The very next day was my first day of school. I made it to the bus stop with a couple minutes to spare, and waited, keeping my eyes out for Gary or Hodge or anyone else who looked suspicious. I was pretty sure they wouldn't try to grab me when I was standing at the bus stop surrounded by other kids, but you never know. Soon enough, the bus came rolling up and I got on, looking around for Jonah or Chip or Katherine. I didn't see any of them, so I sat down in a random seat next to a random girl and struck up a conversation. It comforted me that I could still do that. That was something the old Daniella was really good at.
It didn't take long before we arrived at Harris Middle School. I had to go to the main office at first, so I could get my schedule. Then I went to my homeroom class, where, to my delight, I saw Chip. "Chip!" I exclaimed, waving as I made my way over to him.
"Daniella! How art thou?" Chip blushed and shook his head. "I mean, how are you? Sorry."
"Chip's a little bit of a weirdo," said the boy sitting next to him. "Half the time he's perfectly normal, and then he'll go on a tangent about medieval weapons and start talking like he's some ancient king or something."
I tried not to smile as I exchanged a knowing glance with Chip. Little did this boy know that Chip was an ancient king—some British royalty from the 1400s.
Just like I was Russian royalty from the 1900s. I wondered if my speech would give me away.
The day went by pretty normally after that. I went to all my classes, met all my new teachers, and introduced myself to all my new classmates. I ate lunch with Chip and Jonah and some of their other friends (not Katherine though, because as a sixth grader, she had a different lunch period). I didn't make any mistakes that would give away anything about time travel or my other identity—although I did have to look away when a girl in my English class introduced herself as Tatiana.
I called Gavin the moment I got home. "How was your first day at school?" he asked me.
"Okay," I shrugged, even though he obviously couldn't see me over the phone. "How was your first day back at school?"
"Eh. It was whatever. Good news, though. I did talk to my mom, and we made a deal. I'm going to be starting at your school next week!"
"Yay!" I did a little happy dance. "I hung out with Chip and Jonah at lunch today. And met some of their other friends. It was fun."
Gavin and I kept talking, first about school and how weird it was to adjust to living our twenty-first century lives again, then reminiscing a little about stuff we'd done growing up together in twentieth-century Russia. Finally, he had to go, so I promised to call him the next day, and we both hung up.
And that was when I noticed Mom looking at me with a very strange expression on her face.
Oh, great! I didn't even notice she was there! Did she hear me talking about Papa making those little toys for us? Or about that book I'd been reading to Alexei that we never got to finish? How am I going to explain this? Maybe say I was practicing role-playing for some school project…
"Hi Mom," I said, trying to act normal. "Um… do you know what we're having for dinner tonight?"
Mom just kept looking at me weirdly. "Were you speaking Russian?"
Oh. Oops. I don't know when Gavin and I made the transition over from English to Russian—probably some time when we were talking about our childhood. But, yeah, I guess I should have paid a little more attention to what was going on around me.
"Um," I said, giggling nervously. "Yes, actually. My, uh, my new friend Gavin speaks Russian, and he… he's been teaching me."
Mom still looked suspicious. "You seem to have learned pretty quickly. How long have you known this Gavin?"
Good question. I just kind of sat there, because I didn't know how to answer her. I'd been talking with Gavin on the phone for over a month, but I'd only physically met him the day before, which to me felt like several days or maybe weeks ago. And of course, I'd known him as Alexei my entire life as Anastasia.
I finally just shrugged and went for my best technique—distraction. "Oh, hey, you wanna know what happened at school today? Third period was kind of funny, because…" I rambled on and on, making up a story about something that had happened during my (actually pretty boring) day at school. And by the time I was done, Mom still looked a little suspicious, but she didn't say anything else about me speaking Russian or about Gavin.
Days passed. I got used to my new house, my new school schedule, and—to some extent—my new life. I hung out with Chip and Jonah at school, talked with Katherine a few times after school, and made some new friends as well. I talked with Gavin on the phone every day—although I made sure to go outside where Mom and Dad wouldn't be able to overhear me. I finally got a call from an unfamiliar number that turned out to be Maria, and she and I talked for a long time. She told me about the college classes she'd started taking, and how she'd managed to convince everyone that she's just a normal Russian immigrant, and how she and Leo had met Angela's boyfriend—a guy named Hadley—who was from the future and really nice. We also tried to come up with a way that Maria and I could get together without my parents being suspicious. Would it be too weird if I just one day said, "Hey Mom, Dad, I met my birth sister! Come on, I'll introduce you to her"? They'd probably have a lot of questions about how I'd met Maria and how I knew she was my birth sister and everything, and so far I hadn't been able to come up with a story that they would believe.
I was still brainstorming ideas of how to get Maria to live with us the day everything changed.
It was an ordinary school day. Mom and Dad had already left for work (they'd been going in early ever since we'd moved to Ohio, I guess trying to make a good impression on their new bosses or something), and I was standing in front of the pantry, trying to decide what to have for breakfast.
Then, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, the pantry disappeared.
So did everything else. The kitchen, the table, the walls, even the floor I was standing on—gone. I was floating through black nothingness.
Floating through time.
