Inescapable Escapism

I picked at the cinnamon roll in front of me, poking it with my fork and trying to keep the glare from my face. Lunch was going too slowly. Everything was moving too slowly. In my regular world, I was sitting in a weird cafe with my mom, but in the spy world, I was sitting on my bed and staring blankly at the open folder on my lap. I looked around, turning the fork in my hand and wishing that time would speed up.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t enjoyed my lunch. I had, kind of. The cinnamon roll was nice enough, but the atmosphere was too uncomfortable. Mom had insisted on going to that cafe, saying that we’d been there many times before, but I was sure we hadn’t. It didn’t seem right. The cafe wasn’t my mom’s style. It was too… aesthetic. There were vines dangling from the ceiling and a flower wall, just for photos.

Mom scoffed at that and loudly said how shallow she thought it was, making the girls who were taking a selfie at the time flush and walk away. That had irritated me, but Mom didn’t notice. She was too busy looking at the menu with a curled lip. I didn’t understand her reaction until I looked at it myself, and I felt myself smile.

It was nothing like what we normally had for lunch. There were a couple of sandwiches, but they weren’t the kind of thing Mom would eat. Mostly, it was pastries and hot options, but the moment I saw the cinnamon roll, I couldn’t stop myself from ordering it. I could feel the judgment radiating from Mom as soon as I spoke, and it only got worse when the server brought it over. The pastry was wider than my palm and tall, too. The top was slathered in a thick, tangy icing that I could have drank a bucket of.

Mom had refused the pastries, obviously. Instead, she’d settled for eggs Benedict with no sauce. I took another bite of my cinnamon roll as I watched her eat. Judging by the slight scowl that came to her face whenever she had some of her food, she was not enjoying it. I really wasn’t sure why she was still eating it or what she was trying to prove, but she continued eating, persevering with the determination of a hardened soldier.

It was probably because I’d doubted her. Not intentionally. When the cafe came into view and I saw the neon sign, I made the mistake of asking Mom if she was sure it was the place she was thinking of. She’d immediately gotten offended and told me that yes. She was certain. We had apparently been going to that cafe whenever we visited my grandparents for years. Despite the fact that I checked their social media pages when I was in the bathroom, and they’d only actually been open for just under a year.

I didn’t tell her that, though. It was petty of me to check, but it would be cruel to bring it up. Unnecessary, too. Mom wouldn’t admit she was wrong; she never would, so I had nothing to gain. That was fine, though. I was happy enough with the knowledge that I was right, even if I didn’t share it with her.

But it made the meal uncomfortable. All meals with my mom were uncomfortable, but this was worse than normal. She was scowling, yet pretending she was enjoying her lunch, and glaring at me. Judging my every bite. And it didn’t help that I couldn’t go back to the other world. Well, I could, but there was no point. I was just waiting in that world.

Dizziness washed over me as I dipped into the world to check. We were in the exact same positions that we had been in the last time I checked. And the time before. Katie was reclining on her bed, a textbook in hand; I was sitting on mine with my folder open on my lap, and Abbie paced back and forth by the door. The clock on the wall showed that barely any time had passed. We still had ten minutes or so until Rodgers completed his rounds, and the waiting was getting to me.

I’m not sure if I always found waiting so unbearable, but I was struggling to cope with it. I just had to sit there and do nothing, and I hated it. I was too restless, too filled with excited energy, and that made me want to get up and run about. Anything would have been better than nothing, but I had to pretend like nothing was going on. I had to act completely normally, and any other day, I would have been sitting on my bed and reading my folder.

But it was difficult. My eyes found the clock again, and I was filled with longing. I wished I could speed up time, in both worlds, not just that one. Time already moved faster there. It wasn’t the same as my regular world, but it wasn’t enough. I just wanted to skip to when Rodgers had come and gone, and we were downstairs.

Something hovered at the edge of my mind. Another dizziness. It was almost familiar, feeling similar to the world I was already in, but something was a little off about it. Something was different. Tentatively, I reached out to it and let some of my awareness slip into it. Not all of it, just enough to see the world.

