Time

I never asked for weird things to happen to me, they just do. Like that time, when I was fourteen, I was found unconscious in the woods in a white and blue tea dress with no memory of anything. The city took me in of course, and put me in one of its foster care programs. So now I spend most of my time at Saint Mary's Foster Care Home for girls.

Or that other time, a couple months ago, when I was having a horrible day I wished I could turn back the clock so I could start over. Things began spinning, and next thing I know is that I'm waking up in my bed that morning.

Or once, when I was walking down the street from school and a strange man in a bow tie bumped into me.

~~~~~~~~~~Line Break~~~~~~~~~~~

It wasn't any spectacular day. It was mid-October, not very warm, not very cold. It was Friday and I had had to stay after school and finish a science test, but that was nothing new. I wasn't even wearing anything fancy or different. I guess I should have become suspicious when I turned onto Blueberry Street, the one Saint Mary's is on, and it was empty. Completely deserted. Normally, at this time, kids were hanging out in the front of Saint Mary's, goofing off and playing games. But no, I didn't notice, I didn't notice anything. There was a tiny scrap of memory, tugging at the back of my brain. It was of a giant room, the size of a school gym. The walls were dull gold; the floor was covered in thick, soft gold carpet and there were pillars the same color as the walls lined up on either side of the room. I was standing on what looked like a small stage, two steps above the floor. For some reason, I felt very overwhelmed and almost scared. But then the memory ended.

I barley registered the wind that had suddenly picked up. I didn't even notice the odd noise, as loud as it was. I half heartedly popped the collar of my jacket and pulled my scarf tighter around my neck. I looked down at the ground. The memory was really bugging me. I've had it since I can remember and that wasn't long ago.

I was suddenly pulled out of my thoughts by someone bumping into me. I grunted in surprise and caught myself. There was a medium height man in a tweed jacket and a red bow tie standing a half a step behind me. He had a weird, old fashioned cell phone-looking thing in his hands. It was beeping, quickly, and something green was flashing. He looked up when we collided, as if he had been focusing on something as important as I had.

"Sorry." He said, like he was surprised I was here. But the thing that surprised me as weird was his accent. British, defiantly British. Must be a tourist. I mumbled my own apologies and kept walking. The thing in his had must have been some sort of science experiment or something. I dully heard the beeping suddenly get slower, as if whatever it was picking up was getting fainter.

"No." I heard a woman's, British also, say behind me. "No, it can't be."

"Never lies." The man said. Suddenly, there was a hand on my shoulder. It was the bow tie man.

"Sorry." He said again. "But were exactly are we?" I blinked at him in surprise.

"Some kind of tourist you are, don't even know where you are." I responded, but it came out a bit harsher than I meant. He didn't seem to notice and stared at me in surprise.

"You're American!" He exclaimed, like my hair had suddenly turned pink.

"Well obviously." I rolled my eyes. "You in Green Lake, Pennsylvania, America. If you don't have family, I don't know why you would come here. Nothing ever happens." I huffed the last bit in annoyance.

"What's your name?" The female voice said behind me. I turned to look at her incredulously, but something else caught my eye. It was a big, blue box. On the top, it said Police Box, several times around, and it had two windows on its double doors. There was a young woman with red hair and a man her age with a slightly big nose leaning against the wall.

"Were did that come from?" I squeaked in surprise. Everyone momentarily glanced at the Police box.

"No were, it's been there the whole time." Bow Tie said quickly. Too quickly.

"One, you're lying through your teeth. Two, I just walked right past there, I think I would notice a big blue police box in my way." I waved my hand at the doors. He seemed pleasantly surprised.

"You know what it is?"

"Of course I do. Any one in Matilda's history class knows what those are." They seemed a bit confused that I would call a teacher by her first name. "Well, her name is Ms. Lovett, but she lets everyone call her Matilda." I lowered my voice to a dramatic stage whisper. "Sometimes she lets us watch old fashioned movies in her class. She says it's to learn how people lived back then in the medieval times like 1960 and stuff, but really everyone knows she doesn't feel like teaching on those days. No one complains of course; we could always use a free history period. Police box's are in almost every one." I nodded a-matter-of-factly.

"So," The first woman, with big curly blonde hair said after she recovered from this information. "Name?"

I rolled my eyes. "You first." She gave me an exasperated look. "Hey. Your four strangers I just met who don't know where they are and have a blue police box. It's a pretty fair question."

"She has a point." Bow tie agreed, much to the annoyance of curly hair. "This is River, that's Amy and Rory, and I'm The Doctor."

I raised an eyebrow. "The… Doctor?" He nodded. "Doctor what?"

He seemed surprised at my choice of wording, but he seemed to get that question a lot. "Just The Doctor."

"O-okay then. I'm Vivimori. But everyone calls me Vivi."

"I can see why." The ginger, Amy, muttered to Rory. She had a strong Scottish accent. "Who names their daughter Vivimori?" Rory snorted.

"Exactly." I nodded to her, which took her by surprise. "Who does?" They seemed a little put off, but suddenly, the police box groaned and a second later smoke clouded the windows.

"No no no no!" The Doctor exclaimed, running up. His next words were muttered, so I only caught a few. "No….. The controls have gone all off….. Something wibbley wobbley timey wimey… Oh come on!" Slowly, my brain was starting to make connections. Impossible connections.

