The Girl Who Ran

Chapter 2

I stopped in front of my house, hesitant to turn the silver handle of the deep maroon door. The man had shown up, almost quite literally out of nowhere, and seemed to know my mother. My mother who had disappeared five whole years ago. Five years, not a single scrap of evidence turns up, and now this man and his "companion" as he had called the girl. Perhaps this was a mistake, I thought, opening the door and letting the strangers into my house. They waltzed into the living room with an air of confidence, as though they'd been there before.

"Something isn't right, Doctor," said Rose. "This is the house that she grew up in. She grew up right here, and we fixed things so that she would keep living." She picked up a vase from the coffee table by the sofa. It had been one of my mom's favorites, and so it was one of my favorites as well, because it carried a special memory of her.

"Some things can't be fixed, though. Some things are already fixed," the Doctor said, his voice gradually lowering with each word, and his consonants being overly exaggerated by the end.

I simply stood in the doorway, unsure what to do about the whole situation. It was one thing to invite strangers into the house. It was a completely different thing to invite apparent friends of your missing mom into the house. And yet, it still didn't seem right.

"You say you know my mom," I said, sitting down on a chair that gave me a view of the entire room. "You know her, but you didn't even know she had disappeared? How is that even possible?"

The two stopped milling around and shared a glance, a knowing glance, and glance that spoke a million words to each other, but to me, there was no special meaning. These two obviously shared a special bond, and I was afraid that by seeing the glance I was somehow interfering.

"We're, uh..." The Doctor began, but Rose interrupted him.

"Doctor, we have to tell her the truth. It's better for all of us that way." She tossed her long blond hair back and came and knelt on the ground in front of me, her hands grasping mine.

"Rachel, what I'm about to tell you is going to sound crazy. Mad. Insane. But it's true. We're..." she took a while to form the words. "We're time travelers," she finally managed. "This man, the Doctor, is from a different planet, and we travel together through time and space, sort of patching things up. There was an incident in 1991, when your mom was a teenager. This entire city was going to be destroyed, forgotten forever, but we fixed that, and your mom helped us. In fact, without her, we wouldn't have succeeded."

I laughed to myself. "So you guys are sort of like plumbers for the galaxy?" I sighed. "As much as I would like to, I really don't think I can believe all of this. I'm sorry it's just too unreal."

Rose shared a sympathetic look with me. "I know what you're going through. More than you know, actually. When I was just a baby, my dad died in a car accident. I thought that I would never see him again. But then," she paused and looked at the Doctor, smiling. I couldn't interpret this smile, but it was more than just a smile of joy. "But then, the Doctor came. He offered me all of time and space, and in that, I knew there was my dad. Somewhere. Sometime. My dad who had never been a part of my life, and I could finally meet him, finally know who he was. I almost didn't go with him."

"What changed your mind?" I couldn't stop myself from asking.

Her smile faded as she turned to me. The Doctor stood with his hands folded, leaning nonchalantly against the fireplace mantle. "I couldn't let him slip away again. This opportunity to see my dad would never come again. Ever. I couldn't...I just couldn't let it pass by."

"So you just left? You just left your family and friends to travel with a stranger, knowing full well that you might never actually meet your dad? Knowing that if you never made it back, everyone in your own time would be clueless as to what happened to you?"

Rose nodded, her dark red lips parting slightly in a grin. "But it was worth it. Every second of it. That's one of the most important lessons I've learned while traveling with the Doctor. Life is so precious, and if you're given the chance to do something extraordinary, take it. Rachel. Take this chance. Just once in your life. You won't regret it."

"Alright," I said. Well, my mouth said it. In my mind I was really constructing counterarguments, convincing them that there was no logical way I would leave my dad without so much as a goodbye, just to maybe find my mom, who had disappeared five years ago, and whom the police couldn't even begin to track.

They shared that glance again, and my heart leapt inside my chest. Because I knew what this glance meant. I knew what they were thinking.

If it's actually real, I reminded myself. But if they were telling the truth, and if I had correctly interpreted that glance, it meant only one thing.

I was about to travel in time.