Rachel looked at the kids around her more carefully. It dawned on her that Brian was right. The nose-picking guy was in her chemistry class. The upside-down girl had been one of the popular girls in high school. In fact she knew pretty much all of these kids. Brian was right too, they were the only two here who weren’t acting like dumb little brats.
“I dunno Brian, it’s pretty weird isn’t it,” she agreed.
“More than weird Rach. I think it means all of this has something to do with us.”
Before she could comment further a loud bell rang and children began to hop off play equipment, climb out of sandpits and hurry over towards the front doors of the building. “We better go too,” Brian suggested, standing up and brushing the wood-chips off.
Rachel nodded and followed him towards the growing lines of kids. It seemed they lined up by grade. In a normal school it would have been easy to tell sixth graders from kindergarteners by height. Here though they had to judge by clothing and behaviour as pretty much everyone was in their twenties. They headed for the line of kids in overalls and skirts squirming about unable to stand still. They had just fallen in at the end of the line when another girl with a familiar face bumped right into them.
Megan looked cuter and more immature than ever with her hair tied in pig-tails with pretty pink bows. She wore a frilly purple short-sleeve shirt under hot-pink shortalls with a pair of purple Dora the Explorer sandals completing the outfit. For a moment Brian and Rachel were each certain that Megan would soon give them a silly grin and start picking her nose or doing something else childish. She just really looked like an overgrown five-year old. But as soon as she recognised them Megan yelled, “Oh my God I’m glad to see you guys!”
“Megan, you’ve got your mind!” Rachel blurted out, perhaps sounding a tad too shocked.
Megan frowned at her. “Of course I do, why is that so surprising?”
“Well look around you!” Rachel declared, trying to cover up her faux-pas.
“Oh, right,” Megan agreed.
Brian nodded at her sadly. He had never seen Megan look so uncomfortable and unhappy. She was always the cheerful party girl of the group but this change seemed to have hit her pretty hard. “You doing okay Meg?” he asked with concern.
She nodded feebly. “Everyone has been treating me like a little kid all morning, but I guess we’re actually pretty lucky. My little sister, Sue, has it so much worse.”
“How do you mean? Is she like a toddler?” Rachel asked.
Megan shook her head. “Worse. She’s like an infant, a big overgrown baby. And she’s not like us guys, she hasn’t got a fucking clue. She’s fifteen years old, but she looks happy as could be creeping around the house in nothing but a big droopy, stinky diaper chewing at her hair and drooling all over herself.”