The three friends continued on down the Sandboro mall’s lower concourse at a sedate pace, navigating through the bunches of people as they glanced through the shop windows and chatted with one another. Alicia found herself hyped up still, occasionally grinning down at the rather bulky Electronics Boutique bag full of Game Boy Colors she hugged against herself. It had weight to it but wasn’t heavy, maybe because right now it meant the world to her.

As little as six months ago, Alicia would have consciously chafed at this entire situation. She would have grown to despise these two white girls, as if they were making her lug around their things like she was their servant or baggage carrier, or something. She felt like she’d grown up a little since then, like some of her strongest fears about fitting in with the white kid Springton crowd had been put to rest in a definitive way. Here with her besties, race wasn't even an issue—they simply saw her as Alicia. No one was making her tote around their bags. Tabitha had actually attempted to hold her bag of anime tapes against herself with her cast, so that she could heft the giant bag of video game boxes with her remaining hand. It hadn’t even occurred to Tabitha to ever ask for help.

She even BLUSHED when we pointed that out. Oh my God, it was so cute… and also yeah, a little tiny bit sad.

Alicia had of course jumped forward to take up the big bag, while Elena even grabbed Tabby’s little Hot Topic bag of tapes, leaving the flustered redhead to just awkwardly clutch her money envelope with her good hand while holding her plaster cast up against herself. Alicia was willing to acknowledge now that her past self would have been sensitive about whatever social dynamic was at play when they were white and she was black. It thrilled her to realize how much of that she’d forgotten.

I’m not excluded at all, none of us are. We’re just—FRIENDS, Alicia beamed. Alright, alright. I’m admittedly feeling extra sappy, ‘cause ‘Lena just bought me a friggin’ Game Boy Color! Soooo cool. On so many levels.

They were just… friends. It was simple to express like that, but the concept of it was deceptive in how much bigger and deeper it was. There was no class barrier separating Alicia from these two white girls—if anything, Tabitha was the one singled out in that regard, because she was from the family living in poverty. Alicia and Elena’s families were on fairly equal footing in upper middle class, with Alicia’s dad being an architectural engineer and Elena’s dad being a partner in a local law firm. When it came to fashion, Elena was their outlier and dressed completely different than them because of her burgeoning gothic identity.

Just when Alicia had begun to worry that Elena not believing Tabby about the future stuff was starting to create a rift between the two, Elena shocked her by jumping up and going all-in on their little Pokemon league idea. Even when the raven-haired girl with her possibly Daria-inspired dry skepticism wasn’t convinced Tabitha was from the future, it didn’t matter. Because, they were friends and Elena was just gonna support her unconditionally regardless. It was really touching, and more to the point, Elena had made sure Alicia was also going to be included in this Pokemon thing they were all doing.

So, it’s not even JUST a bitchin’ handheld game system, Alicia gave the Electronics Boutique bag a little squeeze. It’s like, a promise that we’re gonna stay besties and play together, that even though Tabs isn’t in school with us anymore, and Elena’s embarking on her own weird DARK AND MACABRE personal journey—we aren’t gonna drift apart. It’s a promise.

“Okay, here,” Elena sighed, holding up a hand. “You’re supposed to pick up an outfit or two? We should start here.”

Alicia and Tabitha turned in surprise to see that Elena had stopped them in front of a dELiA*s store. The window displays here were lined with Christmas lights, but the mannequins themselves weren’t dressed in particular for the season—one female figure wore a sporty crop-top outfit, another wore a floral print beneath a denim pullover, and only the last actually wore a bomber jacket, over a navy ensemble that featured those snazzy racing stripes.

“Is this like, sacrilegious?” Alicia joked. “Shouldn’t you be pushin’ Tabs to wear Hot Topic stuff?”

“We were already in there, nothing caught her eye,” Elena sniffed. “Just because I’m going for this look doesn’t mean either of you have to. I used to shop here. For you guys dELiA*s is fine, this is where I used to pick up pretty nice hauls.”

“I… I just spent a lot of the money, I really don’t need clothes,” Tabitha protested in a weak voice.

“Come in and try some outfits on at least,” Elena rolled her eyes. “Since apparently you won’t be able to try things on in the future—better do it now, right?”

