Gabriela Morillo Dal Piccol
A Victorian child stands in the crowd on the school's West Quad. The child fainted at the sight of students' fashion choices and the cacophonous noise.
In a lab procedure gone wrong, Mr. Rowe’s third period AP Physics C class accidentally constructs a time portal to the Victorian era. Clad in a frilly blue dress, large bonnet and button up boots, a small Victorian child steps out, the portal closing behind her. Can this nineteenth century British girl survive the trials and tribulations of TPHS, or will it be all too much for her fragile immune system and painfully limited worldview?
Modern Fashion
First she takes a look around the room at the students. Crop tops, jorts, pajama pants and, the most lethal of all, flip flops. Suddenly faint in the head, she falls backwards onto the floor, cushioned by the ruffles of her dress. You really can’t blame her– no Victorian child has ever laid eyes on this many pairs of revealed ankles and bare shoulders.
Mr. Aghassi
Venturing down the science hallway, the Victorian child stumbles into room 19, where Mr. Aghassi teaches physics. Between disco karaoke sessions during the warm up question time, the discord of students scrambling to finish group tests and the smell of freshly cooked ramen, this jolly corner of the B Building overstimulates her. When Mr. Aghassi goes on a tangent about Einstein’s theory of relativity, her brain is information overloaded, and she blacks out.
Pep rally
Swept along by the crowd, the little Victorian girl finds herself in the gym, jam packed into the freshman section of the seats. The blaring music reverberates through her bones. Charged with school spirit, the cheers of the crowd are deafening. She watches curiously as sports teams compete in relay races and students play a heated game of hungry hippos. The T-shirt cannon hits her square in the face with a TPHS shirt, sending her toppling into the mob of freshmen. She remains unconscious until the thunderous boom of Mr. Coppo’s “We are TP” chant startles her awake.
Lunch
After standing in the giant lunch mob under the intense Californian sun for far too long, she finally arrives in the eatery. She is immediately dumbfounded by the abundance of plastic packaging and unfamiliar foods. Orange flavored cranberries with 24 grams of sugar per serving? In a panic, she chooses the cheeseburger, but, after just one bite, the radiantly yellow, highly processed American cheese sends her into a coma.
The Gum Wall
Stuck haphazardly onto the walls near the vending machines at the 200s building is an array of chewed and dried up pieces of gum. Some are even shaped to spell out the letters of the alphabet. Confused as to what these strange multicolored globs are, the Victorian child pokes at one of the cleanest looking ones, but when she tries to remove her hand, it stretches into strings of sticky pink. This one should be gross enough to shock anyone into a stupor.
Student parking lot and e-bikes
The end-of-school-day bell rings, and students swarm out of campus. Born in an era where automobiles were just being invented, the Victorian girl stares in awe at the cars, admiring how sleek, shiny, high-tech and futuristic they look. By the time she notices she is standing in the middle of the parking lot, she is already trapped in the eye of the storm. Surrounded by a whirlwind of swerving cars, e-bikes whizzing by and unruly pedestrians, she dizzily collapses to the black top.
Football game
Arriving at the Ed Burke Field, she finds herself squeezed into the stands amongst a wild crowd. The rows of students shift and fall like dominoes, sending her tumbling to the ground. The blasting speakers, concessions and Freddy the Falcon contribute to her blackout, but it was really the American football itself that is unlike anything she had ever seen before. She doesn’t even make it to the half-time show.
After countless all nighters and chaotic attempts at teamwork, the AP Physics C class finally reconstructs the time machine. As she is about to step into the portal, our young Victorian visitor looks back, reflecting on her outlandish journey. She feels like Alice in Wonderland, tripping down a rabbit hole and ending up in a place where everything is mad as a hatter — but also magical. She leaves TPHS feeling disoriented, but a little more worldly. When the portal closes again, sealing the rift in time and space, she might even miss it here.