Reading instead

Everyone chattered as they filed into class four, and took their places. Laura was telling Anita that she hadn’t got to sleep until ten o’clock last night, and Anita replied that she had stayed up until eleven! Maura said she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all, and Sadie listened with a smile on her face. Ondine seemed not to notice, she was engrossed in her book.

The yellow paint on the exterior was fading, and though you couldn’t really put your finger on it, there was definitely something odd about the office block. Fenella had always thought so. Strange things would happen, staplers went missing, staff left and never came back, indoor plants died for no reason. Something was definitely causing these bizarre occurences, but Fenella hoped that if she ignored it, it would go away.

That morning she couldn’t find her scissors.

“It’s probably nothing,” she said to herself.

She looked for them everywhere, but they really weren’t there. She stood up and looked around the room. Maybe someone had borrowed them, or there might be some other scissors she could use.

A big hole in the carpet opened up, and swallowed Louise from accounting.

“That’s weird,” said Fenella. It was getting more and more difficult to ignore the fact that something strange was going on.

Niamh couldn’t believe her eyes. She was horrified.

“Louise!” she screamed, and ran around the desks to pat the carpet with her fingers. There was not a hole for Louise to have fallen through. She knelt down and pressed her ear against the floor, listening for Louise.

“Quadratic equations,” announced Ms Garlic. “Page one hundred and seventy-seven.”

Ondine opened the textbook to the right page, and continued reading her own book.

Barbara came around the corner with a mug of tea.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “We haven’t got ants, have we?”

“No,” said Fenella, “Louise was swallowed by a hole in the floor, that’s not there any more.”

“Oh good, I’m glad it’s not ants,” said Barbara, sidling past carefully.

“But what about Louise?” shrieked Niamh.

“Try to keep it down, people are trying to work,” Barbara called back, as she left them lost in thought.

Alone together on the carpet, Fenella tried to –

“Ondine! Put that book down and concentrate on the equations,” Ms Garlic rudely interrupted. Ondine nodded, and pretended to buckle down.

Alone together on the carpet, Fenella tried to have a logical discussion with the mildly hysterical Niamh.

“What do you do when this happens? Call the police? They’d laugh, probably, or if they did believe us, what would they do? There’s not even a hole in the floor. What is there to investigate? Louise didn’t fall, she was swallowed. By a mouth. This building ate her!” said Niamh, barely pausing between words.

“It probably ate my scissors too,” said Fenella, reluctant to let go of her denial. She looked around again.

“Maybe the police do investigate this type of thing, they just keep it quiet,” Niamh theorised. “They might have the building condemned. Structurally unsound, due to supernatural phenomena. Of course, they’d still need to track Louise down, but she isn’t stuck between the floor boards, is she?” She rubbed her ears with her hands.

“Oh, yeah, this sort of thing probably happens all the time, you see those abandoned buildings all over the place,” said Fenella.

It was really bizarre. If only she’d been looking the other way, she’d be as oblivious as Barbara right now.

“We’re going to learn how to solve quadratic equations,” said Ms Garlic.

“Can I borrow your pencil sharpener?” whispered Katherine.

“I don’t have one,” Ondine replied.

“No talking,” said Ms Garlic.

“What are we going to do?” Niamh said to her computer screen.

They’d decided to look it up online, and discovered that it wasn’t a poltergeist situation. They’d also discovered that even if the police believe you when you report supernatural phenomena, there is nothing they can do.

Fenella really wanted to pretend everything was normal, so she played solitaire on her computer.

“I understand you’re in denial, but I just think I need another pair of eyes on this thing,” Niamh said, while she paced up and down the room. “Move the Jack of spades to the queen of diamonds.”

“Oh yeah!” said Fenella. “Thanks!”

Paying attention this time, Fenella listened in silence. She was getting the feeling that there was going to be no way to ignore this strange occurrence.

“Quadratic equations can be solved by factorisation,” said Ms Garlic to the room. “If the product of two factors is zero, then one of those factors must be zero.”

“Well I think it’s obvious that this building stands on an interdimensional threshold. I’ve suspected it for a while, that’s why all the scissors keep going missing,” she said, shrugging.

“Either x plus five equals zero, giving x equals minus five,” Ms Garlic was saying. It was difficult to concentrate with all that noise. “Or x plus four equals zero, giving x equals four. These roots are-” Ondine made an effort to tune her out.

Niamh was speechless for a moment, taken aback by this sudden change in her colleague. She wanted to say “Why didn’t you say something, but all she could say was “um.” Luckily, Fenella kept on talking.

“I hoped that I was just imagining it, and I thought ignoring it would make it go away, but I’m getting the feeling that’s not going to happen. The universe is constantly expanding, and we only have five senses, so we can’t detect alternate realities, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. All over the world there are cracks for people to fall through, the Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge, Aokigahara Forest, and so many more.”

“You think Louise is in another dimension?” Niamh finally found her voice.

“So, if Z squared minus Z equals three… ”

“She could be, or, she could have teleported, within this dimension. People do that sometimes, she could be in the car park, or in her home town, or Peru,” said Fenella, gathering momentum. It was turning out to be quite a relief to let go of the denial she’d been clinging to since she’d first started working in this building.

“So what should we do?” asked Niamh.

“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do. We both walked down the corridor and nothing happened to us, so the portal is obviously not there anymore. And it really depends on where Louise went. She may have travelled through time, or space, or both.”

