“Bedtime, girls!” Dad called after my twin sister and I washed up and ate dinner and changed into pajamas. 

So we hurried into our shared room so that we could read before Dad came in and pushed our bedtime to a little later. About five minutes later, Mom and Dad came in and said it was time to put our books away. 

“Aww,” I said, “just a few minutes more pleeeease?” and I made my pleading face.

“No,” Dad said sternly, “you say this every time.”

Charlie and I didn’t want to argue, so we gave him our books and laid down. I was really looking forward to knowing if the characters in my book made it back from the time machine. 

Mom and Dad tucked us in and said good night. 

After they left, Charlie said, “Hey, Ali, want to read some more? I have my reading light that I got for our ninth birthday.”

I surprised myself with my own answer. I said that I wanted to get some rest before our first day of fourth grade. She seemed a little disappointed but hardly showed it. Then, I started to fall asleep.

Suddenly, I was flying. I couldn’t tell where, but I could see a whole town below me. It looked like London. Charlie and I went there with our parents last summer. But it didn’t look like how it did when we went there. It just looked different.

Then I started going in circles and I hoped it would stop soon, because I was getting dizzy. It stopped, but I was somewhere else.

“Hello?” I tried to say to an elderly woman. “Hello? Could you please tell me where I am? I’m lost.”

But she couldn’t seem to hear me.

It was hot. “Am I in some sort of tropical place?” I thought. Maybe I was in Hawaii. I have never been there, but I studied it in first grade and my cousin went there a year ago. But then I realized that everyone looked different. Not like how they looked in Alex’s pictures. “How is this happening?” I thought.

But just then I started twirling again. I landed with a thud in some place that looked like Pensylvania, where I’m from, except maybe older. Maybe in the colonial times that we were learning about in school. And then I realized it. I realized what I hadn’t noticed before. I was time travelling. 

And then I started spinning one last time. I ended up in a place. I couldn’t tell where because it was all covered in trees and bushes. There were Native Americans and deer and other animals getting shot by the Natives for food and clothes. It was their way of life I suppose. We learned about them in third grade also. I tried to talk to them, maybe ask some questions, but they couldn’t seem to hear me either. Maybe it was that they were visible to me, but I wasn’t visible to them. 

Then, I heard a “bring, bring, bring!” and “Wake up, Ali!” And that was the moment I realized that it was just my imagination.