AN: Thank you for the reviews, everybody! And kudos to Rokahl, who said they liked the OC's...just so y'all know, this is a self-insert of me and my best friend.

Oh, and as a quick side note about String Theory...yes, it is real theory, but I REALLY twisted it around so it could fit the story. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to the PBS website and search it.

And, once again, enjoy!

I woke up to the sun shining on my eyes, a bright, hot sun that burned. Squinting painfully, I sat up, feeling my face cautiously, and staring down at the steering wheel my cheek had previously been resting on. I felt together. No body parts seemed to be missing or broken. There wasn't any blood. And I didn't have a headache, like one would expect after fainting. Then again, I had never fainted before. Great, now my perfect record was ruined.

I then proceeded to look at Meg, who appeared to also be unconscious. Hesitantly, I poked her, and yelped in fright when she opened her eyes. "What?" she asked sleepily. "Is something wrong?"

"No," I answered. "I just…never mind. Why were you sleeping?"

"I was waiting for you to wake up."

"I wasn't asleep."

Meg frowned. "Of course I knew that. But I checked to make sure you were breathing and all that first aid stuff, and you were fine. So I waited. What time is it?"

I cocked an eyebrow at the question. "You think the clock works after…whatever just happened?"

"It did last time I tried."

Turning the key, which happened to still be in the ignition, I looked at the clock as it faintly read 7:59 pm.

"Hm…about an hour has passed."

I looked out the window at the sun, which was set at roughly five pm. "My clock is off."

"No," said Meg, "I think it's right. But whatever just happened…all I remember is a flash, and then…this. You too?"

"Yep. Lets get out. I'm roasting."

We stepped out of Hidalgo and onto moist green turf. The air, was humid, stuffy, and all together extremely uncomfortable for a person who has lived in a dry climate all their life, namely, me.

I absolutely hate humidity. If I had a list, it would be one of the top five. But I don't have enough time to make such a list because I am a high school student who struggles to keep decent grades in all her classes.

I know it supposedly keeps your skin nice and soft and whatever, and that it keeps you from having chapped lips and dry throats, but I'd rather have all of those instead of suffocating from the air. Yes, that's exactly what it feels like to me. I once took a trip to Mississippi and couldn't breathe the entire time. Texas is humid to me.

Enough of my rambling. Back to the story.

Anyway, the air was definitely humid. I thought I heard the sound of the ocean, but all I could see was forest and green.

"This sure ain't New Mexico," I mumbled. Meg nodded mutely.

Now, aside from the obvious fact we were no longer in the high school parking lot, there was one thing that tipped me off that we were no longer in New Mexico. It was this: everything was green.

I am now going to give you Geography in New Mexico for Dummies. Essentially, everything brown. The dirt is brown, the grass is brown, the bushes tend to be brown, and most trees are dead and brown. Only three things are not brown. The first is juniper, which has a bright green color that rapidly fades when out in the sun for a long time. It is this bush that populates most of New Mexico, and subsequently makes all the residents miserable. Almost everyone is allergic to the juniper bush, and if you aren't yet, you will be.

The second is pine trees. There are many of these in the mountains, and actually, the mountains tend to be pretty all during the year, except were I live. About six years ago, a fire swept through and burned down all of the scenery we have. So now I get to look at a charred mountain instead of a pine-green one.

The third are the aspens. However, there is a very minimal number of these, and none where I can see. They are usually in the high mountains, and as I just said, my mountains were burned.

Now that you have that lovely picture of my home in your mind, it must be obvious that I saw mostly brown. To have green, green, and more green was, to say the least, quite the shock to my system. As if I hadn't had enough of those today.

"Where do you think we are?" murmured Meg.

"No idea," I sighed. "But it's not home, and I'm worried."

"Well, at least we're alive."

"Yeah," I answered weakly. I hopped onto the truck and sat down to think. Meg came over and looked at me worriedly, but said nothing. Nothing needed to be said. We were far away from anywhere we were familiar with, and frankly, I had no idea how it had happened. It was terrible.

"I think we need to go explore a little," said Meg after a moment. "Then we can decide what to do next."

"Okay." I jumped out, glad of something to distract me, and, of all things, grabbed my backpack. Meg raised her eyebrows. "Might have something we need," I explained.

"I doubt we're going to need a Pre-Cal book out here."

"I mean first aid."

Meg laughed, then grabbed her backpack. "Good idea. Lets go."

We set off, then I ran back to get my keys, Meg was laughing so hysterically that I was worried about my truck getting stolen in the middle of the forest. Despite the fact we were lost in a gigantic forest far away from civilization, both of us had somehow not forgotten our sense of good humor. And, despite the fact that we were in danger of something drastic happening, I was far from being scared. I was with Meg; so I was going to be fine.

To say the least, I was very glad I was still in my track outfit: short-sleeve shirt, shorts, and sturdy running shoes. If I had been in anything else, I would have roasted. Heck, I felt like I was roasting anyways. Sweat dripped down my neck in sheets, and I was sure I was as red as a tomato. Looking over at Meg, I saw she fared little better.

"So," she huffed after thirty minutes of walking. "How do you think we got here?"

"I think we need to know where here is," I answered. "We have decided that it certainly isn't the high school, nor New Mexico for that matter."

"An excellent start to our investigation, Sherlock," said Meg, smiling at the look I gave her. "We also know that this must be somewhere tropical."

"And therefore utterly unbearable."

"Think what the kids at home will think when we say we were magically transported to Tahiti…"

"That we're loco," I muttered under my breath.

Meg rolled her eyes. "Well…let's be glad for a few things in stead of being cynical."

"That wasn't cynical, that was practical."

"Ugg…Lyn, you can be so technical some times! Whatever, I just need to think of things to stop me from freaking out, because technically, none of this should have happened."

