“Oh, it is, Rose,” Anand replied. “That’s one of the best episodes. ‘Let’s Kill Hitler.’ They get there. They crash-land in Berlin in 1938. But the TARDIS is highjacked. Its chameleon circuit has broken down. They came to kill Hitler but accidentally save him instead. . . .”

“Okay . . . okay . . .” She put up her hand to stop the yammering. The plot was getting too confusing. “So basically Myles is going as this time machine thing—the TARDIS—and what are you two going as?”

“We haven’t quite decided,” Joe said.

“We can go as the Doctor’s companions.”

“I might go as K9,” Anand said.

“Who?” Rose asked.

“A robot dog. Get it, K9 as in canine? But you can really go as anything. I mean, it’s a time machine. One episode is about Cleopatra.”

“And one is about Queen Elizabeth. You know, the old one. The first one.”

“What?” Rose’s eyes opened wide.

“Yeah, really. As I said, you can go as almost anything. I mean, it’s the TARDIS—a time machine,” Myles said.

“Susan, who are you going to be?” Rose asked.

“Another Susan. Susan Foreman, also known as the Unearthly Child. She’s the doctor’s granddaughter.” Unearthly, Rose thought. Wasn’t that exactly the word that had come to Rose when she first saw Susan?

Susan continued. “She’s this kind of weird schoolgirl. But her grandfather is the doctor and they live in a junkyard. I kind of thought the black lace could work sort of . . .”

“Oh yes, junkyards can have fantastic stuff. Just like landfills! Terrific source for shoes!” Rose was getting excited.

“Two days,” Anand said. “That’s plenty of time for painting this box blue to look like a London police box. No problem.”

What would they do if I ever told them about my time travels? she wondered. Enter her in the science fair?

Rose’s mind was racing as she walked the ten blocks from Myles’s house to her grandmother’s. She had a piece of brocade fabric that she had planned to make a cape from. But there might be enough for a dress. And of course she would need to make a ruff too. Between her second visit to Hatfield and the time her sewing machine arrived, Rose had ordered two books from Amazon on Elizabethan costumes. One had even come with several patterns. She had made the sketch of the blue dress, the one with the tiny ruby-red beads that Elizabeth had been wearing when they first met. But she wanted something grander for Halloween. Something that said Queen with a capital Q! If she was taking a virtual trip in a virtual time machine, she might as well be a queen with virtual power. Oh, how she wished she had just picked up one of those discarded ruffs that Sara had shown her when they were in the princess’s closet.