Parallel [ONC 2020] // Shortlisted

Chapter Eleven

Ricky helped me to hide the Bible back in the wall and together we crept back through the hallways and to the room where our roommates were sleeping. Despite having shared a room with these people for two days, I didn't know their names and I had yet to meet them formally, but neither Ricky nor Mitch wanted to introduce me to too many people just in case I gave myself away. That plan looked as though it may have to change if they had been right.

If I never made it home, I would have to meet the people around me despite Ricky and Mitch's apprehension with introducing me to them. My only hope was that we would find a way to get me home long before I had to be introduced to another person, but my hope in that idea was fading fast. Home seemed like a distant memory, but I didn't want it to remain that way and wanted more than anything to return to my own time and be with my own family once more.

Family had meant very little to me before, it had been my lineage and gave me my position in society but being away from my family hit me harder than I ever thought it would. I missed Father playing the piano in the evenings, Mother teaching me needlepoint in front of the fire and even Luke flicking peas at me across the dining room table. They were only small things, but I missed them more then I would ever admit to and I wanted to go home.

"Do you know if Mrs Likens is around or did she go home for the holidays?" Ricky asked at breakfast that morning. The dining room was quiet with students walking around in a daze despite it being ten in the morning.

"I think she stayed. Why?" Mitch said.

"She might be able to help. We're not going to solve this one on our own and who better then a science teacher who introduced us to the Einstein quote in the first place?"

"You want to go and spill everything to Mrs Likens? Do you know how crazy we're going to sound?"

"As crazy as a box of frogs, but it's worth it. Who knows, she might know a bit more on this then we ever could. We might as well try."

"Okay, if you think it'll work. If she thinks we're high, I'm blaming you."

"I'm pretty sure she thinks we're high anyway."

I had little to know idea what they were talking about, but if there was someone out there who could help me get home then I wanted to meet them. Home would always be my goal and I didn't care who found out about me as long as I made it back there. The whole world could discover the truth about me, and I could be poked and prodded until they found an answer. I just wanted to go home and nothing else mattered to me but that.

After breakfast, I followed Ricky and Mitch across the grounds to the larger building that looked more like an eyesore on the area than anything else. We walked through the door and down a maze of hallways and corridors that seemed to stretch on forever. Eventually, we reached a long, tiled corridor with doors on either side of the hall. The doors open up onto large, white classrooms with strange shaped desks and taps in the centre of them.

We walked into one of the rooms where a woman with short, bright blue hair sat behind a desk almost hidden by a large stack of paper. She held a red pen and chewed the end of it before scribbling on her sheet and turning the page before chewing on the pen again. She didn't notice the three of us as we entered the room. Mitch cleared his throat and the woman almost threw her pen across the room, knocking several sheets of paper off the table and sending them crashing to the floor.

"What are you doing here? You know it's the holidays, don't you?" She looked at me. "Who's this?"

"We know it's the holidays, but we have a little bit of a situation and need your help. This is something we can't solve on our own," Ricky said.

"You haven't broken anything, have you? I can't be seen aiding and abetting criminals as you well know and if I don't get these tests marked by the end of the week, you won't be knowing your scores."

"Nothing's been broken. Yet. Out dilemma is a bit of a strange one, though."

"No surprise there."

"We were wondering if you knew anything about parallel universes or crossing timelines."

"What is this about? I won't help if you don't tell me the truth, no one comes to talk to me during the holidays and I don't like the vagueness of your questions."

"This is where it gets weird." Ricky turned to look at me and nudged her head towards the woman, as though she expected me to explain myself.

I wasn't entirely sure what I could say to make this situation seem normal because we all knew it would be anything but. I didn't know who this woman was, and she didn't know anything about me, not the real me at any rate. There was little doubt in my mind that she would believe me but telling her seemed easier if it meant we could find a solution to my rather unusual problem. Being given a strange look was worth it if it meant I got home.

"Ma'am, my name is Harriet Longdale. I was born in 1867 in this very house and I am in the wrong century."