“I guess so,” said Niamh. “You’re saying you think this building is like the Stonehenge, and it’s allowed Louise, and all the scissors, to cross over into another dimension.”

“I’m not saying anything,” said Fenella.

“You just said it!” Niamh shrieked.

“And if I repeat myself, we’ll just be going around in circles. I’m very uncomfortable talking about this. I think we should get back to work.”

“If it’s not squared, then it’s not quadratic,” said Ms Garlic.

“Teleporting? Is that a real thing?” Niamh asked. She wasn’t going to let this go.

“Who knows? Reality is not as dependable as we’d like to think. Who is to say what is possible?” said Fenella.

“Well,” said Niamh. “If you think there’s a chance she’s somewhere, then that’s good. All I need to do is find her.”

“I think you’re just going to drive yourself crazy,” said Fenella.

“Ondine!”

“Yes, Ms Garlic?”

“What are the roots for this equation?”

The roots. She had no idea, she had to guess.

“Um, is it…”

“An answer should never be given in the form of a question,” Ms Garlic reminded her.

Right, Ondine knew that.

“Zero and minus seven,” shrugged Ondine.

“No, try again.”

“Minus three and minus four.”

“I’m afraid that’s not the answer I was looking for,” said Ms Garlic. “Don’t be discouraged. Look again at the examples on the first page of the chapter.”

“You said she could have been transported home, right? So I will call her house!” said Niamh, cheerfully looking for her phone number.

Fenella wanted to go back to playing solitaire. Or do some actual work. But she found it very difficult to concentrate, with all this interdimensional drama in the air. Especially since Niamh was on the phone in the same room, stirring it all up.

“Hello, is Louise there? Louise Carmichael… no? Ok, thank you,” Niamh put down the phone. “Well, she’s not at home.”

She looked at Fenella for a response. Fenella took a deep breath.

“There was a nun who was back and forth from … somewhere, Spain to South America, I think, like, fifty times. And she had time to do missionary work in between. People have been vanishing mysteriously since the Fifteen hundreds, sometimes permanently, sometimes not.”

Niamh’s mouth fell open.

“Sometimes permanently?”

Fenella winced.

“Sometimes Portugal,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “The point I’m trying to make, is that …” she paused, trying to remember her point.

“Just because Louise isn’t back at her house yet, doesn’t mean she’s not going to end up there eventually.”

“But she might be permanently gone forever,” said Niamh.

Fenella, barely resisting the urge to explain that if you saypermanently, you don’t need to say forever, gently tried again.

“You don’t need to worry about Louise,” she began. “Wherever she is, she’s fine.”

“But,” said Niamh.

“If she’s not on this planet-”

“Ondine! Will you shut that book and concentrate!” shouted Ms Garlic. There really was no need to shout, she’d frightened the life out of poor Katherine.

Ondine stopped reading. It seemed the lesson had moved on from quadratic equations. Ms Garlic was explaining the history of the geography. Two thousand years ago, it was invented by combining the words geo, meaning earth and graphein, meaning writing, or description. At the time geography was all about describing the world, mapping out rivers, mountains, every sort of environment, and whoever lived there. She said that it had changed over the years, and turned to write on the board.

“If she’s not on this planet, on this plane of existence, somewhere, then she’s entered another dimension. That’s not a scary thing. It’s probably exactly the same as this one. There’ll be another one of all of us, and she might not even notice.”

“What? Might not notice what?” said Niamh.

“That she’s somewhere else.”

“Really?” Niamh asked, letting that sink in. Fenella nodded, hoping that would be the end of the discussion. It wasn’t. “So are we just supposed to, what are we supposed to do?”

“Nothing,” said Fenella, avoiding eye contact.

Niamh’s shoulders slumped.

“We can’t do nothing,” she said.

Fenella closed her eyes. They were going around in circles.

“I’m going to do nothing,” said Fenella.

There was a peaceful silence, but only for a moment. Niamh had another question.

“So how does that work? The other dimension?” she asked.

“Well,” said Fenella. “We’re three dimensional, time is the fourth dimension, and then there’s about ten more, no, I mean, there’s ten all together. I don’t really know why they need so many, because basically they just mean that anything is possible.”

Niamh waited for more, so Fenella kept talking.

“It’s, not just that anything’s possible, it’s that every possibility has an actual reality. It’s all just in theory, but I guess it makes sense, if the Universe goes on forever, then there’s room in it for every possibility.”

Niamh smiled.

“Every possibility?” she echoed Fenella. “So that means there’s another world where I became a doctor? And another one where I’m a professional ice skater?”

“And another one where you’re a stegosaurus,” Fenella nodded. “The tenth dimension is where there are no boundaries to what can happen, we can’t even comprehend the extent to which it goes on. The possibilities are infinite.”

“Wow, that’s incredible,” said Niamh. For a moment they both thought of all the possibilities. “But if everything is possible, then how can you be so sure Louise is okay?”

Fenella kicked herself for not seeing that coming. Of course, Niamh was right, because of infinity, every good and bad thing possible could have happened. Would have happened. And wouldn’t have happened. Luckily, she didn’t have to think of a response.

“Did someone say my name?” said Louise.

“Louise!” gasped Niamh.

“Ondine!”

“Yep, yep, yep, I’m listening,” said Ondine, shutting the book and sitting up straight. Now that she’d finished that chapter, she could definitely concentrate on what ever it was Ms Garlic was going on about.