"Now who's being technical…"

Meg rolled her eyes again, but smiled. "Okay, fine. Whatever. What can we be grateful for?"

"I feel like I am being interrogated by a priest."

"Just say something!"

"We are not dead." Meg, for the third time, rolled her eyes at my comment. "Fine," I sighed, "what else can we be happy for? I know! My car wasn't totaled."

This, time Meg laughed. "You care about that car too much."

"It's my freedom," I explained. "I can go anywhere I want with that car."

"Except this forest." I snorted at the comment, but said nothing in return. "Okay, my turn. The weather is good."

As if to mock her, the sky thundered loudly and large, wet drops of water began to pelt us. "I think you have just jinxed us," I mused softly.

Meg narrowed her eyes threateningly, but when I raised my eyebrows in defense, she began to laugh. "Fine, I jinxed us. Let's just find somewhere dry."

Our good humor disappeared as we trudged through the damp forest. Everything seemed to be soaked; the ground was soaked, the trees were soaked, even the rocks were soaked. Oh, not to mention that we were soaked, along with our backpacks that were getting heavier by the minute.

We said nothing, but continued to fight our way through the torrential down pour that never happened back home. It was at this point that I decided I truly, without a doubt, hated the tropics. Even if it was Tahiti.

After another hour of steady walking, Meg squealed with delight, shaking my shoulder happily. I, who had been looking down, glanced up to see lights. Lots of them.

"Civilization!" I gasped, my teeth chattering like a wind-up toy.

"Come on!" Meg insisted, shoving me forward. "I bet there will be a hotel or something that we can go into. With warm blanets. A heater. And phones! We can call our parents!"

With the thoughts of warm blankets and communication on our minds, we jogged the rest of the way to the town, grinning despite our misery and general discomfort.

The grins lasted until about ten steps into the town, when we discovered something was wrong.

Very wrong.

"These buildings are…old," whispered Meg.

Actually, age wise, they weren't old at all, but very new and pristine. However, the style would have dated to around the early sixteen hundreds to the late seventeen hundreds. I stopped walking, letting the rain pour down my face and freezing legs to take a closer look. The paint was new, and wood wasn't rotting. Wherever we were, people lived here.

"Lyn, I'm freezing."

The sky was too dark to see Meg, but I could tell she was shivering, as was I. "Okay, let's just go inside somewhere."

"What do you think this place is?"

I forced my mind to think past the cold that enveloped me. "Maybe it's some type of living museum, like Jamestown or Williamsburg. People dress in colonial dress and are in colonial houses. That would explain the condition of the buildings, and why the style is so strange."

"That makes sense. Let's go try that house."

We lumbered up to the door that Meg pointed to and she knocked.

Soon footsteps were heard, and faint voices asking questions shrilly. "Who would be out in this whether?! I ask, who?" The voice was that of a old lady, bad tempered most likely. I winced at the thought of our very future meeting.

The door swung open, and a little girl of about ten stared up at us, holding a flickering candle, standing behind her a frumpy, scowling hunchbacked lady.

I could feel my heart stop beating. These people were not re-enactors; that I could tell from the way they held themselves and the looks on their faces. The house looked most definitely 'lived in' instead of being use from ten until five every week day. Something was wrong.

"Who are you?" snapped the lady. "Theresa, hold the light closer so I can get a good look at them." The little girl obeyed the order, and the lady took one look at us and screamed. "You are practically running around in nothing! Theresa shut the door! I don't allow prostitutes in my house!"

"Wait!" begged Meg lunging forward to stop the door. "We aren't prostitutes! We're lost! Please let us in!"

"You want to know where you are? Port Royal, a place for decent citizens that don't allow loitering of bad influences! Go away now!" With that the door slammed in Meg's face, and I could hear her crying quietly.

"How could anyone be so cruel?" she sobbed. "Couldn't she see that we were cold and…and lost?"

My own eyes were quickly becoming wet with more than rain, but I wiped everything away and helped Meg stand up. "Come on, we need to find somewhere dry."

"None of the other houses will let us in, not if they're like that lady!" Suddenly, Meg became mad, her eyes glaring daggers at whatever happened to be in the way. "I can't believe how rude they were! And at a museum! But, Lyn, this place doesn't look like anything like Jamestown." She turned to me, her brain working. "This isn't right. Things don't make sense. What happened to us, Lyn? Where in the world are we?"

"First thing first. We need to find somewhere warm, or at least dry."

We searched around for twenty minutes, trying a few more houses, where we got roughly the same response as before. Finally, we found a run down building which had no one in it, and we sat down, both blue and trembling. Meg had recovered from her outburst earlier, and now was frowning.

"I don't understand why they kept calling us…prostitutes. We look nothing like that! All we are is lost! How can they not see that? And the way they reacted! No one would just kick out a prostitute because they are one!"

I sighed, leaning against a bushel of hay wearily. Now that we were out of the rain, the weather of the tropics was paying off, and we were both slowly thawing in the warm humidity. "I think they thought we were whores because our legs and ankles were showing. Like, really showing."

Meg stared at me like I had hallucinated. "They're just shorts and a t-shirt! It's just a running outfit! Everyone sees those nowadays!"

"I don't think we are in 'nowadays', Meg."

"What are you saying? That we time traveled? That's impossible."

"Meg, that lady said we were in Port Royal. In 1692, an earthquake sunk two thirds of the city, and it was later replaced by Kingston."

"Lyn, this doesn't make sense. I'm scared."

"So am I," I whispered. "But we're safe, for now. I don't think anyone is going to try and kill us. That's always a plus. And we now know where we're lost."

Meg looked at me in exasperation, then smiled. "I suppose it's good to know that."

"I'd say," I mumbled before drifting off to sleep.