Standing upright, she sees very unfamiliar buildings, visible at the edge of a relatively large park. There are children her age, climbing and playing in the trees, mostly dressed in relatively short light blue skirts worn with leggings, with a few adults looking over them.

Oh, she thinks.

Thoughts jumble in her mind — this kind of thing doesn't happen to her, what if she's swapped places with some girl from whatever school this is, what if this is how getting an invitation to a magic school works — before realizing something very important:

If all the girls over there are wearing pretty much the same skirts, clearly she has ended up at a private all-girls school. And they're not exactly going to let her in just because she showed up, because she doesn't have a uniform, or know her way around England, or anything.

She takes a deep breath.

Maybe they'll still be willing to point her at the American embassy. She knows how embassies work from reading the Mrs. Pollifax books (well, some of them), which she always liked because Mrs. Pollifax shared her name.

She marches across the park.

Looking a bit closer, she can see that it's both girls and boys wearing the clothes. She also sees some of them play a very intense game of tag on a playground full of obstructions, or simulating a battle with foam swords or foam darts, running around deftly and taking cover as they advance. A few of the kids are practicing firing on targets, and there's even a pair of teenagers fencing just like they do at the Olympics. One of the teachers takes a look at Emily. "Hi there, young miss! Were you just playing in the forest?"

... do boys wear skirts at private schools too? That's kinda cool. And it explains why the books don't really talk about boys' uniforms very much, if they're the same as girls' uniforms.

"I was reading," she explains. "But when I started reading I was in Vermont, and now I don't know where I am because I don't recognize anything."

She hesitates for a moment, before deciding that this is probably an urgent enough situation to call.

"Could you call my parent, please?"

"Parent? That means your home-parent, right? Which one of them?"

She's not sure what distinguishes a home-parent, exactly, but she does live with them, so it probably counts?

"I've only got one," she tells the teacher. "Their phone number is ..." and she rattles off a 10-digit American cellphone number.

"Oh, I think I get it! But... don't you use any of the other characters? It'd be really strange for a phone number to use just the lower ones." She dials it anyway. "Typing your number in, it doesn't connect me to anyone?"

Emily blinks.

She vaguely remembers something about there being "international numbers". Maybe if this is England you have to dial things differently?

"Maybe it's a countries thing?" she ventures. "I'm from the United States. What country are we in now?"

"Well, the country would have to be Daybrook, but I'm not sure why you'd ask that? You're on the territory of Alexandria's Creche, and the city's territory extends a fair distance from here. What's the point of asking which country you're in?"

She's never heard of Daybrook. It doesn't sound like a very country-ish name.

But geography is also not her strong suit — they're doing local geography in class this year, international is supposed to be next year — and there's tons of countries.

"I thought phones only worked in a country," she explains. "Or, they worked between them, but you had to dial them differently."

It's starting to sink in that contacting her Parent is not going to be easy. She blinks quickly to hold back tears, because she doesn't want to cry and make a bad impression on the possibly-magic-school teacher.

"Could you," her voice hitches. "Could you put me through to the American embassy, instead? They can probably ..."

Well, they can probably take her away from the only interesting thing that has happened to her outside of a book all year.

"Well, that's what you're supposed to do, in a foreign country, anyway," she mumbles, voice quiet.

"...there isn't an American embassy. I don't know how you know what America is, but it isn't anything that's here. Do you want me to hug you? You must be so scared, showing up here, where you don't know anyone. But you shouldn't be scared, because there isn't anything dangerous here."

Does she want a hug? She usually likes hugs, but she usually gets them from her parent. And she normally doesn't like teachers. But this one actually asked, instead of just prescribing how things were going to be.

"Yes," she agrees.

The teacher takes some very slow and deliberate steps towards Emily, before kneeling down and embracing her, gently and warmly. "I'll be here for as long as you need."

This isn't how anything is supposed to work. She's supposed to wake up in the other world, and be able to take charge and become a hero. Or, really, she's never supposed to end up in another world at all, except through books, because that's fictional. And she doesn't know what's happening, and she doesn't know what to do.

She starts crying into the teacher's shirt.

The teacher just ignores Emily's tears, as she keeps the hug going. She squeezes Emily ever so slightly more. "You'll be happy here, I promise."

Emily shakes her head. The teacher can't promise that. She knows that — she's read the Lioness quartet. Making yourself responsible for other people's feelings doesn't work.