Water lapped at my calves as I stood on a ladder, and laughter echoed around me. My hands tightened on the cold metal as I swayed, the pool spinning around me. No one had noticed my hesitation, and I turned slowly, sitting on the top step and staring. I was in the pool. The same one we had swimming practice in. The world was dark through the fogged windows, and Katie laughed as Scott leapt into the water.

But something felt wrong. I wasn’t sure what exactly, but I looked around. Everything seemed to be exactly the same. The same people, the same room, the same world. But it was later. It was almost eleven. I’d found another world where time moved even faster, and, as much as that did appeal to me, I felt myself recoiling away from it. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t want to be there. There was a sensation in my stomach, something sitting heavily, that told me to leave.

I think I must have just been too used to the other world. To my regular spy world. Going to a different one where I might not have had the same experiences or bonded with people as well felt wrong. I couldn’t stay there. My regular other world was perfect, anyway, and I was strangely loyal to it. I didn’t want to go to another version of it where something might be different and risk losing anything. Waiting was better than that.

“So,” I said, shaking my head and bringing myself back to my normal spy world. “Run me through the plan again. I want to make sure I’ve not forgotten anything.”

A grin stretched over Katie’s face, and Abbie whirled around. She rushed towards me, her eyes alight with excitement, as Katie sat up and swung her legs off the bed. I did the same, facing Katie and leaning towards her as Abbie dropped onto the bed next to me. She huddled close, leaning forwards so we could whisper.

“Okay, so we wait until Rodgers has done his rounds,” Abbie started. “Then, I’ll open the door just a little. Just enough so that we can listen out for the others. We’ll wait until they’ve gone first, so if it is a trap or something, we know, and we don’t get in trouble.”

“Great,” I said, my stomach tightening at the thought of getting in trouble, but Abbie continued reciting the plan as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Then, we sneak out and go to the kitchens. They should be unlocked, but if they’re not, then we know Rodgers was lying, and we come back up here because he could be lying about the other stuff too.”

“I don’t think he was,” Katie said thoughtfully. “I mean, I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t see why he would be. And… there’s not actually a rule against it, is there?”

Confusion came over Abbie’s face as she looked at Katie.

“What do you mean?”

“Like… there’s no rule that says we need to go to bed at ten, is there?” Katie asked.

I felt my eyebrows pull together as I considered her question.

“I don’t think so,” I said slowly.

There wasn’t. We’d never actually been told that we had to go to bed at ten; that was just when they wanted us to turn the lights out. No one usually came around and enforced it, though. We’d just been going to sleep at that time because we were exhausted, not because we had to.

But no one had even told us we weren’t allowed to leave our rooms after then. The only thing we’d been told was that some rooms would be locked and that we weren’t to go into them without a teacher being present, but that was usually for good reason. The shooting range was one of those rooms. The greenhouse, too. It was for safety, so we couldn’t get hurt. Nothing else had been mentioned, though, so maybe it wasn’t a problem at all.

“I don’t think so either,” Abbie agreed softly. “There’s nothing in the folders about it either. It just mentions lights out and that we’re expected to go to sleep at that time to ensure we have an adequate amount of sleep.”

“But that doesn’t mean we have to. Just that we should,” Katie pointed out.

“I guess not,” Abbie said, but she still looked nervous.

“So I’m sure we’ll be able to get into the kitchen without any trouble,” Katie said confidently. “And then we’ll get a bunch of snacks, and Scott and Seth will meet us there. Or, I guess they’ll meet us in the dojo if we’re done before they get there.”

I opened my mouth to ask why we were meeting in the dojo and not the pool before a memory hit me. We’d debated it earlier, after Rodgers had left the room. I wanted us to go swimming. An after-hours pool party with no teachers would have been so fun, and not just because I would be able to see a certain person in their swimming trunks again. I mean, that thought had barely even crossed my mind, and it didn’t really matter, anyway. I’d seen Seth in them before. We had swimming class together. I just thought it would be fun.

