Maggie opened one dark eye. As she did so, she glanced over at the clock. The digital readout said 3AM. She sighed and rolled over in the bed, stretching her arms above her head. Quinn had wanted to slide early in the morning from the Golden Gate Park. He thought they'd be more inconspicuous there. They'd all decided on a slide time of 6:30 AM. Maggie thought about trying to go back to sleep, but decided it would be no use. Once she was awake, she was awake. It probably had to do with her military training. There was no snooze alarm in boot camp.

Maggie got out of bed and padded softly across the hall to the bathroom, stopping briefly at the two other bedroom doors. Wade's door was shut tightly. Maggie pressed her ear to the door, but heard no sound. She assumed that meant Wade was fast asleep, and moved on to the next door. It was cracked open slightly, and she peered inside. Quinn lay on his back sprawled across the large bed, dressed in the rumpled clothes he'd been wearing the day before, his hand still clutching a large hardcover novel . She heard an occasional soft snore from the figure--he was fast asleep as well. For a brief moment, Maggie considered climbing into bed next to him, but she pushed the idea out of her head. That would be too forward, too obvious, and it might send Quinn running straight into Wade's arms. She'd have to come up with something better.

Maggie entered the bathroom . She wanted to take a shower, but thought better of it. The sound of the running water might wake the others. She wanted to keep Quinn and Wade as far away from each other as possible. Besides, she could use this quiet time to put the finishing touches on a plan to insure Quinn would be sliding with her. She dressed quickly, grabbed a washcloth and her toothbrush, and headed downstairs. She could wash her face and brush her teeth in the kitchen with fear of waking anyone. Rembrandt was in the basement, but the odds of him hearing a bit of running water in the kitchen were slim.

She entered the kitchen and flicked on the light. As she moved to the sink, she noticed a small leatherbound book sitting on the counter. As she got cleaned up, she glanced over at it several times. Finally, her curiosity got the best of her; she picked it up off the counter and opened it up. She read the name written in the top corner of the inside cover: Wade Wells. Maggie rolled her eyes. Wade's journal. "This should be good for a few laughs," she thought to herself. She took the small book with her as she passed through the darkened dining room and headed out to the living room.

She settled in on the couch and flipped through a few pages at random. Most of what she skimmed through in the journal was pretty boring, in Maggie's opinion. Wade had apparently started keeping this journal when they had landed on some world that Wade kept describing, upon their arrival there, as "Utopia". Maggie didn't want to imagine what a world would be like that a person like Wade might consider utopian. She noticed Quinn's name popping up a lot, and a few times where Wade mentioned , in passing, about having a crush on him. "Oh please," Maggie muttered. "A crush? What is this, junior high?" She didn't notice anyplace where Quinn had ever returned those feelings. "Well, too bad," she said, closing the book with a hard snap. "If you wanted him, you should've taken him--which is exactly what I'm going to do."

Maggie went back to the kitchen to put the journal back where she'd found it. She flicked on a small lamp that was located on the hutch behind the dining room table as she passed it. In doing so, she noticed a framed picture was sitting face down on the table. She picked it up. It was a picture she'd caught Quinn staring at several times when he thought no one was looking. It was a picture from the wedding of this world's Quinn and Wade. Maggie shook her head. This house was covered with pictures--every room had them scattered about: Quinn, Wade, Quinn and Wade, Quinn with his parents, Wade with her parents, pictures of people who were friends and coworkers. Maggie was sick of looking at them all. It didn't help that the night before they were all to slide their separate ways, Quinn was up half the night staring at some wedding photo. She shook her head. It was like Quinn had told her once: Things weren't the same on every world. Quinn and Wade were most certainly not going to end up the way they had on this Earth. Not as long as Maggie had anything to do with it.

Maggie went to put the picture back where it belonged on the small stand next to the entrance of the kitchen. As she turned from the table, her eyes fell on the legal pad covered with writing that was underneath the picture. She set the picture back down on the table, took a seat, and tossed the journal on the hutch next to the lamp. As she did so, a folded piece of paper fell out of one of the journal's back pages and slid underneath the hutch. Maggie ignored it as she examined the tablet. The light was dim, but she could see that it was Quinn's handwriting. As she lifted the tablet closer to the light, she could see it was a letter, made out to her, and she began to read it.

What she read didn't make her very happy at all

Go to part 9