Well, okay, let's continue with Ana's life.

1989 got a little easier. Since JD wasn't around all week, I was able to plan things out about how I would approach him when the time came. Meanwhile, I continued to sit with Martha at lunchtime, since Veronica still sat with the Heathers. She was easy company, non-judgemental and a good listener. She gave me all the relevant gossip about who was who of Westerburg, so I could at least talk a little bit about people as if I knew about them and it was harder to slip up. She also told me about a few other people that weren't in the musical or the movie. Then there were the people that were in the movie, but not in the musical. In fact, after she pointed Courtney out, I realized that she was in my homeroom. Most of the teachers got to know me as Ana, thank heavens. I would have been mercilessly teased if it was shoved in everyone's faces that it was short for Indiana.

I did have to get a doctor's note to verify my asthma and make sure gym teachers didn't try to force me to overexert myself. My gym teacher, a wiry woman who looked like she'd never been ill once, didn't look too pleased, but she didn't yell at me if I took it easy, something I only did if I actually felt short of breath. I think she could tell I was trying.

I don't think anyone even noticed that I was sitting with Martha for the moment, since no one was giving me a hard time. I didn't talk to her outside of lunchtime and we weren't in the same classes, but I did see her being picked on in the hallways a few times. I wanted to defend her, but I was still trying not to stand out. On Friday, she warned me "I'm not popular. I do get picked on, like a lot. If you don't want to stick with me now that you know the school better, I'm not going to ask you to."

I just shrugged and told her "I like you. But yeah, I'm trying to stay invisible. Nothing personal, but I might sit somewhere else next week. But there's no reason we can't be friends outside of school."

Martha had smiled at that and had said "I'll give you my phone number."

That let me off the hook for the next week, which was fine. I mean, five days was probably the very limit before people noticed Martha Dunnstock seemed to have made a new friend who they'd think was just as childish and weird as her. My plans of how to get what I wanted involved getting an invite to Ram Sweeney's homecoming party.

The thing was, I'd always had a little crush on JD. That's why I wanted to start getting to know him the second he set foot in Westerburg. I'd always liked the look of him, even in the movie, but he was a little too crazy for me there. In the musical, he always seemed a little more like he actually loved Veronica. He was protective, affectionate and seriously romantic, if to the point of homicidal. He also only murdered people who kind of deserved to die, which was really the selling point for me. I could deal with the deaths of the right people and even join in, as long as I had all the positive points. Of course, blowing up the whole school at the end went too far, but I knew why he'd done it, and if everything went to plan, he wouldn't have any reason to do so. Veronica wasn't ever going to be able to keep those murders a secret, even if she could forge the notes easily. I may not have had her talent for forgery, but I was pretty good at drawing. If I had a sample, I could easily fake handwriting myself, I was sure. Anyway, if my plan worked, for all I knew, JD possibly wouldn't end up murdering anyone. But if he did, I could stomach it, as long as he continued the pattern of only punishing the wrongdoers. I just had to make sure I stuck by him once I had him, and then he'd stick by me in return.

But to get to JD, I had to have a clear path, and to do that, I needed to get Veronica out of the way. I didn't dislike her – and I hadn't even spoken to her yet – but if I could stop her from breaking into his house once she left the party, that would be a start. Maybe I could try befriending her. She'd need a friend, and she always seemed like someone who I could hold an interesting conversation with.

Martha actually did call me on Saturday night. "Hey, Ana! Usually I have movie nights with Veronica," she said, "But tonight the Heathers wanted her to come over, so I'm at a loose end. Want to come over and watch The Princess Bride?"

I'd seen the movie before, and it wasn't really my thing, but I didn't want to disappoint this girl who I knew had a hard time coming up and didn't dislike in the least. I was also a little flattered. "Sure! My parents won't be home until late anyway, but I'd know they'd say yes."

I enjoyed hanging out with Martha. Like, genuinely had fun, when I hadn't really been enjoying life for a while. My friends from 2019 were almost the same, although they were more streetwise and Generation Z. We were a more cynical people. Martha was so idealistic and a bit naïve for someone who was seventeen, but that's why she was such good company It was easy to curl up on the sofa and watch the fairytale unfold while scoffing buttery stovetop-popped popcorn, squealing at the horrible CGI (although it was pretty cutting-edge for now) and "awww"-ing at the sweet parts and the happy ending.

"Would you want to be Buttercup by the end?" Martha asked me at the end. "I think I would."

I scoffed. "She has to wait for her true love to come home, thinking he's dead, and then she's kidnapped and trapped and has to go through all that hell. A happy ending does not make a happy life."

"I guess," Martha admitted, "But I'd still like a fairytale. Someone to love me, who doesn't care that I'm not thin or pretty or cool."

I recognized some wording from her solo, and answered gently. "Someone will. You're a nice person. Not many people would adopt the new kid and then let them abandon you to save their own skin. High school sucks. It always does. Even parents have their own high school horror stories – at least, mine did. You'll find someone at college."

Martha hesitated for a moment, and then said in a low voice "Actually, I'm hoping I'll be able to get back together with someone from here." I sighed inwardly, knowing where this was going, but I let her talk.

It did – Martha told me about how she'd been really close with Ram Sweeney in kindergarten, but despite the fact that he'd barely spoken to her except to laugh with the other jocks giving her a hard time since, she still thought he might care about her deep down.

"I wouldn't hold out for him," I advised her gently. "Maybe he does still like you, but I don't think he's worth it, not if he's ignored you since first grade. I'm hoping if I get in with some of the cool kids, I can get an invite to his homecoming party – you know, since football season's starting and partying raises morale or something like that. Maybe then I can get a chance to scope what he's thinking."

