Young Writers Society

The conversation the others were having went completely over Mary's head. It sounded like a cool movie that she hadn't seen. She was about to ask, but she was focused on the redheaded tour guide.

"Good afternoon, I'm Claire Fox, welcome to Hollywood," she said in her Liverpudlian accent.

The bus started driving, and Claire started on a spiel about Hollywood history.

That was when Mary remembered. Adam. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Perfect smile. They'd met in the summer of 1976 at Disneyland, of all places. Mary's family lived in Anaheim, a mile from the park. She'd taken their family's annual pass and gone for the day because no one wanted to go with her.

On Space Mountain, she'd had to go in the same car with Adam and a six year old girl. His baby sister, Esther.

After, they'd waited to look at ride pictures together. And they'd gotten to talking. And then made plans for dinner. Adam had immediately told her about his past, about who his father was, and she'd fallen in love with him all the same. Shortly thereafter, she'd stopped using, and Adam did too. They made each other better.

Of course, none of this had really happened. So why did she remember it so clearly? It's not like Mary spent much time daydreaming about that sort of thing.
She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't find the words.

Slowly, what the others were saying was starting to sink in.

"So are we in some kind of parallel universe?" She asked.

Julian stared at Queenie. Her gaze was downcast, focused intently on the dirty bus floor, and she was so tense. It reminded him of that time he'd walked in on her on the phone with someone at practice. The tone she'd been using had scared him.

"It's nothing," she'd said when he asked her about it, "My sister and I are just having a fight."

He'd smiled, chuckled at her explanation, "She start dating your crush?" he teased.

Queenie had lightly shoved his shoulder, herself, laughing, "Get your shoes on. Let's run through that section from yesterday again."

And that was that. Why did he believe her so quickly?

Because she's my friend.

"Queens," he said softly. She still didn't look at him. "Tell me what happened."

That got her to glance up. Her glass-blue eyes were glossy, reddened. She was trying not to cry. She looked back down.

"I can't, Juels."

"Please, I need to know what happened."

She shifted her weight, leaning ever so slightly away from him. "No, you don't."

Her words were like salt pressed into an open wound. "Queens-"

"No, Julian," she said sharply, still keeping her volume low, but to him, she might as well have been shouting. "I can't explain it to you. I can't."

He drew back. More salt, deeper wounds. "So it's true, then."

She didn't answer.

I opened my mouth, ready to add more fuel to the fire between Julian and Queenie, but then Mary's words suddenly registered. I spun around to stare at her, confusion flickering across my face. The people who had gotten memories back so far were ones that had actually known Esther or been affected by the change. So either Mary was strangely understanding of what had to sound like crazy talk to someone who hadn't been there, or...

...She was somehow involved with Esther, too?

"Who are you?" I said. Kirux tugged on my arm, ducking behind me as he glanced over at Queenie again. He looked so hurt by the realization that she was a terrible person.

(Somewhere, I thought a small part of me - the part of me that saw the similarities between her and Megara - was hurt by it, too.)

Bo, piped in to be helpful.

"The answer to your question is yes, I think. Because Alex - uh, not that you'd know her I don't think? Isn't in jail, so yeah, definitely alternate timeline."

"I don't know," Mary replied. "I'm Mary Webb. I think I get married. But, I'm not married. So that's why I asked. Does the name Adam Whitman mean anything to anyone?"

"He's the son of a murder," Queenie said. She could feel Julian's eyes on her, begging for an explanation. She owed him one, after all. Another debt.

She turned fully to face Mary. There was no salvaging Julian's opinion on her. It was the first time in a long time that she didn't know what he would do next, how he would react. So she turned her back on him and ignored it. The creeping guilt that tightened in her chest, the feeling of horrible regret and loss that made her limbs tremble and had tears pricking the backs of her eyes.

She ignored it.

"Adam was a nice guy. Trusting. He doesn't exist anymore because of some circumstances involving a stuck-up bitch of a librarian." She expected more questions despite the sharpening of her tone with every word until she was spitting them out like bullets.

