Vanishing Alley

-13-

      As I'm sure you can imagine, the next few days seemed boring and uninteresting compared to Monday. Before travelling back in time to 1882, going into town, walking around, sitting on a bench, all sounded like great options of how to spend the day. But now? Now that we knew there was a more interesting and exciting choice? Well, all of that just seemed so underwhelming. After all, this time-travelling thing was new and exciting, how could we not want to go back more than once? WOW! It still feels weird saying that we time-travelled! Anyway... we all texted each other over the next few days — we couldn't stop talking about what happened. We were still in disbelief and processing everything. When we went through the alley, we had only explored a couple of blocks and wondered what else there was to see. Did they have a local fair? What other types of stores were there? What about farms? A blacksmith? We had so many questions! But the one, BIG question that we all had was... should we go back? And if so, when? Would we tempt fate a third time opening the alley? Would we try walking further into town in 1882? We planned to meet-up on Saturday to discuss all of this. That Saturday, we all met-up at our favourite ice-cream parlour. It was a beautiful sunny day, with cloudy breaks and a slight breeze. It was a perfect day to walk around and enjoy the outdoors.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm curious to go back." Philip was the first to admit that his curiosity was getting the best of him.

"Yeah, me too," Amy agreed, adding, "but is it safe for us to travel through time? Especially more than once?"

"Clara, did the store owner mention if Helen wrote about any side effects from travelling through time so many times?" Sara asked a very good question, but I didn't know if my answer would calm her.

"Nope. I just remember her saying that Helen wrote about feeling kind of jet lagged. Well, Helen described it a different way obviously, but it essentially sounded like jet lag. It was like what we felt the next day after the first time we went."

"Would we dare try it again?"

"I know what you're saying Amy, but I have an idea." Jamie decided to share his thoughts on the matter. "Why don't we go back to that spot in front of the store and see if the alley will even re-appear again. If it doesn't show, then it'll mean that we can't go anymore."

"And if it shows?"

"If it shows, then we can decide. What do you guys think?"

"This idea is coming from skeptical Jamie?" I was pretty surprised to hear this idea coming from him!

"I know. I'm the most skeptical person out of all of us. So the fact that I'm suggesting this should tell you something, right?"

"You know what? Jamie makes a great suggestion!" Amy seemed to be on board with this idea. "We can go back to the store and see what happens. It's not like we're forced to go in."

After much discussion, and A LOT of back-and-forth, that I'll spare you from, we decided to go back to the store and see what happens. Even with all that discussion, I already knew that if the alley appeared, we were going to go back. We were all WAY TOO CURIOUS not to!

The walk there was pretty quiet. I figured we were all just wondering if it was going to work. Me, I was wondering who was going to be the first one to approach the alley if it appeared. Who would be the first to say, 'Let's go'? When we finally got there, we all stopped, looked at the store and then looked at each other. I was first to break the silence.

"So, we're here. Shall we do this? See what happens?"

They all looked at each other and with a simple nod of their heads, they all gave me the go-ahead.

"Ok, here it goes."

I know we had already done this before; we already saw the alley and had already walked through it. But we couldn't help but still feel a bit nervous about it. I know we didn't really have a reason to be nervous, but we were. We also were excited to see what else we could discover. I mean, imagine if you were in our shoes. Would you expect it to happen EVERY time? Or would you try it with the expectation that the last time it worked might have been a fluke? That's what was going through our minds. Anyway, back to it. I pulled the pin on my watch and slowly turned it as we watched the storefront... And there it was. The front of the store started to wave back and forth, like a reflection on water, as it began to disappear and transformed into the alley. It was amazing to see! Especially since it was MY first time seeing it as it happened. I couldn't believe my eyes! Already knowing the answer, I looked at the four of them and asked...