Percy was avoiding fact and fiction with equally definite prejudice. He had copied from another boy, and come top of the class. He faced a losing battle. If he worked his hardest, he would avoid trouble, but receive no mention of Miss Winters' apparent counterpart Jenny.
Percy had no problems with the double period of recess between recess and lunch. At lunch time, Percy decided to put his suspicions to the test.
"All I need to do is to climb into the teachers' room while the teachers are out supervising the playground. Then I can look for some way of checking to see if Miss Winters is called Jenny."
Percy stole around behind the school building and located the teachers' room. The room was empty and the window was open.
"Hooray for summer," thought Percy as he climbed through the open window. He found Miss Winters' pigeon hole, and then her books. All he could see in the inside covers of her books was the same unintelligible group of letters, which his mind could not read in the dream.
"Another failure," thought Percy. It had been merely enough to whet his appetite, without giving him any certainties. He still had to find another way to determine whether or not the J definitely stood for Jenny.
"And what do you think you're doing?"
It was the voice of Miss Winters.
Percy rapidly turned away from her books, and composed a lie.
"Well I was playing hide and seek, Miss Winters, and I was really sure that nobody would think to look for me in here."
"Hide and seek! What nonsense! You were going to steal my books, weren't you? Why don't you eat your lunch at lunchtime, like everyone else does?"
"I was going to eat it."
"When? Where is your lunch now?"
"In my schoolbag in the classroom."
"Well fetch it at once and bring it back here. It's a good thing I remembered to come back for my tuckshop money, or I would never have caught you in here."
Percy soon returned with his lunch.
"Now Percy, I have to buy my lunch, but from now on I won't bother. Since you're too busy hiding in teachers' rooms to eat your lunch, you're going to secretly give it to me, as well as your recess food every day. If you don't bring me all of it every day, I'll tell the rest of the school that I caught you trying to steal things in here, and then you will be expelled from the school."
He could only sit and watch her gobble down his lunch, knowing that he would now have to surrender all of his food to her on a daily basis in order to escape being punished for a nonesuch theft, when he had actually been attempting to conceal a minor act of espionage.
As she finished off his sandwiches, Percy had an idea. If he could see her wearing her hair in a ponytail, he would know a little more about the similarities between Miss Winters and Jenny Winters.
"Miss Winters, could you do something to help me? I could bring you extra food if you do. I was writing a poem called 'Going to the Barber's' for a hobby at home. I found a word that rhymes well with ponytail, but I don't know what a ponytail looks like, because I have never seen anybody wear their hair that way. Could you hold your hair in a ponytail with your hand, just for a minute?"
"Percy Dale, I'm not about to do a favour for a boy who won't stop breaking the school rules. Now you go out into the playground and don't forget to bring me your lunch, and your recess food too, every day; and if I catch you eating anything yourself in this school, I'll have you expelled for coming in here."
* * * *
"Alright, we've got two periods left. I can't give you any more maths or social studies work until you've got your books, so I think you had better all write a composition in this period, and I'll mark them next period while you go and get the new books."
Percy decided that he was too shy a boy to confront Miss Winters with the truth.
"I've had two chances alone with her today and I couldn't do it. I'll use this composition to tell her about Jenny and myself, only I'll disguise it a bit," thought Percy. He began to write (not in words, but in his mind):
There was once a girl called Jean Wilkie who lived in
a nice house. One day she met a boy called Presley,
who invited her over to his house to play chasings and
hidings. One day they couldn't see each other anymore.
So Presley missed her, but when he thought he
recognised her somewhere else one day, she couldn't
remember him.
He bought her some lunch, but she still didn't
remember him. He knew that he had to solve the
mystery. So he tried all sorts of ideas, but they only
got him into trouble. Eventually, he felt so sad that he
just sat down and wished that Jean Wilkie would
remember him. He wasn't even sure that it was Jean
Wilkie, but he was pretty close to sure. She seemed the
same, and also different. He decided that it would have
to stay a mystery, until she proved who she really was.
THE END.
* * * *
"Well I did some marking while you were all getting your books. I don't know where some of you get your ideas from, but they're all very well written, for sixth class boys anyway. You can all go home now, and remember to look at your timetables each day and get out the correct books to start first period."
Percy absorbed the fact that his composition had failed to invoke a reaction from Miss Winters.
