Then the doors open.
The girls compete to be first inside. I wait for the clatter to subside and follow in. The lecture hall is almost full, so I resort to a lonely bench in the last two rows, and watch the Pillar enter.
My plan is to wait for a chance to approach him and talk him into helping me with finding Jack. But my plan is thrown out of the window when I take a better look at the professor.
How could this be?
The vicious serial killer is nothing but a nerdy professor like I have seen before.
Chapter 66
Professor Pillar wears a multicolored jacket too short at the waist. It’s battered and probably hasn’t been washed since Wonderland. His trousers are pink, too large, and he wears flip-flops. His eyes hide behind thick glasses with black frames. Glasses that desperately need wiping. The man stutters when he welcomes his students. He has a tic of adjusting his glasses whenever he says something. For God’s sake, the Pillar blushes when a girl compliments him.
I sit, mouth agape, unable to fathom what’s going on. How is this going to help me? I suppress a shriek when he mentions his idol is Indiana Jones.
I spend the lecture in a terrible kind of awe, waiting for him to finish. I need to go talk to him. Wake him up.
When he is done, all I have left is seven hours. I slither through the crowd and pull him by the arm. “Professor!”
“Yes?” He adjusts his glasses. “How may I help you, kiddo?”
“I need to talk to you.”
His eyes dart sideways. “Aren’t we already?”
“In private,” I whisper.
His eyes widen. He blushes and worries. Says nothing.
“It’s important,” I whisper. “I’m Alice.”
“Alice?”
“I’m the Real Alice you’re looking for.” I grit my teeth.
He backs away, suspiciously scanning me from head to toe. Then he slouches, hugging his book, about to leave.
“We need to talk alone.” I pull him back again. “I need your help.”
“Who are you?” He stops, irritated now.
It’s going to be hard to explain things to him among all those girls. Then I remember seeing a poster out in the streets of the upcoming Star Wars movie. It gives me an idea. “I have tickets for the next Star Wars. Front row. Premiere day.”
His eyes widen again. Immediately he excuses himself and pulls me into his office. He locks the door behind us, gets behind his desk, and glares at me. “Is Darth going to be there?”
Really? I fist one hand. Is this really happening, or is he making it up?
I rap my hand on the desk and lean forward as he slumps back in his seat. “Look, whoever the Jub Jub you are now, I’m Alice Pleasant Wonder. Mary Ann. I used to know you in Wonderland. We go back then. Not in Wonderland, but in the future. I have seven hours to save myself from dying because of a lapse in time travel. According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wonderlastic Time Travels, I need to find my Wonder or I will die. But even if I can’t find it, I need to save Jack. You know Jack? In fact, I need to save my classmates, probably the hordes of girls outside, from killing them in a bus accident a few hours from now. I need you to stop me from doing that. No, this isn’t right. I need you to help me stop me from killing my classmates and ending up in an asylum for the next two years. Do. You. Get. That?”
The Pillar sinks deeper into this chair, shielding his face with his arms. The look on his face is priceless. He stares at me and says, “Is the hookah you’re smoking that good?”
Chapter 67
THE PRESENT: INSIDE THE INKLINGS, OXFORD
“What’s going on with her?” Fabiola said. “What’s happening to Alice?”
“Not good,” Mr. Tick said, reading the paper, some unearthly publication called Newsweek. No, it was actually called Nextweek. “Tell her, Mrs. Tock.”
“Alice can’t find Jack,” Mrs. Tock explained.
“So?” Fabiola said.
“She can’t save him.”
“I don’t care about Jack. What about her Wonder?”
“Well, she can’t find that either.” Mrs. Tock seemed worried. Unlike earlier when she had all the fun, now she knew if Alice died, they couldn’t get the keys.
“Good,” Fabiola said.
“Good?”
“As long as she can’t find her Wonder, she will die in the past.” Fabiola sat down, relieved.
“Really?” Mrs. Tock said. “You want her to die?”
“The Real Alice must die.”
“I thought you loved her,” Mrs. Tock said. “You’ve repeatedly helped her fight monsters.”
“Thinking she was a regular girl doing good in the world.”
“And letting her think she is Alice?”
“We’re all delusional.” Fabiola didn’t mind her blunt deflations. “If it serves the good cause, so be it.”
“And now you want her to die in her past, even though you know she may change and become good in the future? Aren’t humans always redeemable? What about absolution?”