Young Writers Society

Queenie eyed the other table briefly, then went back to looking bored.

Fucking Macbeth and the farmer boy were back. Looking pretty couple-y, at that. She snickered at that thought. Those two hadn't gotten along too well back when she'd been 'part of' the group. Gods, those were some humiliating, if brief, times.

She went back to messing with her hair, undoing and redoing the end of the braid.

By the time we reached the new restaurant, I had the distinct feeling that we weren’t really welcome. Maybe it was because of the threat Carter had issued. Maybe it was because Claire hadn't liked what I said. Whatever the case was, Claire definitely hated us and I could care less about that.

Still, it was boring being ignored. I debated talking with Carter, but I didn't want to talk with him more than I had to. So I settled for just observing the scenery around us, even once we entered the place we'd have our very late lunch in.

And that was when I saw her.

Elizabeth.

She was sitting at a table with some guy who looked like Jay. The resemblance wasn't perfect, but it was enough to make me pause and stare at the two.

My gaze shifted to Elizabeth.

Without consulting anyone in my group - and much less Carter - I made a beeline for where Elizabeth and the man were. It was only when I reached her side that I realized I had absolutely no idea what I had been planning on saying to her.

"Nice of you to show up," I finally settled on, crossing my arms as I looked at her.

Fuck off.

She hardly glanced at him as she slowly and methodically finished braiding the end of her ponytail. It was only once she'd arranged her hair exactly how she wanted it - being rather more finicky than she had to be - that she looked up the wannabe Reaper.

"I was here first, love," she said, her voice as sweet as could be, "so really, you're the one who joined me. Unfortunately, your company isn't nearly as welcome as you seem to think it is. Kindly, go to hell. Please and thank you, or whatever pleasantries they use in this decade."

I couldn't help but feeling just a bit offended at her comment, but I had bigger fish to fry - namely, how someone was still missing from our group. Claire had said that Elizabeth left that night, and that Esther stayed a bit longer. Chances were that Elizabeth had been kicked out of that time like we had that night, and Esther was kicked out a few days later.

"Sorry," I said, "but hell isn't exactly my biggest fans. It's already kicked me out twice - pretty sure it'd do it a third time."

I glanced around the room. Esther wasn't anywhere to be found. Part of me had been hoping I'd see her walking out of the bathroom or something - that would have made everything a lot easier.

I looked back at Elizabeth.

"So," I said, "have you seen Esther anywhere? You're here with Jay's look-a-like, Claire's with her daughter over at the table with Carter, and Iris was here before a certain librarian decided to yank her away from us. Esther's the only one unaccounted for, and I don't think it's a coincidence we're all here right-"

I fell silent.

...Jay's look-a-like?

If Jay had someone running around that looked like him, he had to be related somehow. Maybe a brother or a son - I couldn't tell for sure. Either way, the guy Elizabeth was with definitely had some sort of connection to Esther. If he was Jay's brother, Esther was his niece. If he was Jay's son, then Esther was his half-sister.

Claire had been useless, but this guy probably could give me some of the answers I was looking for.

I turned to him.

"Hey," I said, "does the name Esther ring any bells? I don't know her last name, but the two of you are definitely related."

Adam was breathing heavily. He didn't even think to question how Queenie and the goth man knew each other, or how he'd ended up in this mess in the middle of nowhere. They'd just gotten a new security system for his home, but it looks there was nowhere these people wouldn't go. And if he knew enough to stalk him this far, and somehow end up with Claire and her daughter, Adam wondered how the goth man didn't know about Esther. Unless he did know and was just taunting him.

And Jay's look-alike? What was that about?

"Esther Altman is dead, all right? She drove her car off a fucking cliff last year, and my father is fucking dead to me. And look, bud, if you ever come near me again, I have a gun and I'm not afraid to use it."

Adam caught himself. He was scared with how scary he sounded. He hadn't gotten this scary since he'd gotten in a drunken fight at the Grateful Dead concert when he was 19 and ended up spending the night in jail. That had been a wake-up call to change his life around. And all of these years he'd fought the temper and yet he really felt like he could break this man's neck if he wanted to. He couldn't. He was better than that.

Still, he deserved answers as to what exactly was going on. While he waited for him to respond, he looked over at Claire's daughter. Adam was blanking on her name right now. There had been rumors about who her father really had been... he wondered about them.

