NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 34

Matron Caine is on my floor at six in the evening. Some of the girls are long gone – those students whose parents she always laughs with. But Tessa is in. The matron enters her room all smiles. Now their conversation carries on like an annoying plastic bag during an intense search. Tessa is bragging about her promotion at Stocatta Embassy. Apparently, she's a human resource manager now; and Matron Caine is going on and on about it. This is more than I can take. Why couldn't one of those students have been my neighbour? They're never at home. And by the time they do arrive they're tired from studying. The most I'll have to bear with is the clicking of the light switch when one wakes up to study. I know because sometimes I'm the ghost who haunts the corridors during the witching hours.

She sizes me up before entering my room with her snowed-on hair. I step aside to let her have free passage. The last thing I want on a Friday night, when I have completely zero action going on, is to let Tessa hear Matron Caine tear me to shreds right after snuggling up with her.

"Mary Pethiel," she spits my name like a bad taste. "I hope there aren't any problems this week."

"None that I can think of."

She sticks her nose into my nooks and crannies, and does something I do not expect, even from her. Matron Caine stoops lower than the white line on all Leer Island streets, except Florence Street Extension of course, where the worst criminals live. She lowers herself and checks beneath my bed. Usually, a clean tidy surface does the trick for her. But apparently not today. She decides to be a bit extra, for Tessa's ears, I assume. And with that comes the embarrassment I was trying to avoid since the room inspection alarm was sounded.

The matron extends her long dark grey left arm into the vast unknown and pulls out not one, but all three of my dusty bags of coins.

"You mean to tell me you owe four months' rent and you're hiding all this money away?"

She holds on to the bed and pulls herself up. As I'm about to answer her, I see a smooth-skinned Tessa appear in the doorway with phone in hand. She puts the person on hold and looks at me like she's about to call the police.

"Matron?"

"It's okay, Tessa. I'm all right. Just dealing with a bit of madness here."

"Call me if anything changes," Tessa says with way too much concern in her voice.

Matron Caine nods in response and the evil witch scowls at me before crawling back to her hole.

"I can explain, Matron." The words pelt out. "That's barely enough to cover anything."

"Barely enough? This is at least a hundred dollars a bag."

"I just told you. It's not enough to cover what I owe."

"Who says I care about that?" she announces. "So you can't pay four? Just pay three then."

"I'd rather pay all at once," I say, more for Tessa's ears than anything else.

"Mary Pethiel, stop acting as though you're some rich girl living off daddy's money," she says at the top of her voice, making sure whoever is down the hall hears. "You know, I think maybe it was a mistake to lump you with these girls so soon. I should've waited until you held that job for at least a year."