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“Alex,” she told him.

He shrugged. “Sure. Now tell us more about what happened with this doorway?”

She repeated the story as best as she could, watching them both for signs of understanding. If anything, they looked more and more excited, though she had no idea why.

“All I really want to do is hand in my enrolment papers, find out where I’m sleeping, and put this whole day behind me,” she concluded. “So, how do we get out of this forest?”

Jordan turned to Bear and asked, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“No question about it,” Bear agreed. “It’ll be a shock for her, but the best way is just to show her.”

“?‘Her’ is standing right here, you know,” Alex said pointedly.

“Right, sorry, Alex,” Bear said. “You’ve just given us a lot to think about. If we’re right, then you’re the first Freyan to come to Medora in thousands of years. If not more. This is huge.”

“Epic,” Jordan said.

Alex looked from one of them to the other and asked, “What’s a Freyan?”

Bear turned to Jordan who cleared his throat and said, “Freyan is the name we use for someone who comes from Freya, the Original Earth. Medora is our world, which is Second Earth—kind of like a parallel Earth, but different. If we’re right about what’s happened to you, then you’re from another world.”

Alex stared blankly for a beat, waiting for them to jokingly cry, ‘gotcha!’ but their earnest expressions didn’t falter.

“Right,” she deadpanned. She wassonot in the mood for any more first-day-at-the-new-school pranks. “I’d say it’s been great chatting with you, but… well, nope. Falling into the fountain was bad enough, you don’t need to continue this ‘let’s punk the newbie’ charade. So, thanks for the welcome, but I’ll just find my own way back.”

Alex chose a direction at random and headed straight into the trees. She half-expected Jordan and Bear to try and stop her from leaving, but they let her walk away without argument. She heard them following her and whispering to one another, but she didn’t deviate from her onward mission.

It took less than five minutes before the density of the forest began to lessen. The boys moved up beside Alex and together the three of them stepped out from under the canopy of trees.

“But—What—How?” Alex stared incredulously at the view, speechless.

Directly in front of them lay a beautiful lake, glistening in the late afternoon sunset. The forest where they stood led straight down to the water’s edge, and both the trees and the lake continued on to her right, much further than she could see. To her left, the forest cleared out into a grassy field which bordered the curve of the lake. Alex could even see a few horses grazing in the distance, adding to the picturesque image.

Further on from the fields and resting atop a small hill were a cluster of buildings, each one different from the next. Some looked like they were from the Dark Ages, while others looked as if they’d been built just yesterday. Two in particular stood out to Alex, if only because of their contrasting forms: one was a multi-storied U-shaped complex that was almost futuristic in design, and the other was a tower-like structure in the middle of the campus that looked like it belonged in aMedieval Weeklymagazine. It was all very strange.

“Welcome to Akarnae, Alex,” Jordan said.

“Whatisthis place?” she managed to say. “Where’s the International Exchange Academy?”

“We need to tell you some things that you’re not going to believe,” Bear said, “but you have to hear us out before you decide to ignore us, okay?”

She nodded absentmindedly, distracted by the picture in front of her. Wherewasshe?

“Alex,focus,” Bear said firmly, turning her to face them.

Seeing their serious expressions, she hesitantly said, “Okay, I’m listening.”

They led her over to a fallen tree and made her sit down while they spent the next few minutes describing an impossible reality. When they were finished, she looked at them apprehensively, torn between laughter and tears.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “According to you, I’m from another world, a world that was once identical to your own—this ‘Medora’ place—but over time the two places changed and became… different places?”

Yeah, that was really articulate. But they nodded, so she continued, “And people from my Earth—sorry, ‘Freya’—don’t know about Medora or how to get here?”

When they nodded again, she asked, “Then how do you explain me?”

“No idea,” Jordan said, grinning widely. “But I reckon we’ll have fun trying to figure that out.”

Alex looked from him to Bear and asked, “Are you aliens?” When both boys burst out laughing, she frowned at them. “Different worlds? Hel-lo! It’s not that strange a question, especially considering I feel like I’m the leading character in some kind of alternate reality movie. And you’ve just told me that there are all kinds of different beings in your world, not just humans. Give a girl a break, would you?”