Carter watched from the table with Claire, Amy, and Scott. He felt that he was doing his best to try and solve whatever mystery they were thrown into with tact, but Skull seemed to be casting aside all subtlety. It was a shame. It seemed like they really were thrown into Esther's world, and they very well could've been altering reality by existing, if this wasn't some dream or simulation.

Then again, he could blame that more on the fault of the librarian than anything else. She seemed to have faulty judgment thinking it would be a good idea to throw Skull, a complete idiot, into the picture.

Carter felt torn. Part of him was enjoying seeing Skull burn even more bridges and make things worse for himself, but he also didn't want to anger the librarian deity (or whatever she was) by allowing Skull to cause as much chaos as he was.

With a resigned sigh, he turned to Claire. "Ms. Claire," he said. "I'm so sorry for Skull. He's always been a reckless, tactless delinquent and I regret to say it seems that won't change any time soon. It appears his impatience and frustration is going to make it a lot harder to talk about things quietly. I'm sure you'd like an explanation as to what's going on as much as they do." He gestured to Elizabeth and the man who resembled Jay. Probably another child of his, just like Amy and Esther. It made sense with the current trend of things.

"Give me a moment. I'll be back," he said, getting up from his seat and walking over calmly to Elizabeth and Skull.

He carefully watched the movements of the man beside Elizabeth. He clearly looked aggravated (a reasonable response to Skull), but Carter was sure no one wanted more of a scene to be created than already was.

He caught what the man said as he walked over. Esther had killed herself. His father, Jay, was dead to him. That probably meant Jay had done something worthy of shunning, even more than just impregnating his harem of women.

And then there was the threat of violence. Oh, great job, Skull. The guy has a gun.

As he came up behind them, Carter firmly rested a hand on Skull's shoulder, but this time it wasn't to keep up the facade of their "relationship." It was a warning.

"There's no need for that," he said calmly. "Listen. It seems there's a bit of a misunderstanding. Skull here isn't very good with words, or anything for that matter, so please forgive him for charging over here and ruffling feathers. And while I'm sure his distasteful behavior may make this next offer unsavory, please consider it. We would love to talk to you more about Esther, if you can find it in your heart to give us a chance. I know how uncomfortable all of this is, but I knew her before her passing, and I'm just trying to find some closure."

I shook my shoulder free from Carter's grasp, but it was a half-hearted gesture.

I wasn't scared by the guy's threat. Maybe I should have been. But I was so tired of this whole thing now, and I just wished the librarian would show up so I could demand answers from her instead.

The librarian had said Esther was the key back in the library - I still didn't get all of that. It made her sound like she had some great destiny to fulfill. But that was just a cruel joke, when I thought about it. Esther was dead. I couldn't wrap my head around why she'd kill herself. I had done everything I could to stay alive. But Esther couldn't do a whole lot if she was gone. This world didn't have ghosts, and I doubted it suddenly was going to now.

But why did I care so much? I barely knew her - and the majority of our conversations had been arguments over the situation the librarian had blindly thrown us into. Sure, I had wanted to find Elizabeth and Esther. But that was just tying up loose ends, right? Just keeping an eye out because I knew Jay reminded me too much of a certain cult leader I knew as a kid?

I glanced over at Carter. I hated how calmly he was taking this, but I hated how much I cared about his reaction even more. I was the one who had been a type three ghost. I was dead for more than a century. I knew the ins and outs of death more than anybody, so why was I suddenly getting flustered when I was the one who wasn't doing the dying?

I didn't let my face betray any of my emotions.

I just stared down at the ground, waiting for a response. Making my hands into fists at my side and digging my nails into the palms of my hands did little to distract.

Adam took a minute and calmed down. "Esther never said anything about you," He said. "but I guess I'm not supposed to know everything." He took a deep breath. "Look, it was a year ago today, all right?"

Before the boys could respond, Claire caught Adam's attention. "Adam, how are you!"

Adam managed a wave. "Why don't you take these boys back to LA with you? We actually have to get on the road, and um, actually, we're going to visit my brother in Palo Alto."

Before Adam could really respond, Claire, her daughter and the other guy were already out the door. Adam turned to the guys. "Well, guess you're stuck with me."