“I did say they go out gradually!” Tabitha said again, sticking out her tongue. “But… fine. I am a little interested in all this retro nineties fashion.”

Alicia watched with interest as Elena opened her mouth to retort, then flicked her eyes down to the rather angelic blouse Tabitha was wearing that went so well with the bleached-white jeans. Tabby looked good today, and though Elena had been one of those popular girls that kept current on trends and normally had no trouble picking apart the usual freshman faux pas in others—there really wasn’t any room to criticize, here. As a matter of fact, Elena herself was wearing one of the gifted blouses from her right now, and Alicia had likewise paired the blouse Tabitha had given her with a cute dress today. What could Elena possibly say? There wasn’t anything to say, and it was satisfying seeing Elena give up and purse her lips into a pout.

Another point in favor of time travel, right?! Tabs was workin’ on the strictest budget of all of us, and still came out ahead of the curve in the wardrobe department.

“Fine, it’s—whatever,” Elena threw up her hands. “You do dress fine, but also—you don’t have a lot of… situational stuff. Back then when we were with your cousins, you were playing tag in your nice clothes. You probably went running in your nice clothes, back when you were running. You need actual athletic wear.”

“I wasn’t running in my nice clothes,” Tabitha grumbled. “I had old gross clothes I wore for getting all sweaty. And anyways, it’s not like I’m gonna be cleared for anything too strenuous for a while, yet—I had an operation like, three weeks ago. Recovery time for that procedure’s s’posed to be six weeks, so—”

“Okay yeah, but—today’s black friday, when you can get the better deals on athletic wear,” Elena made her point with a decisive nod, ushering them both inside. “C’mon, c’mon. And, I did see you getting all sweaty in your nice clothes—you were running around the playground in them, doing… I dunno, backflips and somersaults and pulling out three-hundred-sixty-degree black belt Van Dammes, or whatever.”

“Th-that’s—that’s not even a real thing!” Tabitha giggled. “I do believe you just made that up.”

“Damn, she was doin’ Van Dammes?” Alicia laughed. “Make sure you guys bring me next time, I wanna see Tabs doin’ split-kicks and shit.”

She followed her friends into the busy store, where they were forced to squeeze past people in a single-file line to even get to where they could browse through some of the racks. After only a bare few minutes of sifting through the garments hung up for the black friday promotion Alicia found herself tempted into picking out something—a pair of greenish nylon parachute pants that was displayed with a long-sleeved dugout tee. Alicia thought it’d look rather smart on her, they had the pants in size 15, and—wait, no, this peekaboo sweater with the color blocked top and sleeves would go even better with it. White and green would go way better on me than the white and blue.

By the time she turned her attention back to her friends, she found that Tabitha had likewise picked out an outfit, somehow managing to pick out something Elena didn’t approve of.

“It’s just… really?” Elena crossed her arms. “All this great stuff on the women’s side, and you have to pick out boys clothing? Just to be contrary?”

“What? C’mon, it’s very nineties!” Tabitha said, holding up what she’d found. “Sporty, but also kinda rugged? I want to go for that Avril Lavigne sort of skater girl look.”

“Avril Lavigne?” Elena repeated in confusion.

“Yeah—Avril Lavigne?” Tabitha nodded, turning the garment this way and that.

“No idea what that is,” Elena said. “Skate brand? Ska music thing?”

“No, she’s—” Tabitha’s expression fell. “Not famous yet, I guess? I thought for sure she was a late nineties thing? Alicia; Avril Lavigne?”

“Uhh,” Alicia laughed. “No? Sorry? But hey, what do you guys think about this one for me? Yes? No?”

“Yeah, that looks really good,” Elena nodded in approval.

“Yeah?” Alicia’s enthusiasm soared at the validation. “Tabitha?”

“I like it,” Tabitha also gave her a thumbs up. “Wait—how much is it?”

“Cheap as hell!” Alicia reported. “Was on a Black Friday rack. These are 29.99, and the top is—today looks like only 14.99? Lots of pockets, too.”

“Go for it, absolutely,” Tabitha said. “It’ll look great on you. Oh—and, now that I think about it, you’re not wearing glasses? I’ve never seen you wear glasses.”

