The rules

Lying there in her bed with the lights off, Mai's eyes were wide open. She twisted and turned but she just couldn't fall asleep no matter how hard she tried.

'Arghh that idiot!' Mai screamed internally, placing a pillow over her head to cover the grunts she made as she expressed her feelings. It was late and she didn't want to wake anyone up.

There were a lot of reasons why she couldn't sleep. One of them being the fact that tomorrow was the day the group had decided they would all go out together, and it was her chance to get closer to Chris. However, the main reason why she couldn't get to sleep was because she kept thinking about the words Simon had said to her before they had left school.

'Why did he have to say something stupid like that, did he really mean it?' She wondered.

Many people believe that the more time two people spend with each other, eventually their feelings would grow beyond friendship. There were even those that believed a friendship between a girl and boy just wasn't possible, but Mai felt like it was different with Simon.

Not once during the whole time they had known each other had she ever developed feelings like that for him. Sure, she thought he was cute, but he was always the jokey little cry baby Simon in her eyes.

'Of course he doesn't feel that way about me, he would have told me otherwise. He always has been upfront, and he already told me that he liked Shirley. If he really liked me he wouldn't say he liked the girl next to me. Unless he really was that much of an idiot.' Trying to put that thought aside, she tried to think about the real problem at hand.

She got up from her bed and went over to her desk to get out a piece of paper and a pencil. She knew until she had sorted out her thoughts, that she was never going to get some sleep. There was still the uncertainty of whether or not the other world was real, but it didn't stop her from thinking about it. In fact, it did the opposite.

She started to plot down what she had planned for both worlds.

In the 'real' world, she was going to meet people from school tomorrow, and hopefully things will go well and she and Chris will get along.

According to the other world, she and Chris were meant to be a couple a year later from the date when she had originally asked Chris out, and that's when she and Simon had stopped talking. Tomorrow she was meant to meet Simon to discuss what exactly happened back then, and she had a new question she wanted to ask. How did Chris actually die?

Trying to figure things out, she noticed even though it was night time when she would usually fall asleep and go to the other world, it seemed to be daytime in the other world yet the same date. So the future world seemed to be several hours ahead of the current world.

This meant even if she was able to travel to the new world tonight, it would be Friday morning and she still wouldn't be able to meet up with Simon to find out the answers to her burning questions.

If she could, she would have asked him about it before going on this date tomorrow.

'Wait, but if I know things, won't that ruin what was meant to happen? Maybe because I learned those things I will act differently and me and Chris will never be. Or wait, maybe the future me knew this already and because of these actions me and him ended up together, but does that mean I didn't stop Chris's death?'

This whole time travelling malarkey was confusing and she realised that she would have to try to figure out some rules if this whole thing was real in the first place.

Even before all of that, she needed to figure out one more thing - how to get to the other world. Although she had always needed to wake up in the other world due to sleeping, that didn't happen yesterday. Which meant there was another trigger to it all.

'Think Mai, when did you start having these weird dreams….it was on your birthday.'

Everything was linked back to when Mai had her birthday party. But why this birthday and not all the others? As she continued to scribble down notes scruffily, she noticed the green pendant around her neck.

'Could it be?' She thought.

It was one of the gifts she had been given by her grandmother for her birthday and she had never taken it off since then. Her birthday and the pendant were linked, so there was a good chance that this was a lead to help her discover the truth.

'If it really is the pendant, then how do I activate this thing?'

She held it in both of her hands and started to shake it like it were a pair of dice.

"Take me, take me to the future!" She shouted but nothing happened.

"I wish to see my love." She said, shaking it again.

She tried a few more similar phrases but soon she just found herself embarrassed as nothing seemed to work. The problem was that if she couldn't figure it out, then she would miss the future meeting she had had with Simon on the weekend. This would leave Mai not knowing what happened between them.

Having exhausted all of her attempts and with no more ideas, she decided to go to sleep again in the hopes that she would get to the other world.

The next day she held the green crystals in her hands, expecting for something to happen. Alas, it never did. The sun had risen and she didn't even have a regular dream, never mind the future dream. With the sun bright in the early sky and it being a weekend, it meant it was time for the weekend trip.

'Just great, I didn't get a wink of sleep. Best day of my life here I come.'