Human Timelord

“So I come to school every day to pretty much help people through their work for the HSC. I’m already set for the exams; I’ve got some weird super-brain.

“Teachers were always ignoring me because they knew I knew more than them and in a way, I suppose they were jealous,” I smiled. “I can still remember their faces when I recited all the bone in the human body by scientific name.”

“Erica, the aliens?”

“Right. The teachers started paying more attention to me than usual. Asking me harder questions as if they were trying to outsmart me. It never worked. I answered everything they threw at me.

“I was staying back after school one day cleaning up the art storeroom-“

“You did that willingly?”

“As if!” I was astounded that he’d even thought of it. “I said something to one of the teachers and I got detention for it.”

“I can imagine you being a fun student to teach,” he murmured under his breath.
I ignored the snide comment and continued my story.

“Anyway, I looked down the corridor and I saw two of the teachers talking, well, more like arguing. But the language wasn’t English. It was like hissing and weird noises that I can’t even replicate.”

“And you didn’t go to investigate? Wow, talk about self-restraint.”

“Well if they were aliens, I wasn’t exactly going to walk up to them and say ‘Hi, I just noticed you were speaking weirdly. May I ask what species you are?’”

“Yeh, that probably wouldn’t have been the smartest thing to do.”

“So I decided to cause a commotion in class. I started talking a lot, being very loud and distracting and I knew sooner or later the alien would get pissed off and do something drastic. And you know what happened after that.”

“I come in and save you from the deadly clutches of an alien and we end up with this conversation.”

“That sentence didn’t need to be said, we both already knew that.”

“I know,” he shrugged. “I just felt like saying it.”

“So Captain Jack Harkness,” I said as I walked out of the school gate. “Torchwood?”

He stopped walking as I said that.

“How do you know about Torchwood?”

I looked down at the ground as I tried to remember but I couldn’t. It was just a strange piece of trivia hidden in my mind.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I truly don’t know.”

“There might be something I can do to help that,” Jack said pondering. “But I’d have to go back to HQ.”

“Cardiff?”

“Yeah right on top of the ri- how do you know that!?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated amazing even myself.

“Yes, I definitely need to get you there,” Jack replied. “This is not normal.”

“Well, you can do the honours of talking to my parents.”

“I’ve done a lot of that in my time.”

xxxxx

I waited outside my front door as Jack spoke to my parents.

“Piece of cake,” he said as he walked out of the front door.

“What?!”

“Go on, go and pack. It’s not exactly an overnight trip.”

I ran inside to find my parents sitting at the kitchen counter chatting away.

“Mum? Dad? You said yes!?”

“Jack can help you.”

“How do you know that?”

“He helped you’re mother when she was younger. I’m sure he can help you too,” my father replied.

“But what's wrong with me? I like being smart!”

“It’s not that simple honey,” my mum replied. “Jack will explain. Go and pack your bags.”

I ran upstairs and threw all my clothes into my big duffel bag. I grabbed my passport before I ran back downstairs.

“Bye-bye Erica,” my mother said giving me an enormous hug. I turned to my dad and he gave me a big hug too.

“We’ll see you soon!” they said.

I walked out the door by myself and out the gate with Jack. As we walked towards a taxi stand he sighed.

“Why is it that every time I want a holiday, aliens decide to invade?”