“Okay, blue hair, off the ice now!” someone else shouted.

Then a voice thundered over a loudspeaker. “Reckless skating will not be tolerated!”

“Susan, are you all right?” Joe said as they disentangled their skates.

“Anybody hurt here?” a man said as he skated up.

“I think we’re okay, Coach.”

“Oh, definitely okay.” Susan made a pathetic little okay gesture, but her voice was shaking horribly. Rose skated up to her.

“Are you sure, Susan? And, Joe, are you okay?”

“Yeah, that was just so stupid. Stupid Carrie,” Joe hissed.

“It’s all right, Joe, don’t blame Carrie.”

“Don’t blame Carrie?!” Joe and Rose both said at once.

“Oh, I don’t know. Might have been my fault. I told you I don’t skate that well.”

Rose looked at Susan. She wasn’t okay. Nothing was broken, most likely just bruised. But she was simply mortified. Her moment of sheer happiness had been wrecked. It was as if something within her had been vandalized.

“I should have just gone and got the dress from Elsie,” Susan moaned as they walked home.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rose said.

“But it was so embarrassing.”

“How can it be embarrassing for you? It is embarrassing for Carrie. She was banished from the rink. Sidelined, whatever you call it.”

“Time-out,” Susan mumbled.

Rose looked at her.

“Time-out. You know, for a foul play in sports,” Susan replied.

But the words had a deep resonance for Rose. She pictured the two princesses, Elizabeth and Mary, sitting on a bench—shamed after some fierce referee from 1544 in a waistcoat and a ruff shouted, “Foul play!!” and forced them off the ice. But royalty was probably shame-proof.

“Listen, I’m just not sure about going to this Halloween thing after all,” Susan said.

“What? No way! You’re going, Susan. Don’t be a wuss. You can’t let someone like Carrie direct your life.”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Don’t blow this up into something it shouldn’t be. Joe really likes you. I can tell. It’s not fair to Joe.”

Susan looked at her and blinked. “I guess you’re sort of right—about not being fair to Joe.”

“I’m completely right!” Rose said, and took Susan’s arm in hers.

Chapter 14

The TARDIS

“You see before you the inspiration for this year’s Halloween costumes—the box that my parents’ new refrigerator came in. Believe me, I rescued this in the nick of time, or the trash man would have taken it,” Kevin announced.

“On Friday?” Rose asked.

“Yep, yesterday,” Myles said.

“Wow!”

“What’s so wow about it?” Joe asked. All three boys and Susan were staring at her. It was because Friday was trash day, and she had almost lost her diary in the trash collection. But there was no other way of keeping track of her time in two centuries separated over a distance of almost five hundred years.