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Counting
Author's Note: Some of you may recognise a line or two of dialogue stolen from the "little Amy, little Rory, and little Mels" montage from Let's Kill Hitler. Almost all of it is mine, though.
Chapter Two
.~*~*~*~.
9 April 1996
She woke up, blinking and bleary but not confused. Amelia remembered perfectly well, this time, why she had chosen to sit by the window at night, and why she had fallen asleep there. Holding back a yawn, she peered out the window, scanning desperately for any signs of the Doctor having arrived in the night.
There were none. Just the remains of the shed, and her little suitcase a ways back.
Amelia sighed. It was Tuesday today; the Easter holidays were through, and she was supposed to go to school. But how could she possibly go to school when she had waiting to do? No, school was out of the question. She hoped, for a moment, that her Aunt Sharon had already left for work, and that she would get to stay home and wait all day. Besides, her homework wasn't done. She didn't move from her spot at the window, continuing to gaze out of it with eyes wide and unflinchingly hopeful. But she didn't get to wait for very long. Her aunt's cry sounded from downstairs just then, and her shoulders sagged. "Ame-lia! Where are you?! It's five to eight!"
She climbed down from her seat, sparing a hasty glance over her shoulder, her senses ready to hear the funny wheezing noise of that wonderful blue box's engines. (How a box could have engines, she still didn't know; that was what she intended to find out as soon as she started travelling with the Raggedy Doctor). She traipsed downstairs glumly to find her aunt just leaving the kitchen, wearing her smart grey office clothes and her briefcase in hand. Amelia had always thought it was stupid for a secretary to carry a briefcase, but she'd never brought it up. Aunt Sharon stopped as her niece appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "Oh, good; there you are. Come on, love, hurry up. Your lunch money's on the table as it always is."
But Amelia stopped at the foot of the stairs, one small hand stubbornly clinging to the banister. "I can't go to school today."
A frown. "And why not? Are you ill?" She moved with a raised hand as if to feel Amelia's forehead, but the girl was sure to duck out of the way.
"No," she said pointedly. "I'm still waiting for the Raggedy Doctor." She scowled up at her aunt, then stalked passed her into the kitchen, oblivious to the look that was being cast to her back. She only stopped and turned at the fridge, where her shoulders sagged. "I have to keep waiting, Aunt Sharon," she explained meekly. "So I can't go to school or else he'll think I've given up on him. And I wouldn't do that ever. The Doctor's my best friend."
Sharon sighed. She considered telling her niece to stop being silly; she was a big girl at seven but she'd had her fun daydreaming and this fantasy of hers couldn't prevent her from attending school, like she was supposed to. But then she recalled how cross Amelia had gotten when she'd told her that her imaginary friend wasn't real, and decided against it. Surely Amelia would get over it soon, just as she had that obsession with the little crack in her wall? "Doctor or no Doctor," she said guardedly, at long last. "You're still a schoolgirl and school's where you're supposed to go. And that's that, Amelia. Make yourself a nice breakfast and get dressed, love. I'm off to work now." She turned on her heel and made for the door, but halfway down the corridor she paused. "And don't even think of skiving off, Amelia, because you well know that I'll get a call from your headmistress if you do." It had happened before, a number of times, and Amelia did in fact know it well. Sharon gave a hasty smile to the nightie-clad child now standing in the doorway of the kitchen, then went out the door.
At the shutting of the door, Amelia waited, uncertain. She really couldn't risk skiving off, she realised that. She'd been hoping in vain that Aunt Sharon might finally come to her senses and acknowledge the existence of the Raggedy Doctor, and that she was going to wait for him for forever if she had to, and that she'd call the school to say Amelia was ill. But of course, that was never going to be the case. She should have known Aunt Sharon would keep on being cy-ni-cal.
Her sharp little mind weighed out her options. She only had a few of them, but they were all of them Very Important Life Choices, and so to ponder over them properly she sat down at the kitchen table, where her lunch money and pocket money, as promised sat under the salt shaker and the pepper mill.
