"Okay class," my wide-eyed religion teacher says in a high, dreamy voice. "See you all tomorrow. Make sure you do Personhood activities 25 and 26!" Not a second later, a familiar beeping sound fills the room, signifying the end of class.

"Thank God," my friend Kate mutters next to me. "I seriously could not listen to that woman for another minute." I smirk. Ms. Trewley is one of the many teachers that Kate despises. The key word being many.

Kate slings her black backpack over her shoulder, and I follow suit. "C'mon. Let's go to our lockers and then the bench?" She nods her assent and we step out of the room at last. Freedom!

The two of us fight our way through the crowd spilling out of the language hallway, threading between people and desperately trying not to get run over. When we finally emerge, panting and slightly disheveled, we let out a simultaneous sigh of relief. Of all the challenges for a person to face, nothing can top the language hallway traffic.

"Well that was fun," Kate says dryly, sarcasm infusing her tone.

"Oh yeah, the best."

We stroll along down the hall. Open classrooms line either side. By open I mean that they literally only have three walls. You might think it's a bit distracting, but it's really not. The main perk is that if you have a slow day in class and another class is watching a movie, you can just listen to that and you are good to go. Today, as always, the rooms are full of high school girls with messy hair, relatively bored expressions, tired eyes, and blackwatch plaid skirts. Welcome to Ursuline Academy!

Then, it happens.

As we near the end of the hallway, I glance through the adjacent library doors and see the oddest thing.

It's the back of a man. He's hurriedly flipping through a dusty, unfamiliar blue book with crinkly yellow pages. He holds it out in front of him, squinting at it under the bright fluorescent light. All I can tell is that he is wearing a tan jacket and has dark brown hair with a fez (fez?) perched crookedly on top.

He turns to the side, and the first thing I see is the bow tie knotted around his neck. Suddenly, he snaps the book shut and darts behind the shelves. Everything about this stranger, even his mannerisms, remind me of...but no. It can't be.

I turn to Kate, who looks like she's just eaten a bite of raw meat or something. I open my mouth to ask if she saw the man too, but quickly snap it shut. You're probably just imagining things, I tell myself. But I can't shake the feeling that something isn't quite right. And why does Kate look so queasy?

Before I can ask, Kate says, "Meet you on the bench, Mira!" and walks away. Somehow we are already in the freshman/sophomore micropolis. She shuffles away, leaving me standing in the center of the microp, looking like a lost little kid.

With a heavy sigh, I plod over to my locker. It is such a Monday.

A few minutes later, Kate and I plop down on the bench. Everyone refers to it as Kate's bench, because basically it is. Being the antisocial being that she is, she hates the cafe with a passion, so instead she likes to sit on a honey hued wooden bench that resides in the hallway. The hallway directly across from the library, in fact.

As we begin doing our dreaded Biology review packet, I notice something etched into the left arm of the bench that I've never seen before. On close inspection it almost appears to be a...telephone box?

"Hey, Kate. Come check this out."

"Ehhh. I don't want to get up."

"No seriously. Something's carved into your bench."

"What? Who is carving things into my bench? I will not stand for this! I'm going to beat them with a cat." She slides over and peers over my shoulder to look at it. Her brow furrows. "Is that a phone box?"

"That's what I thought too! What do you think it means?"

"I dunno. It's probably nothing though. Just some stupid person vandalizing my bench!" she says angrily as she returns to her seat. But I can tell from her expression that she's thinking hard. I am, too.

This whole weird symbol thing is making me really uncomfortable. It's disconcerting. I just know in my gut that it relates to the guy in the library. My thoughts keep bouncing between the two. You should never ignore a coincidence, as one of my favorite telivision characters once said. And I know two weird things in one day is definitely not coincidental.

Absently, I run my thumb over the carving, still thinking hard. And then...

BRRRIIIIIIIIIIINGGGG!

A loud bell sounds, shaking me to my core. I feel a sharp, almost painful tugging sensation around my waist, like I'm being yanked backwards. I look over at Kate helplessly and see that her expression is equally shocked and horrified. She looks at me and mouths, "OH. MY. GOD!" Then, everything goes black.

My eyes flutter open. I lie there for a moment, wondering where on Earth I am and why I'm lying on the floor. Suddenly, it all rushes back to me like a 10-foot-tall ocean wave.

I sit up so fast it makes my head spin. I see someone out of the corner of my eyes, and my head quickly whips around.

"KATE!" I cry in relief. She doesn't answer. She's sitting a few feet away, cross legged, staring about with eyes as wide as saucers. She has a gleeful and disbelieving look on her face.

"Miranda," she whispers excitedly, her green eyes shining. "Look!"

I gaze around for a moment. Still completely disoriented, it takes me a minute. And then it hits me. The room starts to spin. I feel like I might pass put again. I thought I'd eliminated this possibility before? There was no way this could be real! I had to be dreaming. I had to. What other explanation was there? But then, it all seemed so real.

"Oh my God," I breathe, my jaw still hanging open wide and my gray eyes now as big as Kate's are. "We're in..."

Her voice joins me as I say the pivotal, final two words.

"The TARDIS!"