“We were standing at the tree trunk, where I told him there was a portal. Actually, I was going to warn him about some things, but he crawled in so fast, and kept getting surprised by everything.”

Jenna went on, and her story was captivating. 

“We went for a walk around campus first. He was stunned that there were so many girls, and he didn’t think they were wearing enough, but kept staring anyway, which I’m not surprised. But then he wanted to eavesdrop on them! I had no choice but to hide with him behind a bush, and then we had to sit at some benches where some girls were sitting. It was so uncomfortable! Then he saw a bus and couldn’t believe it was working by itself without horses… So then we followed the bus, as far as we could, and obviously it was faster than us, so Dodgson gave up on that.”

“But then we ended up right in front of the library, and he needed to see its books. He was expecting just books and couldn’t get over that there were computers, which he just called glowing boxes – but they were so glowing, they hurt his eyes. Yes, he kept complaining that it was too bright in there, ‘magnificently, dreadfully bright’, he kept saying. But then he kept staring at the lights anyway, and at girls, and at girls using computers, which he really wanted to get his hands on. The computers, I mean.”

“Then he was outraged to hear about ‘email’, and I spent ten minutes or probably more laughing at him about it, that he was so upset nobody was writing letters anymore. He was thinking he might need to apply as a professor of letter writing.”

“Then he remembered that he was famous, and lost his shit when I looked him up in the online directory, and found so many other books that weren’t written by him, but about him. Though he couldn’t read a word of it. Then he peeked inside a few times.”

“Then he needed to lie down. Apparently the lights and how upset he was getting was giving him a headache. A ‘magnificently dreadful’ headache, is what he called it. But there was nowhere to do it privately, so he laid on a bench in the foyer, and I had to stand next to him while everybody stared at us. He didn’t notice, though. It was some real angst he was experiencing.”

“Oh, Victorian angst is nothing to be joked about,” Jennifer added in. “It’s the most severe of all the angsts.”

“It’s got to be. Although, five minutes later, he was fine. Although not long after that, he started to hyperventilate because he wasn’t sure if everybody was Christian. I said ‘they’re definitely not’, and although he was hesitant yet to speak to anyone, he took out his rosary and began whispering prayers into it for everyone who passed by. Then he said something like that it was ‘Hell on Earth’, an oven cooking a ‘heathenous casserole’... mostly when he was outside. Then when we went inside and he was in the air-conditioning, he did much better.”

“Jenna, it sounds like you’ve traumatized him,” Jennifer broke in again.

“Well, I was going to warn him…”

“Did he make it back to the tree-trunk, at least?! The heat alone would have killed me, too!”

“Yes, he made it back and couldn’t have hurried fast enough. I had to help him back to the cottage, where he didn’t even make it to a chair. He spent several hours in the fetal position with his rosary, and the only thing that got him back up again was that he claimed to have very profound poetry to write on the subject, which I wasn’t allowed to read.”

“This poor man! Like, not to be condescending or anything, but he needs to stay in his own time period!”

“Yes, he was telling me the same thing, that it would be better for him to forget all of it and never return, and that Wonderland was already culture-shock enough.”

“Yes! It’s for the better, Jenna. Victorians have very fragile tits to keep intact. Again, not to be condescending.”

“No, not at all. In fact, he shamed me for going through with it, for not warning him enough, or outright refusing him. He said I should have talked him out of it.”

“Well, to be honest, Jenna – I don’t see why you didn’t.”

Jenna sighed. 

“Well, I felt like I had to let him go. He was down on his knees, and…” At that moment, Jenna was distracted, eyes flitting about before she dived into a nearby flowerbed and cupped an apostrophe in her hands, like a trapped grasshopper.