You're so emotional. That's why you need supervision. That's why you will not get father's title.

Mary took a deep breath.

She still didn't really know what the others were talking about, and it was a crazy story, but she had a sinking feeling that it was true.

The visions she'd had of Adam and his younger half sister were too vivid to have just come from Mary's imagination. And besides, if she ever did fantasize about a guy, it would be Syd Barrett, not whoever this Adam -- her soulmate, the man she was destined to Mary -- was.

"What happened?" Mary asked. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Claire was getting annoyed with them for talking so much, but she didn't say anything so as to stay professional.

The stuff about movies and where famous movies were filmed was going in one ear and out the other, though.

I was usually more in tune to how much I was annoying people, but this time was the exception - I didn't even notice Claire getting irritated. Kirux, who was glancing between us and Claire, seemed to be the only one really caring about Claire's thoughts on the whole thing.

"To put it simply?" I said. I pointed at Queenie. "She forgot to mention the little bit where she killed Adam's dad when said dad was five years old thanks to the librarian messing around with time. Carter helped, too, but it was Queenie who pulled the trigger. And once you take his dad out of the picture, he - along with any other sibling he might have had outside of Esther, who was there for the whole thing - disappeared, too."

Queenie flexed her fingers, her gaze pinned once again to the ground.

"He's telling the truth, isn't he?" Julian asked her quietly.

"Only the parts he wants to," she muttered.

He gaped at her. "You...you killed a kid?"

Her chest rose and fell with a heavy sigh, her eyes turning skyward in a silent prayer. "We were hostages, Julian."

"There had to be another-"

"No," she snapped, finally looking at him, "There wasn't. You, of all people, should know that I know what I'm talking about when I say that."

He stared at her a moment, then looked away. He swallowed the lump in his throat, the clump of unsaid words that seemed to get bigger and bigger. A collection of years and years of unanswered questions.

Carter stood up straight when Mary started recollecting things that didn't make sense for the remember if Adam never existed in this timeline. Something wasn't right. What was the librarian trying to do now? Clearly, she wanted them to fix something still. He couldn't imagine what she was trying to get at though. She was sending many mixed messages.

"I never laid a finger on the boy," Carter said to Skull. "You were only suspicious of me because you never seemed to like me in the first place, which is your problem and your bias. But pointing fingers right now is not going to be helpful for us. If Mary is remembering things about Adam, then things were probably never supposed to be as they are now and Jay shouldn't have been killed, even though that's what the librarian said she wanted. We should focus on figuring out how to restore the timeline. We know there are two connections here-" He pointed at Mary, then gestured to Claire. "And there was the girl Kirux hugged earlier that I assume has some significance. We should follow those leads."

If they did, it'd mean they'd get home sooner. At this rate, that was all he cared about. He didn't care about the drama unfolding between Julian and Queenie and the bitterness Skull had towards anyone who breathed and didn't think like him.

"And just maybe, we'll figure this out this time."

Mary did not reply to Carter's comment. She was still having a had time following the group had met her. Coming down from the acid certainly didn't help, and she and ended up looking out the window of the bus.

So, in an alternate universe, she had a husband. He'd been erased from existence. And Esther, his baby sister that had been with him the day they met. That must have been who they were talking about. And if they talked about Esther as grown up, well... Mary must have been older in the alternate universe too.

She was clueless about how to actually help. Before long, the tour came to an end, and they ended up right back where they started. The movie was getting out, and Mary saw the others focused on a blonde girl with her dark haired friend and a small child. Mary thought the blonde looked familiar, even if she couldn't put her finger on why. As the rest of the group descended, Mary saw Claire approach the group.

"Between us," she said. "If you're going to get high on acid, don't come here again. I'm just trying to work like everyone else."