She could skive off. She'd done this a couple of times before, once when there had been a new movie out and she and her friend Mels had slipped away during lunch break to see it. The movie had been good and fun, but things hadn't been very fun when she got home to find out Aunt Sharon had gotten a call from the headmistress and had even come home from work early over it for her worry; a rare occurrence. Also, she and Mels had wasted all their pocket money on popcorn and sodas and sweets, and as punishment she'd been deprived of allowance the next two weeks. The second time had been around Christmas when Amelia hadn't wanted to go to the Christmas carol sing-along because if you asked her, all the carols were boring. The only Christmas song she liked was Frosty the Snowman, which they never sang at school sing-alongs because it wasn't so much about Christmas as it was winter. So she'd stayed at home all day. But Aunt Sharon had gotten a call for that, too. If she skived off she'd be in big trouble for it. So she couldn't do that.
The second option came to her very briefly, for she dismissed it as soon as it came. It had been that she could call the school registry office herself and make herself sound grown-up; pretend to be Aunt Sharon and say, "Yes, Amelia Pond is sick today and she's not coming to school and I don't know when she'll be well again." But nobody was going to believe her, and even when she tried she discovered she was rubbish at making her voice sound grown-up. It sounded strange, like something was caught in her throat, and it kept making her giggle. So there was an option that could go right out the bloody window, as Aunt Sharon sometimes liked to say.
The last option was the one Amelia really didn't want to settle for, but it was the only other one and she'd have to. Go to school.
She was too miserable about the fact that this was her only choice, and that she'd accepted her sorry fate, to eat breakfast, so Amelia went upstairs and put on her uniform, then grabbed her backpack and stuffed the pocket money into the bag's little front compartment. Then she found a pencil and pad of paper on the little table by the hall, right near where the phone was on the wall, and scrawled a note in her very best handwriting.
Dear Doctor,
I'm still waiting. I just have to go to stupid school so if you see this then you can wait inside and have fish custard if you like.
- Amelia Pond
She finished it off with a smiley face, then ran outside and placed the note on her suitcase, weighing it down with a small stone so the wind couldn't claim it. She stood up and admired her quick thinking a moment, then hurried inside to put on her coat, mittens, hat. She shouldered her backpack and last of all stepped into her red Wellies before marching purposefully out the front door, leaving it unlocked, through the garden, and out the gate.
Having saved time without eating breakfast, Amelia walked to the end of the block and sat on the kerb in front of Rory's house, waiting for him to come out. They almost always walked to school together, and they used to walk to school with Mels, too, but now her foster parents made her take the school bus even though they lived fairly close by.
She waited for around fifteen minutes. She was doing a lot of waiting these days, it seemed. And she was willing to do a lot more if she had to, although she wished her waiting would end soon.
Rory came out of the house with his sandy hair messy but otherwise looking very tidy; his uniform shirt was tucked into his trousers and the lapels of his shirt were folded properly over his blazer. He wasn't wearing his coat for some reason, nor any of his other cold-weather garments. His backpack was worn properly, his arms slipped through both straps, and he looked pleased to see Amelia waiting for him. He hurried up to her and she stood up. "You'll never guess what happened to me!" she blurted without giving him a chance to even say hello.
Rory blinked up at her. "What, then?" he asked.
She grabbed his hand and began to tug him around the corner with her excitedly. "I'll tell you later when we meet up with Mels! But it's really amazing, Rory!" She stopped to hug him tightly, much to his bewilderment, then began to tug him along after her on the trek to school. "Why aren't you wearing your coat?" she asked him suddenly.
"Because, it's warm out," Rory said reasonably, as ever. "I was wondering why you were wearing yours."
"It's not warm," Amelia responded, rolling her eyes, even as she began to feel the heat now that he mentioned it. The weather was much improving, and the sun was out, although the sky was obscured by the occasional cloud that hung in the blue like semicolons, signalling of more to come.
"Well," Rory said defensively, "I-I think it is." His slight stammer slipped into his voice, then back out. "What's happened to you that's so amazing, then?"