"Would you?" Martha smiled at me radiantly. "Thanks, Ana! It's so weird, we only met a week ago, but I feel like we've been friends forever already."

I laughed. "I doubt I'm that good of a friend. But I don't set out to shame nice, normal people."

I was aware that I'd changed since moving eras. In 2019, I'd become more cynical and cared less about everything. Here in 1989, I noticed that I felt more aware of things. Not school – I tried a little harder, and having done almost half of senior year already in a later time, I actually didn't have to work that hard and I knew my grades were going to be up a letter come report-card time. No, it was more that I cared about who I knew, what friends I made, and what I did at different times. Maybe it was being in a musical universe that did it. I'd always wanted to be in a musical. Not like this, but it was about as close as I'd ever get to being in one, so I would enjoy the experience.

I did get the chance to buy myself a more 80s outfit on Sunday. I didn't want to give up my skinny black jeans entirely, and resolved to keep wearing them, but I did get a black blazer with shoulderpads and some black leggings with colourful shapes all over them. The blazer would go with both my jeans and the leggings, so I figured it worked. Since it was fall, winter stuff was coming in, too, and I noticed there were a lot of long, cozy cardigans a lot like my favourite hunter-green one. Lucky for me that I had at least something that worked. It was too bad that skinny jeans weren't going to be in for another decade.

Over the second week, I started finding my own clique of kids that weren't super cool, but not super nerdy or weird, either. My new outfit helped a bit. The other seniors didn't give me weird looks, and when I sat at the end of a table that only had two kids when there was room for six on Monday, no one said anything. By Wednesday, a girl called Stephanie who was in my English class was voluntarily inviting me to sit with her group. It wasn't a super-popular group of kids, I could tell, but they were cool enough that they didn't get picked on. They were basically the kind of kids who were nice to everyone and didn't try too hard, but fitted in enough that they weren't ostracized for associating with losers – even the popular kids were civil to us. We didn't really belong to any one clique because we fit in with all of them, but because of that, we banded together, even though we didn't have as much in common as most cliques did. Along with Stephanie, there were two girls, Lisa and Holly, and two guys, Will and Tim. The boys didn't always sit with us, just when they felt like it (they would sometimes just slot into a different group), but I always sat with Steph, Lisa and Holly, and we all got on. In my leggings and blazer, I really felt like I was starting to fit in.

On Thursday, it happened. It was just the three other girls and I today. Holly nudged me. "Heather alert. Looks like it's lunchtime poll time," she muttered. "Just don't say too much, okay?"

Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought about movie-based stuff cropping up. I was starting to get used to living in a world that wasn't quite familiar to me, with some people who only existed outside what the musical cared about. But the lunchtime poll had been mentioned in the first ten minutes of the movie. And just like the movie, Heather Chandler was making her way towards our table, clipboard in hand. It just had to be a day where I'd decided to wear my black jeans instead of my leggings.

"Hi, Steph!" Heather said in the sweetest tone I'd ever heard. "Love the jacket."

Stephanie was wearing a light denim jacket. She smiled and said "Thanks, Heather," but didn't offer any more information.

I was a little confused. Heather looked more like the musical version I imagined – not as pretty as Heather McNamara, or as thin as Heather Duke, but with such an air of confidence that it was obvious she was the queen. But that tone belonged to the movie. Kim Walker had spoken with an iron fist in a velvet glove, or an angel trapped inside a vampire. This Heather was doing the same. I mean, yeah, none of us were really unpopular. But that didn't mean the queen had any reason to be nice to us, not when she was so untouchable.

I'd already scanned the lunchroom – something I did every day – to check that JD wasn't at Westerburg yet. If he wasn't there, the one about spending five million when aliens come down to blow up the world in two days, wouldn't be there either. So I had no idea what the question would be.

So when Heather asked some random question about dream locations for living in, I wasn't too interested. Stephanie answered first, saying something about California, and Heather just nodded, noted it down and then asked "Ana? What's your answer? And cool skinnies, by the way. Love the vintage look."

I was totally gobsmacked. This was the first time we'd ever spoken, and yet Heather knew who I was. Plus, she'd thought to compliment my jeans, whether she meant it or not. Either way, she was staring straight at me, smiling a little. I couldn't tell if she was amused by my face or trying to act friendly.

"Um…" I said, racking my brains, "Thanks. I guess…um…Australia. One of the sunny parts in the east."

Heather looked unimpressed by my stammer, but she noted it down, then asked the other four one by one. I was still reeling from her knowing my name. I wondered if maybe Martha had spoken to Veronica and told her about me, and that she'd told the Heathers. There wasn't much of a stretch.

Still, it gave me a little buzz to know that someone as important as Heather Chandler knew my name, even if I knew she probably wouldn't be so nice to me for long.

I figure that Heather knows just about everything that goes on around Westerburg, so someone definitely told her Ana's name. The reason Heather Chandler thinks Ana's jeans are vintage is because skinny jeans were cool in the 1960s, only coming back in the Noughties. Oh yeah, and one more thing. I don't own The Princess Bride.

As a note, I looked at high school hierarchies, and Ana's group are usually considered "floaters", kids who go between any group. They're usually in the first tier of popular because they treat everyone equally, and usually nicely. In 2019, Ana had her own group of friends, but they mostly kept their friendship group to itself, but still treating those outside the group nicely and equally, no matter what group they were in. Ana tends to be drawn to that kind of dynamic.

Also, please please please review! I need to know what people think. I don't usually beg for reviews, but I know this isn't in a popular archive and I'd like to hear from people.