The Pillar and I are perplexed at this sick wack. I wonder why people like him aren’t institutionalized in the asylum.

The man frees himself from the Pillar. “Are you ready for the last question?”

“The suspense is killing me.” The Pillar rolls his eyes.

“Like I said before, the Hatter says only one girl can catch the rabbit,” the homeless man says.

“Mary Ann,” I interrupt. “Who is Mary Ann?”

The man turns around and runs away. When I am about to chase him, the Pillar grips my hand again. “Let him go, Alice. I know who Mary Ann is now. I should have put it together from the beginning.” He sighs then scans his surroundings, as if he is looking for someone.

“What is going on? Who is Mary Ann?” I ask him. “And how is she supposed to lead us to the rabbit’s whereabouts?”

“You seriously don’t know?” He looks straight into my eyes, as if I should. “I mean, I didn’t get it first, but I’m surprised you didn’t, too. I thought you knew Lewis Carroll’s book by heart.”

“There is a Mary Ann in the book?” I say as the memory hits me. It’s just a trivial sentence in the White Rabbit chapter, a detail everyone usually overlooks. “I get it now.” I feel like I am in a haze. “When the White Rabbit first meets Alice in the book, he mistakes her for someone. The rabbit says, ‘Why, Mary Ann, what are you doing out here?’

“Mary Ann is me?” I sound as if I’m asking, but deep inside I know it's a fact. I can't tell why I am sure about it. “This whole game was to tell me it’s me? Why?”

I am utterly, madly, deeply confused.

“Doesn’t matter why now,” the Pillar says. “What matters is how you’re supposed to have the secrets in you to find the rabbit.”

“I am tired of these games.” The imaginary haze around me is purple. I feel like I am going to drop to the ground any moment. “What is the point of all that?”

The Pillar holds me before I collapse. “I have no idea. You need to be stronger than this, Alice. It’s already 9:52 a.m. A little more than an hour is left. Look inside you, Alice. This is weird, but the solution is buried inside your memory somehow.”

A moment of silence imprisons both of us before I speak again. A moment that feels like forever. I realize that there is a big chance I am a nobody. Maybe I was just adopted, left on the doorstep of some church when I was a kid. Maybe I was raised in the jungle among apes and elephants. Maybe I am an alien, and I just don’t know it. I am saying this because I truly don’t know who I am. This Alice everyone is infatuated with can't be me. I just don't feel it anymore.

My blurry eyes dart toward the tattoo on my arm. What did the homeless man mean when he asked me about it?

“So?” the Pillar says.

“So what?”

“I have no clue to the next step,” he says. “You need to help me catch the rabbit.”

I have no idea what he is talking about. Not since I left the asylum have I searched within me and found answers. Not for who I am, not for what happened in the bus accident, and certainly not now.

I try to think of my Tiger Lily, of Jack, and of any kind of strength I have inside me. What motivates people to wake themselves up from a haze, I wonder. What motivates people to stay sane in all this insanity, I don’t know.

But, surprisingly, a memory hits me like a lightning bolt.

“I think I know the next step,” I say reluctantly.

"Excellent!" The Pillar cheers. "What is it?"

“It depends on how fast we can go back to Oxford.”

"Oxford?"

"Yes, the house where I was supposedly born and raised."

Chapter 14

Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum

Dr. Tom Truckle stared at the envelope for a while.

An invitation from the Queen of England.

Really?

He pulled out the card from the gold-tinted envelope and read with intent. The Queen was inviting him to what she called the Event.

That’s creative, he thought.

The message was brief, demanding a formal tuxedo dress, arrival on time, and the utmost secrecy.

Tom Truckle smiled broadly. The most important event he had ever been invited to was his divorce—even his daughter never invited him to her birthday.

But why him? What did the Queen of England want with him? Did she know who he really was?

Of course not, his mind shushed him.

Then why invite a mere director of an asylum?

He stared at the invitation again, wondering if he should really attend the Event. He scrolled down for his name on the invitation, only to be shocked it wasn’t for him.

The doctor gritted his teeth in anger, wondering what this event could be about. The name at the bottom of the invitation provoked him like nothing else. He wondered why the Queen would invite that person, and how they even knew each other.

Something was wrong here. Very wrong.

Chapter 15

Upstairs, Alice Wonder's house, 7 Folly Bridge, Oxford, 10:56 a.m.

Like a mad thief, I am climbing up the water pipe leading to my room in the house I supposedly lived at in the past. The Pillar waits by the corner of the streets to make sure no one sees me. Two-thirds of my climb up, I ask myself who I really am, and what in the world is happening all around me. When I almost slip and fall, I forget all about it and realize that sometimes in life all we can do is keep climbing, even when it doesn’t make any sense anymore.

I guess it’s some sort of survival mechanism for those who have no clue to what the snicker snack is going on with their lives.

At the top of the pipe, I look down at the Pillar, making sure this is my room I am about to enter. He nods and pulls out binoculars. He begins to track my sisters’ movements downstairs while I find the window to my room half open. I have very little time to get this done. About ten minutes.

There is a pot of tiger lilies by the windowsill of my room. It reminds of Jack. But I can’t afford remembering what happened to him at the Fat Duck restaurant right now. I avoid the lilies and try not to make a sound while I get inside.

The reason why I am here is the clue left by the Hatter. If I am supposed to be Mary Ann, according to the White Rabbit chapter in Alice in Wonderland, then I should also be here fetching gloves and a fan.

In the book, Mary Ann is supposed to be the housemaid, and the White Rabbit says the following to Alice after mistaking her for Mary Ann: “Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan! Quick, now!”

It might seem far-fetched—insane, to say the least. But I have no other choice but to hang on the thin thread of a clue in hopes of stopping the bomb.

I am back home—if it was ever mine.

I am pulling out the drawers and looking under the beds for a pair of gloves and a fan while the Pillar makes sure I won’t get caught by my obnoxious sisters downstairs.

Now I only have nine minutes to get this done.

The room means nothing to me. Nothing. I don’t remember being here before. I don’t remember sleeping in this bed or playing inside these four walls. I don’t remember a mother tucking me into bed at night, nor do I remember playing with my sisters.

The room is strangely covered in yellow wallpaper, which also means nothing to me—what child has yellow wallpaper in her room? It reminds me of the asylum. The Pillar told me once that Alice’s dress was yellow in the original copy of the book, a gesture of madness.

As I rummage for the gloves and the fan, I wonder if I could sink deeper into my memories. How deep should I dig to get there? Will I ever remember what happened to me when I was seven years old, claiming I fell in a rabbit hole? Why don’t I have even one single memory of my younger self?