Amelia rolled her eyes at him impatiently. For a (second)-best friend, Rory was more than a bit wet. "I told you. I'll tell you when we meet up with Mels." And she tugged at his arm a little harder and quickened her pace, knowing but not really caring that she probably wasn't being very nice, especially since Rory was so much smaller than she was; he was running and stumbling to keep up lest his arm be ripped from its socket.
It was a short ten-minute walk to school, and it would be another ten minutes after that until school started. Amelia had let go of Rory's arm along the way, and he trailed along behind her the rest of the walk, rubbing at his shoulder, which made her feel a bit guilty. But her guilt went right out of her the moment she spied Mels on the playground; her other (now second)-best friend swinging herself very high on the swings, her short legs pumping furiously and her hands on her lap instead of gripping the chains either side of her. Amelia went running up to Mels, Rory struggling to keep up behind at her tail, and waved her hands wildly until her friend leaped down from the swing onto the rubber mulch ground, her pigtails bouncing about her shoulders.
It often seemed strange to everyone else that Rory should be friends with Amelia and Mels, two girls who were remarkably similar in just about every way, except that Mels was bolder than Amelia, got into trouble a lot more often, and even had the guts to stand up to teachers. The two of them even shared the fact that they didn't have and couldn't remember their parents. And then, completing their trio was the meek, tiny Rory Williams who would probably rather get his head stuffed down a toilet than break any of the school rules. But Mels had taken a liking to him in kindergarten and ever since she dared Amelia to kiss him on the cheek in the schoolyard, he'd somehow become their dear friend.
Even if he could get infuriatingly dull.
Once Rory caught up to them, Amelia tugged them both other to sit on the wooden edge of the sand-pit. There, she eagerly began her tale with the same words she'd originally said to Rory: "You'll never guess what's happened to me! But it's really amazing, I promise." From here she surged into an animated retelling of what had happened night before last, starting right from when the Raggedy Doctor had landed in her garden to when he took off with a promise to return in five minutes and take her with him on all his wonderful adventures to how she'd spent all of yesterday and last night waiting for him. She remained true to every detail, and finished just as the bell rang.
Amelia, Mels, and Rory picked up their bags and crossed the schoolyard to queue up outside with the rest of the Year Twos to be let in to the school building. The reactions she received were mixed. Mels had drunken in every word Amelia said with wide eyes; Rory bit his lip and looked sceptical. Amelia wheeled on him. "You don't believe me?" she demanded, more distressed than anything else.
Rory shrugged. "I dunno."
Because that was just the same as a no, Amelia turned on Mels. "What about you?"
Mels paused for a moment, considering, then nodded firmly. "Yes. I do."
Which was how Amelia decided she liked Mels better than Rory for the day.
.~*~*~*~.
The school day passed long and slowly for Amelia Pond. She got a scolding for not having done her homework, and another few for not paying attention during her lessons — namely Maths, History, and Geography. She tried very hard to pay attention during English, because she actually liked reading and writing, but even then her mind drifted.
She daydreamed, and stared absently out the classroom window as though the Doctor's blue box would show up for her at school, until one of her teachers had to go as far as to tap their ruler on her desk to bring her back to Earth.
During P.E. concentration was a little easier to maintain; she had to focus to run laps around the gymnasium and turn somersaults around on the mats that had been set up in the middle of the room and jump rope.
But it was in Art that Amelia found her daydreaming and distant thoughts paid off, because of course in basic Year Two art there weren't any real art projects; the teacher set them loose with the supplies from the cupboard spread out on the wall-hugging counter before disappearing behind a tabloid, looking up every so often to be sure her charge weren't killing each other with the Magic Markers. Amelia liked the Art room better than any room in the school. There were three or so of them, all set up next to one another in the basement, and they had high ceilings and counters that were always covered in dried paint and glitter glue. She liked the way it smelled of paint and clay and all kinds of things, all the time, and best of all she liked the high desks and the tall stools she had to literally climb onto so as to meet the height of the desk.
Today, she clambered up onto a stool in a corner with Mels and Rory on either side of her, perched on its edge with her legs dangling a significant height above the floor. She had fetched a large piece of paper and a bin full of crayons and coloured pencils and Magic Markers. There wasn't really any question as to whatever she would draw today.