They finished their food and drove for a while in silence. They were somewhere close to San Francisco when Adam stopped to get gas when he realized his companions were all gone. Vanished without a trace.

Strange. What a strange, strange day.

**

When Esther opened her eyes. There were her friends, minus Iris. She was back in her Grateful Dead t-shirt and acid wash jeans, and they were back in the library. No music, though. Everyone else was staring at her.

It had been so real. Being with her mother. Though maybe it had only been a dream. A very vivid dream.

"What? What did I do?"

They were back. And he was back in his normal clothes. Thank the gods.

Carter wasn't sure what the librarian wanted them to do. Did she want them to stop Esther from committing suicide? That seemed like something that was beyond their own ability - none of them were experienced doctors of mental fortitude and none of them even knew Esther, or were a part of her life until this moment.

What could a bunch of strangers from different worlds do for Esther? Cleary she was a victim of circumstances that overwhelmed her, not that they even knew the whole story.

"We don't know what you did - we weren't with you," he said plainly. "Are you alright? You seem a little shaken."

"You're dead by the late nineteen-eighties," Queenie said, rolling her eyes. Beating around the bush was stupid. She could tell they knew something she didn't, why the hell would they keep it from her?

People liked to push to know things that were bad for them. Queenie wasn't patient enough to wait for her to start that particular little dance.

"Dead?" Esther couldn't wrap her head around it. "What do you mean, by the 1980s? Isn't that just...."

She trailed off, and didn't say what she was going to. Now.

She supposed if they'd just visited the past, if she'd just spent time with her own mother, than these people could feasibly from the future.

It had been months since she'd last thought of killing herself. Spending long periods of times fantasizing about getting in her car, reaching the cliffs and not stopping. She wondered if that's how things ended up.

"Wait, you need to tell me exactly what happened," Esther said. "Where were all of you just now?" Her heart was pounding.

We were back in the library.

Claire, unsurprisingly, had ditched us the first chance she got. We had spent an uncomfortably long car ride in silence; I hadn't been able to stop thinking about what had happened to Esther.

What was going to happen to Esther.

And then suddenly we were back in the library, with none other than Esther before us. Iris was nowhere to be found - either the librarian had sent her running off to another time, or she was lurking somewhere else in the library.

"It's a long story," I said, finally finding my voice. "We ran into some relatives of yours."

I pretended like I wasn't fazed. I tried telling myself I wasn't. But it felt strange, even for me, to be telling a very much alive girl about how she was supposedly going to die.

"Your brother said you drove your car off of a cliff a year before we met him," I informed her. My voice was monotone. I only met her eyes for a moment before I quickly looked away, studying the nonexistent dirt underneath my fingernails. "The librarian said earlier - back when we got kicked out of Jay's little group - that you're the key. Maybe you have some great destiny, or maybe she just wants you to get an intervention."

I paused.

"...Therapy probably would have been easier," I added.

Skull had said that she did kill herself. But Esther couldn't think about that right now, as she had no idea how to possibly wrap her head around it.

"My brother? You talked to Adam?"

Esther collapsed back down the couch, trying to think of what to say. "Well, we're all visiting my memories, right?" She pursed her lips. "I suppose you don't know what Adam and my dad did. I mean, you met him, but. Do you know what he did?"

"Well, these morons hardly spoke to him, but he hardly talked to me on that dreadful little road trip," Queenie said. She didn't really care about her family drama. In her opinion, it was beyond dumb to off yourself over someone else's wrongdoings or whatever.

There were millions of other, better reasons to make such a decision, anyway.

Queenie, apparently, was as tactless as Skull. Carter briefly scanned the room for the librarian. Cleary, Esther was troubled. She didn’t need this kind of drama thrust upon her, but they were far beyond backpedaling.

“We don’t know what your father, Jay, did. It’s only been alluded to that he’s done terrible things, but no one’s said it outright. I, at least, am in the dark. As for Adam, we only really talked briefly, no thanks to him.”

He gestured to Skull. He wanted to lump Elizabeth in with the blame, but he preferred having her on at least neutral terms. Something about her made her seem more likely to stab him in the back if he got on her bad side, and he wanted to keep as many allies for the sake of ganging up on Skull anyways. He was a good scapegoat, and most of the time the blame was deserved, anyway.