"OH MY GOD!" I exclaimed loudly when I had figured it out. All four of them turned to look at me. "Oh my god, it's a space ship!" They recoiled in shock. "It's a space ship that looks like a police box! A real space ship! But why a police box? And how does it work? How do you all fit inside? NO, is it? It is, isn't it? It's bigger on the inside! A space ship, that looks like a police box that's bigger on the inside! How did you get it? Are you from the future? OH MY GOD, you are! It's a time machine! A bigger-on-the-inside-police-box-time-machine!" My mind was reeling from these revelations'. Part of me was denying it all. But the other part, the more clever part, knew it was true. The moment he said 'controls' and 'wibbley wobbley timey wimey', the clever part of my brain had begun piecing things together. It was obvious, if you think about it. I had walked right through the area the box was in now, the sudden wind had appeared, even though it had been still all day. The little thing The Doctor had been holding must have been a futuristic machine, and the science for a space ship that small and silent defiantly wasn't out yet.

Everyone was staring at me. "How…How did you know that?" River asked, her face one of pure shock.

"It was simple. I just figured it out." When they looked at me for more explanation, I told them my reasons.

"That's….." Rory started.

"Brilliant." The Doctor finished. He was looking at me weird, as if he was afraid this would happen. "That was brilliant. No one has ever done that, not even a Time Lord would have figured all that out from five minutes." I frowned. Time what? "Not even I could have done it." Again it clicked.

I gasped and stared at him. "You're not human? You're an alien! You're not a human! Oh my god, what are you? A, what did you call them? Time Lords? Are you a Time Lord? You are, aren't you? And that's why they're called Time Lords, because they can time travel. Oh, it all makes sense!" I slapped the side of my head in a 'duh' way.

"Yeah. I was afraid of that." The Doctor said solemnly. He pulled something small and shiny out of his pocket. He pointed it at me and it made a weird buzzing noise. The end glowed a bright green and he waved it up and down the length of my body. He flicked it and a little slot opened, and he cocked his head to the side as it reading it. "Yep. It's her." I smiled uncertainly. Suddenly, a loud screech filled the air. A big, massive, thing appeared in the air above the Police box. It looked like a big bat, only with dark red skin, a sharply pointed nose, four legs, and purple eyes like an insect.

"Quick, Vivi," The Doctor grabbed my shoulders. "We need something old, really old, fast."

"And preferably close!" River added.

"The church!" I shouted without missing a beat. "The church connected to Saint Mary's! It's right down here, come on!" I whipped around and ran towards the church. It was a big, old brick building with a huge stain glass cross above the front door. The wide lawn wrapped around it to the back, and there was a slim cobble stone path connecting the front path to a big purple-blue two story building; Saint Mary's. I lead the four of them past the wrought-iron gate, the swing set and slide for the kids, and into the looming wooden double doors. They slammed behind us, and I plopped down onto one of the pews. I glanced in up to the front of the empty church, and saw the platform that held the Preachers podium and the chairs for the choir. The platform that was two steps above the rest of the floor, just like the one in my memory. I was suddenly and momentarily thrown into the gold room. I was still on the platform, only this time there was a crowd of well-dressed people in it. They all turned to me as I came in and put on well-faked smiles.

Suddenly, I was pulled out of my memory by a hand on my shoulder. It was River.

"Are you alright?" She asked with concern in her voice and face. There was a old fashioned cell phone thing that looked like the one The Doctor had been holding in her hand. I shook my head.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." I lied. Truth was, I wasn't. The memory scared me. What had I been?

"You sure?" River continued. "'Cause for a moment there your heart rate and brain activity went really high, to high for a normal human." This bit of information shocked me a bit, but after thinking about it, I just cataloged it away in the place where all the bits of information telling me there's something weird about me go.

"Yeah, I'm okay." I waved her hand away. She didn't seem convinced. Meanwhile, the Doctor was waving around the silver shiny thing and it was making the weird buzzing noise.

"Right." He walked over to where we were sitting. "So, this church is about 234 years old, it'll do." He turned to me, and suddenly, his face became stern.

"I know what you're doing." He said in a challenging voice. Amy and Rory looked back and forth between us.

"Ummm, excuse me?" This time, unlike all the other times I get in trouble, I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Oh, yeah, play the innocent card. I know what you're doing, I know all about it. All I want to know, is two things. That's it, two things. One: Who are you? I don't think we've met before, so I would like a formal introduction. Two: Why? Why are you doing this? What's the point? What would you gain?" Suddenly, I felt a memory coming on. Normally, my memories aren't normal. They differ on how I remember them. Sometimes, I wake up and I just remember it, but it's usually a short or boring memory. Like playing with a jack-in-the-box, or making hot chocolate in the middle of the night. Which, if you think about it, is kind of weird, because what little kid makes hot chocolate in the middle of the night?

Or sometimes, I have dreams about them. I have no warning, no light-headedness before bed or anything; they just happen like any normal dream. I wake up in cold sweat and the memory is already fading.

And then there are times when it hurts. The memory is so strong that it physically hurts to remember it. This was one of those times. Pain shot up through my temples, and my stomach dropped. I suddenly felt like I had a really bad case of the flu, even though I hadn't felt sick recently. I was lying in a big bed, half conscious, and my skin was totally numb. I couldn't feel things like the sheets or the cloth on my head, but I could feel things on the inside. My stomach was turning, my head felt like it had a million bricks on it, my vision was blurry, my limbs were like lead, and my heart was racing. I remember lying there, in pain, for days. It felt like months, but I was in that bed for five days straight.

Then the memory ended, and everyone was staring at me. I looked back at them, my eyes watery from the pain, and everything went black.