.~*~*~*~.
She invited Mels and Rory over to play after school (assuming, naturally, that the Doctor hadn't arrived yet, if he had then the play date was absolutely cancelled), but neither of them could because Mels' foster mum said "no, not today" and Rory was being dragged along to some kind of conference in Leicester by the orders of his dad. But they still got to walk home together, and Mels proved herself to be a truly worthy friend because she had an explosion of questions to ask of Amelia about the Raggedy Doctor, a rarity because Mels usually wasn't chatty unless she was bossing people about.
"But why do you call him raggedy? What's so raggedy about him?"
"'Cause his clothes were all torn up, of course, and too small for him, too, I think. He dressed funny, but I already told you that. I've never seen anyone wear a shirt and tie and suit pants with trainers before," Amelia mused.
Mels interrupted. "Is he hot?"
"No, he's funny."
Now it was Rory's turn to ask a question, hurrying to keep up with the girls' faster pace. The woes of being small for one's age. "But," he asked, his curiosity apparently piqued despite his earlier doubtfulness, and that made Amelia's crosser feelings fade away a little, "how can he travel in time?"
"Because he's got a time machine, stupid!"
Rory frowned. "Oh."
Mels grabbed Amelia's arm, looking excited. "Do you think," she said breathlessly, "do you think he's gonna be there when you get to your house?"
Amelia glanced heavenward, squinting against the sun that still peeped through the grey clouds overhead. "I hope so," she answered. "But I don't know. I mean, he's already real late, and I guess he's got to get here sometime." She turned on her friend. "You could come over and see with me," she offered. "Just for a second."
Mels' face lit up. "Okay!"
The girls clasped hands and ran the rest of the way, giggling in simple childish joy and in anticipation, ignoring Rory's distressed high-pitched cries of "Wait! Wait for me!" as they ran.
Except when they got to Amelia's house, everything was as it had been: her suitcase still lying on its side in the grass, and the note on top of it weighed down by a stone, the splintered ruins of the garden shed, which had stopped smoking finally. Rory caught up with the girls, just in time to see Amelia's shoulders sag and to see her march through her garden and into her house, slamming the front door in her wake, without saying goodbye.
He looked uncertainly at Mels. "Now what?" He wasn't all that fond of making decisions, and since Mels was very fond of making them, their friendship worked quite nicely.
Mels hesitated. "I guess we go home," she said, and she sounded almost as disappointed as Amelia. "Else my foster mum'll kill me." Then it was her turn to jog off down the street in the direction of her own. Rory hovered outside Amelia's front garden gate and watched her go, raising a hand in fleeting farewell.
.~*~*~*~.
Early May, 1996
Nearly a month of halcyon days passed, in which Amelia waited devoutly by the window or out in the garden almost every night, or in as much free time as she could spare. She went through several packages of printing paper and boxes of crayons drawing the Raggedy Doctor's time machine; or herself standing with him, often holding his hand. At school in Art class, on one of those rare occasions they had a lesson and liberal assignment, they learned how to make papier-mâché figures. What else was she to make but the Raggedy Doctor? It wasn't a very good doll, and she couldn't get his big, silly chin right, but once the paint dried and they were allowed to bring their seven-year-old creations home, the doll made a home on her desk, right beside her box of coloured pencils.
Better still, she had taken to saving up her pocket money — a respectable ₤15 a week, and a wealthy sum for a seven-year-old — to pay the hobby woodworker to make her her very own replica of the Raggedy Doctor's time machine, that lovely box, a little larger than a phone booth in what Amelia now considered to be the most beautiful shade of blue in all the world. She described it to him in keen detail; the windows at the top and the small squares going down the sides and where the doors were and everything. Most importantly, of course, the words at top of the time machine: Police Public Call Box. To Amelia's surprise however, when she arrived at the local little carpenter's stand, she didn't have to go into nearly as much detail as she'd anticipated.
