Even before Poppy said Grandma was out there, I knew he was talking about more than stars. When Poppy stopped talking, we just lay there in the snow, looking up. After a while I started to feel what Poppy felt. I started to feel comfortable, at home, like the world was our room, like the stars were our ceiling.
On the ride home Poppy told us about entanglement. He said entanglement shows that everything in the universe is connected. He said that light is made up of particles called photons. “Sometimes,” he said, “photons come in pairs. It’s called entanglement.” He looked at us squeezed into the shotgun seat. “You could call them twins.” I jabbed Jake in the ribs. Poppy said if twin photons are separated, they still act as if they’re together. You could put them on opposite ends of the universe and it wouldn’t make any difference. “If you tweak one photon,” he said, “the twin on the other side of the universe will twitch.”
I jabbed Jake again, hard this time. “See?”
Jake squawked. “Ow!”
I was so busy thinking about entangled twin light particles that we were on the porch at home before I remembered something. “Poppy!” I said. “You said you found yourself in two places. Where’s the other one?”
He didn’t say a word. He took a step back. His grin got bigger and bigger under the porch light. When it seemed his grin was ready to crack his face in half, he pointed with both index fingers—straight at us. And grabbed us in a bear hug that lasted forever.
THE END