Chapter 2: Headfirst to Headless

Lauren, good friend that she was, stayed with Jen after school in the library, searching out the best book for her to read. "This is like, totally no fair," Lauren teased, "I mean, why does he give you the chance for extra credit? Oh, I know!" she laughed, "he feels sorry for your hopeless brain and is trying to save you."

"Ha, ha," Jen said, turning the leaves of A Tale of Two Cities. "Gosh, this book looks boring, I don't want to read about cities, I want to read about people."

Lauren popped a stick of gum in her mouth and offered one to Jen. "Hey, what's the next book on your list? I'll go find it for you."

"Um, let's see. The Scarlet Pimple?" Jen paused in uncertainty, knowing that the likelihood of Mr. Gordon putting such a title on her list was nonexistent. She read the title again, more carefully this time, "Pimp-er-nel? The Scarlet Pimpernel, that's the next one."

Lauren smothered a laugh into a snort. "Oh my gosh. That is too much!"

Jen giggled, "Really, I think maybe it's a typo. Go find it."

Lauren left to do her friend's bidding, snorting as she left. Jen sighed and sank down to the ground, sitting against the bookshelf and pushing through the stack of books she had accumulated, hoping for one to inspire her. Ivanhoe, War and Peace, The Scottish Chiefs, Ben-Hur,, the covers of these classic pieces of literature held no pictures that inspired her interest, and a brief glance inside told her that she could never hope to understand their content unless she significantly broadened her concentration span.

"Hey," a quiet voice said suddenly from next to her. Jen didn't have to look far up before she saw the skirt and knew who had addressed her. "Are you going to read A Tale of Two Cities? That's one of my favorite Dickens novels. That and The Pickwick Papers."

"I guess you know all about Dickens, huh Amber?" Jen replied. Of course know-it-all Amber would not only have read, but also enjoyed and actually understood all these boring books.

"Well, sorta," Amber said. "The Scottish Chiefs is a pretty good book too…" They were interrupted by Lauren, returning with her prize.

"Omigosh, Jen," she giggled, "it wasn't a typo!" she held out the small softback book to her friend.

"The Scarlet Pimpernel!" Amber said, her face suddenly animated with excitement, "that is my hands-down favorite book!"

Jen and Lauren burst into louder giggles. "Oooo, should I read the book about the big, red, zits?" Jen said with mock excitement. Lauren began to go into hysterics.

"It's not about pimples," Amber protested.

"Well, look at the guy holding his hand over his face on the cover," Jen reasoned, "he looks like he's trying to hide a severe case of acne!" She quickly dissolved into hysterics with her friend.

"He's got his hand over his face because he's hiding his identity!" Amber retorted indignantly. It was no use; Jen and Lauren were now in the throes of unstoppable laughter.

Indeed, they might never have stopped if school librarian hadn't looked in the aisle to see what the commotion was about and shushed the girls promptly. "Seriously, though," Jen sighed, "what book should I read? That was the last one on the list."

"Take my advice," Amber said, "read The Scarlet Pimpernel." She ignored the smothered giggles that the repeating of the title elicited and continued. "If you're not used to reading classic literature, then Dickens will be too heavy for a start. The Scarlet Pimpernel is a very romantic story that just so happens to have historical settings, I suggest you read it, you won't regret it."

"All those romantic zits," Lauren sighed dreamily. Jen held her nose to keep from laughing out loud.

Amber sighed and left them. There was no reasoning with these two. Apparently the copious amounts of Mountain Dew they had drunk at lunch still hadn't worn off.

After the girls laughter subsided, Jen looked seriously at her stack of books. All of them were at least a daunting inch thick – all of them except The Scarlet Pimpernel. It was only half an inch. Her mind was made up. She tucked the little book under her arm and lifted the stack of the others, placing them on the return cart.

"Oh, Jen," Lauren said, not willing to let her friend get away without a tease, "you aren't going to read the zit book are you?"

Jen grit her teeth and stalked determinedly out of the library, her friend trailing behind her.

"So, can we, like, go hang out at Amy's now, Jen?" she asked as they walked down the deserted school hallway.

"You can go," Jen said, "I want to get this out of the way." They turned down the concrete flight of steps that led to the downstairs and main entrance.

"Come on, Jen, you've got, like, four weeks to read it," Lauren persisted, "You could at least – Oh, my, gosh. Look, Jen, it's Zach!"

Jen paused on the landing and turned to look behind her. There at the top of the steps was Zach, sixteen years old and the cutest of all cute dudes in Jen and Lauren's opinion.

"Hi, Zach!" they both called in unison.

Zach grinned, revealing his perfect teeth, "Hey, what are you guys doing here so late?"

"What are you doing here so late?" Lauren asked.

"I just got out of basketball practice," Zach said, "and you?"

"Jen checked out a book," Lauren giggled mysteriously.

"Lauren stop," Jen demanded, realizing what her friend was up to.

Zach leaned forward in great curiosity.

"It's about zits!" Lauren laughed.

"It is not!" Jen protested, "it's a stupid book I have to read for extra credit."

"You read about zits for extra credit?" Zach chuckled, "that's cool. Can I see it?"

Jen shook her head coquettishly and took a step back.