Katie suggested the dojo before I could, and Seth agreed quickly. I had to fight to keep the disappointed pout from my face, but they had a good point. We couldn’t exactly eat snacks whilst swimming, and we’d be able to talk more in the dojo. That would be nice.

I felt like we’d barely had a chance to just do nothing and chat since we’d gotten to the Academy. We had weekends, of course, but they were usually filled with exercising as much as I could without being told to take it easy by the tutors who wandered around and catching up on learning. There were too many things to do and focus on, and the tutors were always mentioning something new that I felt the need to immediately start studying.

Actually, I thought, pulling out of the fantasy a little. Someone had mentioned something in class that morning that I’d wanted to make a note of. Something that I could do in the other world, my normal world, to prepare for when we covered it in class. I wracked my brain for a moment before it hit me. Programming. It had been mentioned by Mr Schooler. He’d said we’d start working on it after we all had received our specialisms.

I needed to go to the library in the fantasy and do some research in reality. Programming sounded impossible to me. It always had. I wasn’t sure what it was about it, maybe just the endless rows of numbers and seemingly meaningless words, but it made my brain hurt even to just think about it. That was a problem. It was probably a really useful skill, especially if I did end up not being a field operative.

It seemed like something that the behind the scenes people probably had to do a lot, and that made me immediately grimace. Perhaps fieldwork would be a better fit. But… actually, maybe I’d still need to learn how to programme. I knew very little about actual fieldwork, but I was pretty sure that spies in movies normally did some kind of programming or coding.

I needed to learn, I realised, suppressing a resigned sigh. It was probably one of those skills that was really useful, like sewing. That was another one that one of the tutors had mentioned how important that was, and it made me wince. We’d learnt how to sew in school, and I wasn’t good at it. I’d made a lopsided and unevenly stuffed pillow that my mom had suggested we bin the moment I’d brought it home. Dad had been scandalised, of course.

It had sparked an argument, and I’d hid in my room to avoid it, but the next morning, my dad sent me a picture of the ugly pillow on his office chair. He said he’d been meaning to replace his lumbar support cushion for ages and that it was perfect for that. He’d gone so far as to tell me that it made him smile every time he saw it. It might, but I was pretty sure it was causing permanent damage to his back, which couldn’t be worth it.

But now I needed to learn how to sew properly. Rory, the first aid teacher and nurse, had said it was important. Everyone, not just field agents, had to learn how to deal with basic wounds, and that included being able to suture them if needed. It prevented scars, or made them less noticeable, and that was important too. Everyone had scars, but too many could force an agent into retirement. They made a person too noticeable. Too identifiable to the wrong people.

I wasn’t sure who exactly the wrong people were, but my mind flashed back to the people who’d hunted Mitch. The Sterlings. I wouldn’t want them to be able to easily identify me. That felt dangerous. If I had an obvious or notable scar, I’d need to cover it any time I did anything. If they could access security camera feeds, which was likely based on what we’d been taught, they could find me anywhere.

But that didn’t matter. Not for the world I was in. The Sterlings probably weren’t there; they were in Mitch’s world. But… that didn’t mean that they couldn’t exist in any other world. In fact, they probably did. As far as I was aware, most of the things in Mitch’s world were the same as my normal world, and the same was true with the spy world. That meant that the Sterlings probably existed in all three.

A shudder ripped through me, but I tried to ignore it. It didn’t mean anything. The company could exist in all of the worlds, but they only knew me in Mitch’s. I was safe. As long as I stayed out of that world, they couldn’t hurt me.

“Um… what are we going to do once we get to the dojo?” Abbie asked nervously.

I blinked, glancing around. I hadn’t been paying any attention to the conversation, but now I focused on her. She was picking at the skin around her nails, and her expression was tight with worry.

“I guess we’ll just hang out and chat,” Katie said uncertainly, glancing at me.

I wasn’t sure what else to say, though. I could see that Abbie wasn’t particularly reassured by Katie’s words, but I didn’t know how to make it better.

“That sounds nice,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

“It will be!”