"Ohh, you must mean those old police boxes that used to be around in the 1960s," the woodworker had said, nodding and smiling. "I'm surprised a girl your age would know about those. You're how old, kid, eight? Nine?"
"Seven," Amelia, who was a little tall for her age, had replied. "But it's not a police box; it's a time machine."
"Seven, eh? Even more impressive," said the woodworker, nodding absently and apparently not having heard her argument. "Sure, I could make one of those for you. That'd be twenty quid, if you've got it."
After stubbornly confirming that the woodworker was familiar with each and every detail of the outside of the Raggedy Doctor's time machine, she had handed him four fivers, which the woodworker put into the register. He had smiled at Amelia. "Do you know your phone number so I can ring your house when it's finished?"
Amelia had had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. Of course she knew her phone number. She wasn't a baby. But she had dutifully recited it off by heart for the woodworker to jot down, and then she'd skipped all the way home. She'd received the call about her custom-made miniature "police box" less than a week later, thankfully when Aunt Sharon was away, and as it had been a Saturday, the seven-year-old had left the house immediately, skipping all the way to the carpenter's and then, upon receiving her replica, which looked just like the Doctor's time machine except less battered, had skipped all the way back home.
Now the time machine sat on her desk next to her papier-mâché doll; and she'd proudly shown it to Mels and Rory, both of whom had been very impressed. Mels especially.
All through April, though, Amelia waited, and no signs of the Raggedy Doctor appeared for her. She'd been forced to haul in her suitcase, eventually, when her aunt finally caught sight of it as the construction of the new garden shed began. And while she still clung to her hope, despair had begun to grab at her heart.
Questions tossed and turned in her mind all day and all night, often keeping her up late tossing and turning. Simple yet vastly complicated questions like, why was he so late? Why hadn't he come for her yet? He'd promised, and she'd trusted him, so why, then, wasn't he here yet? Had she somehow missed him? Had the Doctor lied to her? She dismissed that last one, because she refused to believe her Raggedy Doctor would ever be anything but the epitome of honesty with her, but it was unfortunately replaced by an ever greater concern: if he hadn't lied, which he wouldn't ever do anyway, then had something happened to him? Was he hurt? Had he been kidnapped by hostile aliens in outer space? Had his time machine exploded, leaving him unable to come for her? Was he dead?
Sharon Pond, meanwhile, was growing all the more concerned. Her niece may have been disturbingly obsessed with that crack in her wall — which really had mysteriously disappeared — but this was a whole new level. Never before had her charge ever fallen into such despairing obsession. This imaginary friend of hers consumed Amelia's every thought, and yes, it was worrisome. She'd not only told her friends about her "Raggedy Doctor," but all her fellow schoolchildren as well. She didn't invite her two friends over as often as she used to, nor did she go over to their houses to play very much, and when she did, it seemed all she and her friends did was either play Raggedy Doctor or talk about the man. Many a time had Sharon already been forced to drag Amelia back into the house late at night, or when it was raining.
And even when she did manage to coax or haul her young niece back inside, there was no stopping her from rushing to the window and pressing her nose to the glass, where she would spend eternities simply staring skyward with a heartbreaking hope that refused to be crushed no matter what.
This was no fantasy, not Amelia's runaway imagination at work again. No, this was something far beyond that.
This was something Sharon was beginning to think was out of her hands.
.~*~*~*~.
And Amelia, for her part, continued to hope. She didn't have much else to do, so she hoped, and believed, and for her, it was enough. She knew that her Raggedy Doctor was real, and that he would come for her, and she wasn't willing to listen to anyone tried to tell her otherwise. Some of the other schoolchildren teased her about it all, but she didn't care, because she had Mels and sort of had Rory supporting her. They were always willing to play Raggedy Doctor when they came over to play, or when she went to one of their houses to play, which was always fun. They made his time machine fly around the room and practised mimicking the funny wheezing noise the box made; something none of them were very good at and their poor attempts always made them double over in giggles.
But when she was alone, she would sit by the window, waiting, and counting the days until that enigmatic blue box finally came for her.
It never did.
But that didn't mean she was going to stop waiting anytime soon.