"She caught me when I stole into the teachers' room at lunchtime," thought Percy, "but I'm sure I know her. I don't know how old she is now, and I don't know how she got that way in less than a month, but I am going to find out. She won't catch me creeping into her house, until it is too late."
"But how can you find her house?" said the silent mentally questioning voice which represented the cynical side of his young mind.
"That will be so easy," thought Percy, "because I will just let her show me the way."
He used his chemistry set to invent a shrinking formula, took it and reduced his size unnoticed in the empty teachers’ room, and then hid himself inside Miss Winters’ handbag. He would now be taken to her home by Miss Winters herself.
Now Miss Winters could not drive, and this would be the logical inability of a person who would be the age of young Jennifer Winters. Instead, she walked to a house located in Wollstonecraft, two small suburbs away. He was finally doing something for a lengthy period of time, and managing to avoid being caught in the act. Everything he had attempted had resulted in his own humiliation. He was finally able to outwit the lady who bore the surname and initial of his friend Jennifer Winters.
He waited until he heard her entering the house and putting down the handbag, and leaving the room. Then he crept out of the bag and heard her on the telephone. He found himself listening to an unhappy mixture of tears and words. It had been intended for the recipient of her telephone call, but its volume had no trouble penetrating a closed window. It reached the ears of Percy Dale in time to inform him that Miss Winters was speaking to-
"Laura, it's been an awful day. You're the only one who knows all of this. I couldn't believe myself at school, but it was the only thing I could think of to do."
"Laura," remembered Percy, "the name of Jennifer Winters' eleven year old cousin."
"Laura, how can I give the boy good or bad marks for a composition like that?"
"Yeah, figures," thought Percy.
"Laura, it's too much to cope with right now. I'm going to lie out the back on the hammock and sleep until whenever. If I had the energy, I'd prepare myself some dinner, and with daylight saving going on, I could eat out in the garden, but all I want to do now is sleep."
Percy waited for her to say goodbye, after which she put down the receiver and was soon settled in the hammock.
"Well that's good," thought Percy, "She left me an open back door."
With Miss Winters asleep in the hammock, Percy was able to walk through the back door, discarding his need to use the side boundary bushes for cover. He made his way towards the sleeping woman, enjoying the realisation of his giantess fantasy.
We do not know if, and if so what type of dreams were being encountered by Miss Winters. However, we know that she awoke to see a tiny boy standing beside the hammock.
"Percy! How did you find me and get here so small?"
He explained.
Miss Winters had broken her pattern of belittling his every word and action.
"Miss Winters, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, I guess."
"And you'll answer truthfully?"
"I'll try... if I think it's something you have a right to know about."
"And you won't punish me again?"
"Of course not."
"Then who are you really?"
"I'm Jennifer Winters, formerly of Burns Road Wahroonga," said Miss Winters.
"Jenny, you are Jenny! I've always suspected it, but how did you become a teacher, a lady over twice my young age? Why did you pretend not to know me, and be so unfriendly to me at school?"
"I wanted to tell you when I caught you, looking for what J stood for, I suppose. Then I wanted to show you a ponytail like this."
She held her hair up in a ponytail. She looked just like the Jenny that Percy knew well.
"So why not?"
"Because I'm older now. I was afraid you wouldn't understand, that you wouldn't want to be my handsome young boyfriend any more. I'm an adult, Percy, and you're a handsome young boy. We used to be neighbours of neighbouring ages. I was hoping to frighten you away to a new school, so we'd never see each other, until I could work out how to fix myself. I could only get a job at Waverton Boys Preparatory School, because they happened to have a job that didn't need experience. How can I have experience and prove it, when I was twelve only a month ago? Now I must be twenty-four. Oh Percy, you just wouldn't understand."
"Tell me, and of course I'll understand. I recognised you, didn't I? That was before you wanted me to find out."
"I just woke up the day after you left your grandmother's house, and I was a grown adult. I told Laura about it on the telephone, and then felt a strange urge to come here, where I found an empty house with a key in the door lock. I found furniture, but no people in the house. I knew I could stay here, and that's why I knew that I had to take the job offer from your school. They both came to me in the same area, the house and the job."
"Maybe it happened so that we could be together. It's actually easier for us now than it was when you were a twelve year old girl living in Wahroonga and going to a girls school."
"I don't know how I changed, but I'm sure Laura would love to be a girlfriend of yours if
you-"
"I don't want to be Laura's boyfriend."
"But she'd be your own age."
