimes. I know it's odd, to say the least, but I'll let you come and see how it all works. No police officers needed. It's harmless," she repeated firmly.

Connie Anne, who was currently moving backward toward her bike, grinned wider than ever before. Louise hadn't known quantum mechanics made her so lighthearted. "Okay! Meet me at Honor tomorrow at noon! Oh, and bring your brother—he's good at mathematics, isn't he? We'll need a calculator for the type of tests I'm looking to run."

"Oh, Connie Anne! Wait!" But she'd already mounted her bike and begun pedaling away furiously.

Louise sighed in frustration, toeing the dirt-colored snow under her feet with her saddle shoes. There was just a tiny issue with Connie's plan to experiment with Jump Time, and the blame for this fault landed squarely on her. She had told neither her brother nor anyone else on planet Earth of the Ring. Connie Anne Williams, quantum mechanics extraordinaire, had been the first. And with her idiosyncratic forms of studying and researching, the young physics journalist certainly wasn't going to be the last to question the silver band around Louise's finger.

Damn you, Connie Anne Williams, she thought as she mounted her own bicycle, her eyes watering by virtue of the freezing Washington winds. Damn you for being the most inquisitive scientist-in-training I've ever met.