Her foot went down fast as she accidentally stepped off the landing and onto the lower flight of stairs. The surprise, as well as the weight of her backpack completely knocked her off balance and Jen fell backwards, smacking the back of her head sharply on the concrete as she tumbled down the stairs. The last things she saw before she landed were the scared faces of Zach and Lauren.

Jen groaned and turned over on her face. Wow, that actually didn't hurt as bad as I would have expected, she thought. Oh, boy, Zach probably thought she was a complete klutz now. Jen stood up and dusted off her jeans. "Oh, cool, I have an authentic knee-hole now," she commented, straightening up. She suddenly stopped cold in shock. Something had happened to the downstairs hall. It looked like the inside of some old historic building. In front of her, where the glass case holding all the trophies the football team had won should have been, there was instead a floor to ceiling painting of a lady in a dress with a mountainous hairdo. That's funny, Jen thought to herself, the drama club really went to town this year with the decorations. She turned to Lauren only to find that neither she, nor Zach were on the rickety looking wooden stairs that were behind her. Okay, this was really weird. "Lauren? Zach? C'mon you guys, where are you?" She had to get out of here. The school had suddenly gotten very creepy. Jen dashed out the door and was even more astounded. There was no parking lot. Only dirty cobblestone streets lined with old houses met her searching gaze. A cart pulled by a disreputable looking horse rattled past her. The driver, a man dressed in a dirty shirt, tattered breeches and red stocking hat stared at her. Jen returned the favor, catching a whiff of him as he left.

"Dude, take a shower!" she wrinkled her nose.

"A bas le aristo!" he yelled back at her.

"What?" Jen queried to herself. A woman in a ragged dress brushed rudely past her, staring at Jen as she left in the direction the man in the cart had gone. "Okay, you guys," Jen called after them, "you're taking this drama thing way too seriously." The couple paid her no heed but kept on their way. "Hey I'm talking to you!" Jen yelled, trotting after them. "Can you at least tell me what's going on?" As she followed, she began to be joined by other similarly costumed people crowding the street, thronging about her, all pressing in the same direction. Not a few of them cast shocked glances at her attire. Jen was beginning to feel like some sort of outcast. She was the only one who was wearing properly fashionable jeans and shirt, the only one whose hair had highlights, who was wearing makeup and the only one who was wearing tennis shoes – or shoes of any sort for that matter. She was also the only one who looked and smelled like she had taken a shower within the past month. She felt weird.

"This is stupid," Jen muttered, "if only somebody would show me the way out of this lousy mess everything would be. . ." she trailed off as the crowd swept her into what appeared to be some sort of town square and set up in the middle of it was a – "Oh it's a whatchamacallit," Jen said eagerly. "No, I really know this, it's a – what's that word? – a guillotine! This must be some sort of reenactment or something. Man, is this how Mr. Gordon wants me to learn history? This is the most insane reenactment that I have ever. . ." Some soldiers were leading a man up the steps onto the platform of the guillotine. Jen watched as they lay him on the bench under the knife and then dropped the lever on him. She had not expected what happened next in the least. There was no mistaking the fact that the man's head had truly been chopped off – no special effects were that good.

"Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh, omigosh!" Jen shrieked hysterically. "You chopped his head off!" she screamed at the crowd. "You're all murderers!" Her voice was mostly drowned out in the maniacal screaming of the crowd, but those around Jen began to stare at her. Soon quite a few people were beginning to notice the girl who obviously disapproved of the goings on. Jen was suddenly aware that several hundred people were now staring at her none too favorably. "So it was all real. . ." she faltered, "somehow I – I have, landed in revolutionary France. And now you guys all want to chop my head off because I disagreed with you. Omigosh! I hate history!"

"A la lanterne le aristo!" the cry from the mob began to rise.

"Liberte, egalite fraternite."

"Ou la Mort!"

Jen didn't wait another second, but turned and dashed away as fast as her Nikes would take her. "I am innocent!" she called back behind her as she did. Bother, why hadn't she taken French this year instead of Spanish? The mob soon caught up to her and Jen was taken forcibly and swept along in the direction of the guillotine. "This is bad, this is really bad," she whimpered. "Please, I don't want to die!"

Suddenly, just at the moment that she would have been led up the stairs, a group of soldiers came marching into the plaza breaking through the swarm of people, and surrounded her, taking her away from the mob. She was too frightened and overwrought to say or do anything at the moment and allowed the soldiers to lead her into a large, dismal building. They led her down a hall lined with heavy wooden doors with grated windows and pushed her through an open one, locking it behind her.

Jen looked around her and realized she was in a prison cell of the late 1700's persuasion. There were no windows in the stone walls that encompassed the narrow space except for one high up at the end of the cell. Judging by the fact that the window lent a very good view of people's feet walking past on the neighboring street, Jen guessed that her cell was partially subterranean. But all this did not matter in the least to Jen as more pressing issues were upon her mind.

"Oh, gosh, I'm too young to die," she sniffled, sinking down to sit on the cold, damp, stone floor. "I wish I knew how to get back home. I wonder how I even got here? Maybe it was-," Jen stopped short as a small scrap of white paper fluttered through her window onto the floor of her cell, its pure, unstained folds standing in sharp contrast to the grime of the cell floor. "Litterbugs," she muttered. Her gaze rested on a small bucket in the far corner. That must be the – Jen didn't even want to think about it. She buried her head in her arms and battled the fear inside her that she couldn't conquer. What was to happen to her?