But teachers making promises and not following through is nothing new.

After a few moments, she manages to collect herself. She wipes the tears out of her eyes with the heel of the hand that isn't holding her book.

"If we can't ..." she trails off. "What's next? Do I have to wear a skirt?"

"I think that's your choice, about whether you wear a skirt or not. The kids here think it's fun, and it lets everyone know they're from the school, but they don't have to. I think that what's next is signing you up for the basic income. If you follow me, I'll take you to the station, where they'll sign you up. And you can get a few minutes to think about what you'll do after that."

She thinks about the variety of places people in books have ended up. She doesn't know whether this is a mysterious castle situation or a Discipline Cottage situation or a wandering-the-world situation. Probably not that last one, if there are a lot of children gathered here.

"I think I need to know more, to know what I want to do," she says. "What's a creche?"

"It's an old-timey name for a place where all the children live together that's built with their needs in mind. It means tons of playgrounds, streets that are safer for playing on, lots of fun things to do, and places that are child-sized and good for learning." After making sure that Emily is fine with ending the hug, the teacher begins walking towards a subway entrance that blends in well with the rest of the city.

Emily is vaguely dubious of things that are designed for children.

"... and do all the children live in a creche? Or do some of them live elsewhere?" she asks, following the teacher. "... is there a library?"

"No, not all the children, a lot just live with their bioparents in a non-creche. But there aren't as many children around, and it isn't as fun for many children. Yes, there is a library! There are actually multiple, not just the big main library for the politicians and the inventors." She starts on the steps down into the station; it is incredibly close to the surface. A short train arrives just a few seconds after she's made her way down; the seats are made out of soft mesh, almost like a hammock, instead of hard plastic.

She's not sure how to feel about that answer. On the one hand: multiple libraries. On the other hand, it seems like she might still be limited to the creche if they can't contact her parent. Which ... maybe it will happen, but she can't exactly plan on it.

What she wants to ask is 'so what level of autonomy am I going to have, here, exactly', but that sounds like the kind of question that she can't figure out how to ask without making people think she's going to cause trouble.

She sits in the seat and squirms to get comfortable, book held on her lap.

"What are the ... requirements for classes and stuff like that?" she asks instead. If she knows what's expected, then she either knows what she will have to do, or at least what she'll have to silently tolerate while trying to contact the resistance. The train looks all futuristic, so that probably means there's a resistance. Unless it's like Ministry of Disturbance ...

"Well, you have to prove that you're literate, numerate, and can understand statistics, but it's very rare for anyone over 6 or 7 years old to not pass those tests? After that, it's up to you if you want more classes." The train takes maybe 10 minutes before reaching their destination, only a few blocks away from a rather inviting-looking police station. It's built as the first level of a skyscraper; this city seems to have either skyscrapers or parks *everywhere*, with nothing inbetween.

... huh.

"Well, I'm definitely literate and numerate," she replies. "I don't think the school where I came from teaches statistics until you're in ... sixth grade? Unless you just mean, like, probabilities and fractions."

But if you only have to learn a few things, one class a day doesn't sound too bad. Not unless they have really long classes here.

She looks out at the skyscrapers, thinking furiously. None of this matches anything that she was expecting — not that she was really expecting this at all. But they have school uniforms, except they aren't mandatory, and you don't have to go to school. And they have skyscrapers, but she doesn't see any flying cars.

"... do you split the country up into districts, and make a boy and a girl from each district fight to the death every year to determine food allocations?" she asks. "Or anything along those lines," she adds, because she hasn't actually read that many books in that genre. She didn't really think it was that interesting, other than when Katniss was strategizing for the games.

"Well, maybe you'd need to learn statistics, too? But I think that learning it once you're literate and numerate should be easier than getting to numeracy from scratch." 

"No, no, not at all! We're very particular about food security, actually. We have a system where we try to have the food paid for as far in advance as possible, and people can volunteer to have a stash of food in their house so we can be extra-safe. But nobody's really worried, so it's a really rare thing. You can start volunteering for that if it makes you feel safer... I don't know what you could mean by 'anything along those lines', can you give me some examples?"

Entering the police station, there are a few people signing contracts, and a man sitting bored behind a counter.

"This girl needs to sign up for the basic income, could you get the process started?"