There was a beat of silence, broken only by the faint sound of Abbie picking at her nails.

“So… did you throw many parties?” I asked Katie. “Before you came here, I mean.”

It was the first question that came into my head, but I saw Abbie look at Katie out of the corner of my eye.

“Mmm, not really,” Katie replied. “I didn’t really like being at home. Things weren’t too good there, so I mostly just went to parties. Actually… I don’t think I’ve ever thrown one. What about you?”

I hesitated, unsure how to answer her. I didn’t throw parties or really enjoy going to them too much in real life, but I wasn’t sure whether I did in that world. I had a few foggy memories of house parties, but they were strangely hard to recall. They felt too distant, inaccessible.

“Not really. I mean, I didn’t really throw them either, but I went to some,” I said finally.

Katie smiled at me, and we both glanced at Abbie. I felt rude for not asking her about it, but she’d said earlier that she hadn’t been to a party in years. There was clearly a reason or something that stopped her from going, but I didn’t want her to feel like she had to tell us if she didn’t want to.

Abbie wasn’t even looking at us. At first, I thought she was staring into space, but her posture was wrong. She was sitting too upright, her eyes fixed on the door. My eyes darted towards it.

“What is it?” I asked softly, anxiety starting to build within me.

“I think I can hear footsteps,” she said after a pause.

Katie leant back, her gaze snapping to the door, and I strained my ears to try to pick up whatever Abbie was hearing. For a moment, I couldn’t hear anything, but then I caught it. There was a step followed by a pause, a slight brushing noise and another step. One stride was heavier than the other, and the rhythm was unsteady.

“It’s Rodgers,” I said with certainty.

He was still in a knee brace. It had to be him.

Katie’s eyes darted between Abbie and me.

“I can’t hear him. You two have good ears,” she said, her posture relaxing slightly.

I smiled but didn’t respond. I was too busy focusing on the footsteps again. They were slowly moving closer, causing excitement and nervousness to battle within me, but I still didn’t move. A faint knock sounded, and my eyes widened. It wasn’t our door, but I hadn’t expected him to knock on anyone’s.

I stared at the others, my mind working fast. Rodgers had been the one to suggest a party, even if he hadn’t outwardly said it. Did that mean we were meant to play along and pretend we were just going to go to bed and not celebrate? If so, we needed to do something. We were still in our normal uniform rather than pyjamas, and it was almost time for lights out. We had to act fast.

“What do we do?” Abbie asked, her voice high-pitched and worried.

“Go into the bathroom,” I said quickly, guessing that she’d struggle to lie to a teacher. I would too, but I could manage. “Turn the shower on, and we’ll pretend you’re in there. Katie and I will get our pyjamas and make it seem like we’re getting ready for bed.”

She hesitated for a moment before nodding and darting away from us as Katie and I rushed to grab our clothes. I paused, listening again, but it was hard to hear anything over the shower. I didn’t even hear Rodgers approaching before there was a knock at the door.

Katie looked at me, panic crossing her face. I dropped my pyjamas onto my bed, trying to work out how to make it appear like I was about to get changed. I was putting too much thought into it, focusing on something that didn’t matter.

“Who is it?” she called out.

“Rodgers,” came the reply. “Can I come in?”

“Yes!”

There was a slight pause before the door swung open, and Rodgers smiled at us.

“Sorry for the intrusion. I’m just doing my rounds and was asked to check in and make sure that everyone is okay,” he explained with a slight wince.

“Don’t worry,” I said, my voice coming out smoothly. “We’re all good in here. Just getting ready for bed.”

“Mmm, I’m exhausted,” Katie added with a realistic yawn.

Rodgers smirked, amusement flitting across his face.

“Great. I assume Abbie’s in the bathroom?” he asked.

I forced myself to look confused.

“Yeah, where else would she be?” I questioned innocently.

Rodgers shook his head, clearly trying to hide the laugh that was making his lips twitch.

“I have no clue,” he said. “Well, I should be off. I have my rounds to finish. Sleep well.”

“You too,” Katie and I chorused at the same time.