Acid? What was that-

Oh. That was what Claire thought was going on. She thought we were on drugs. Kirux, of course, just looked confused by Claire's accusation - he definitely hadn't heard of getting high from drugs before - but I just rolled my eyes.

"You never do like me, do you?" I said. She obviously hadn't gotten her memories back like Mary had. I didn't really care - I wasn't exactly fond of Claire, given how our two previous interactions had gone.

I turned my gaze to where the movie was getting out. Kirux had a big grin on his face and was waving to the blond woman I had seen. Now, of course, that I had gotten my memories back, I knew exactly who she was: Alex, Esther's mom.

I glanced over at Kirux. Seeming to remember that Alex didn't remember him, he lowered his hand and frowned - I could already see a new wave of tears coming. After a moment of hesitation, I gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder.

Which, apparently, was a major mistake if I didn't want to get a hug a second later.

"Well," I said, shifting uncomfortably with Kirux's arms wrapped around me, "if we're going to do the librarian's dirty work again, I'm guessing we have to go talk to Alex and jog her memory. She's never been a fan of giving us clear instructions."

Carter didn't feel right.

His heart was racing, he was burning up, and he was sweating. Either he had a fever, or the acid finally kicked in.

He looked over to Claire, who apparently could tell he was on drugs and wasn’t happy about it.

“She gave it to me,” he said, pointing and accusing Mary. “And I’m never coming back again.”

As they left the big moving car, the ground seemed to be made of butter. With shaky legs he started to follow the others but stumbled into the big, tall man's back. The sidewalk was so slippery and greasy it was sickening. He grabbed onto the man's shirt and pulled himself up for balance, and he was convinced he was succeeding until he realized he was being held by the man's arms.

What was his name again? B... it started with a B. Carter had forgotten. He never forgot names. He always remembered names. Gods, he did not feel like himself. He tried to push himself away, but his feet hesitated, still anticipating his for his dumb other-world shoes to slip on the wobbling street.

"You took acid too?" the big man asked. Carter scoffed. As if it wasn't obvious. He didn't have to make a fool of them both by asking!

"Let me go," Carter insisted.

The big man blinked with his one eye. Gods, his scar was awful.

"I'm not touching you."

It was Carter's turn to blink cluelessly as he looked down at himself. He was standing on his own, rather normally, and the man was right. He wasn't touching him.

Carter stood frozen for a moment before scoffing and walking towards Skull and Kirux the crybaby.



Carter was going the wrong direction. Bo tugged on the back of Carter's jean jacket and pointed at Skull. Carter gave him a mean look before course correcting.

Man, Bo was glad he didn't do drugs.

Bo hurried up to Skull and Kirux, choosing to ignore Carter for the moment. There was a lot of controversy around like, half the members in their party at the moment, but he didn't really know who was telling the truth. He was of course, inclined to believe Skull who had proven himself trustworthy when they'd met in the past, but this whole situation just seemed like a mess.

Bo started ahead of the others and waved Alex down, making sure to show a big, friendly smile as he made a beeline for her. He hoped that would be enough to not scare her off.

"Hey!" he said, holding out his hand for a handshake. "I'm Bo. I'm sorry about my friends cutting in line earlier, they didn't mean to! I hope you enjoyed the movie."

At that moment, he could hear someone behind him start crying. It sounded like Carter.

Claire looked over at the dark haired boy. "What are you talking about? We've never met before tonight."

Outside the theater, Alex froze. It was the group from earlier. Had they waited outside the theater the entire time? She was sure they hadn't gone into the movie. She was thankful Carolyn and Juliet were there so she wasn't alone.

"Are you following me?" Alex asked. "And uh..." She looked over at the shorter man, who seemed to be far out on something. "Is your friend okay?"

"He's high," Queenie said, "It should wear off soon enough."

"How would you know?" Julian asked. She could tell he was just trying to change the subject between them, but that didn't change the flash of anger she felt at the question.

She waved him off, biting back an angry tone that would only add tinder to the burning bridge.