"I love you Jenny. I'm young and I don't understand love the way some people do, but if you really still love me, then we could be special friends at school."
"But look at your size, and I thought I’d changed! Percy, I’ve just had an amazing idea! You look so nice and small that I can eat you for my dinner!”
It was in that moment that the young boy understood why he had been dreaming about being shrunken and chased by giant ladies and girls for years. The focus had always been on the smiles and laughter of their mouths. He had subconsciously wanted to be shrunken, chased and EATEN by a beautiful woman. And this Jenny wanted to do it.
"Well it's more useful than an apple for the teacher," said Percy.
Jenny giggled adorably.
“No, really, I mean it, Percy. You’ll go down whole in a few gulps!”
"Oh Jenny, this is what I hoped for all the time."
"Even though you seemed to know I was older?"
"And you must stop worrying about that. The problem wasn't that you were older. The thing that upset me was the way you made the worst of everything at school. I've seen movies about boys falling in love with their teachers, but this time the teacher and the boy were both already in love, and I’d love you to eat me."
"And in love in the strangest of circumstances," said Jenny, "I guess it would be silly for a lady my age to be in love with a ten year old boy, but I remember you and the way I felt about you last month, when I was only twelve. We mustn't let anyone find out about us. I shall swallow you down this very night."
"Nobody will, Jenny," said Percy, "Oh do I still have to call you Miss Winters?"
"No."
"I nearly called you Jenny today at first."
"Well don't worry. You fooling me today was the hard part, and you've already proved you can do that. The two of us together fooling everybody else will be easy."
"So long as I don't have to read out my compositions to the class."
"Well you won't have to read today's little effort, which was not bad by the way," said Miss Winters.
"Thanks Miss... Jenny."
Then he was amazed as Jenny lifted him up and began moving him towards her mouth.
* * * *
The real world Percy Dale awoke.
"She... it all seemed like it really happened," he thought, "She had a strange feeling telling her to go to live in Wollstonecraft. Maybe if I have a look around the streets of Wollstonecraft after school, I can at least find a young Jenny, which would be everything to me right now. I can be as devoted to my search as I was in the dream. Maybe I’ll at least find someone who wants to shrink me and eat me. I thought it was possible at last, but it was a dream. Now I know I don’t just want to be tiny. I want to be eaten.”
* * * *
Percy did manage to locate a house in Wollstonecraft. He had never seen the house before. He had never even entered the street wherein the house was located, prior to this Thursday afternoon, the day after his dream. He did not dare to approach or enter the property, but it looked extremely similar - in fact unmistakably similar - to the house in the dream. He waited until he saw a family drive in and step out of their car. None of them bore any resemblance to either Jenny aged 12 or the Miss Winters of his dream. Detouring home through Wollstonecraft would still see him at a station covered by his student's free rail pass, but a trip to Wahroonga would not be possible. He would not be able to see Jenny again.
"All I can do is call it an incredible coincidence," he thought, "and I might as well head home to Killara."
His teacher had been Mr Jackson that year, and he was still unable to perform well in social studies. Perhaps he would never meet Jennifer Winters again. How she would giggle at the dream if her met her and told it to her!
In reality, time is a confusing dimension of life. In a dream, time is impossible to account for, because a dream allows time to break its own rules, and to demolish its own barriers. There are as many numbers between zero and one as there are between one and infinity, and there is as much likelihood of Percy recapturing his dream about Miss Winters as there was of that Miss Winters recapturing her mysteriously vanished youth.
Consider the following facts:
(1) It is impossible to make - in the sense of command and force - a dream to come true
in the future.
(2) It is equally impossible to hold onto a past reality in the future. It can be copied and
repeated, but the original experience cannot be maintained.
Thus there may be no resulting implications from a decision about whether an event was a reality or a dream. If neither can be seized, captured, manipulated, stored and withheld; then is there any internal value in asserting the status of the event?
The author does not seek to answer these questions, but rather to present them as an answer to the apparent void left in the mind of a person who is unable to differentiate between his dreams and his realities.
A dream is also a means of satisfying the callers of both heads and tails, with merely one toss of a coin. The mind can rest, free of controlled thinking, and yet it is subject to the extraordinary level of erratic thought, which is able to equip the brain of the sleeper with a mental experience of certain facts that are not true facts. A dream enables a sleeping mind to traverse the boundaries of reality and exceed the constraints of physics, biology, geography and history. A dream can redefine these studies, as new concepts.