“Glasses?” Alicia tilted her head. “No? I don’t wear glasses.”

“I just, it’s one of the things I definitely remember from that Hometown Heroes thing,” Tabitha laughed. “In your photo in the future, you had those big, thick-framed glasses.”

“I—wait, what?!” Alicia exclaimed. “Is that—are you—are saying my eyes gonna go bad?!”

“I mean, you were older in that photo,” Tabitha hurried to reassure her. “I just wasn’t sure if you wear glasses now or not. I don’t think I’ve seen you wear them? A lot of people have to start wearing glasses or contacts when they get older.”

“Don’t listen to her, that’s a myth,” Elena rolled her eyes in exasperation. “If you don’t have bad eyesight now, you’re fine. You won’t need reading glasses or that kind of thing ‘til you’re like, old enough to be retired. Plus, contact lenses? My mom says they do more harm than good, like, wearing them actually damages your eyes in the long term.”

“What?” Tabitha shot Elena a look of disbelief. “No way. Soft lenses have been around since like… the mid-eighties? Right?”

“Am I… am I gonna go blind?!” Alicia put on her most aggrieved look. “Give it to me straight, Doc—will I ever see again?!”

“I’m sure you’re fine,” Tabitha said. “You looked—happy. Successful. We know for sure you get to be an amazing artist, and, honestly? Alicia, you kind of already are.”

Alicia warmed at the praise and returned to flipping through the hangers of womens tops as Elena and Tabitha continued to quibble over the ‘April Lavigne’ or whatever outfit. Holiday music was audible over the conversation, apparently Tabitha didn’t actually know how to skateboard but that for some reason didn’t matter, and Elena was still of a mind to put Tabitha in some of the more traditional feminine offerings on display to try out those styles on her, while an argument could be made that Elena was being a bit hypocritical to insist on that for Tabitha while eschewing such styles herself to instead go gothic.

Honestly, I do think Tabs could pull off a punk girl sort of NO DOUBT kinda look. She’s got that sort of weird vibe to her. Not BAD weird, just—alternative sorta style? I dunno. Something to outwardly sort of indicate how DIFFERENT she really is, because no one seems to see it at first.

With Alicia’s pick and two outfits for Tabitha pending, the girls eventually made their way to the back of the store where a substantial queue had formed for the four dressing room stalls. The rare one or two shoppers here on their own seemed to be in and out quick, but virtually everyone else was with someone and needed to step out for a moment for their friend or partner’s second opinions, making the wait exceptionally tedious. In fact, the longer they stood there, the more she thought Elena’s position on the fitting rooms thing had some credence to it—it was hard to even picture them simply not being a thing anymore in the future.

When the gaggle of Sandboro teens ahead of them was finally done trying on clothes and they got their turn, Alicia shooed Tabitha in to change. She wanted to see how the two different ensembles—Tabitha’s choice and Elena’s choice looked on her, how they compared, and also… Alicia just wasn’t all that comfortable using a public dressing room or changing clothes when other people were nearby. And a little too embarrassed to come out and admit it. She knew for sure she was getting what she picked out, and was fine just waiting off to the side of the stall like a wallflower.

“So…” Alicia said, shifting their big games bag from one hand to the other.

“So…” Elena replied.

“You still think she’s delusional,” Alicia accused in a teasing voice, squinting her eyes at gothic friend.

“I didn’t even say anything,” Elena shrugged, keeping her attention on the dressing room door. “You gonna actually try anything on?”

“Don’t change the subject!” Alicia elbowed her. “You didn’t say it, but you’re still thinkin’ it. You think she’s delusional.”

“Stop, ow,” Elena swatted Alicia’s arm away. “Your elbow’s like, extra bony.”

“Elena…” Alicia elbowed her again.

“Stop it, I bought you a game boy,” Elena sighed. “I don’t think she’s delusional. Okay? I think it’s a coping mechanism. It’s not the same thing.”

“You’re still basically being like, she’s making it all up,” Alicia grumbled. “Where’s the faith?”

“She’s—it’s not like that,” Elena said. “She’s very… imaginative. Some of the things she describes make a lot of sense, and other things—like malls disappearing, those’re all obviously B.S. You realize that, right?”

“Tabs said it was like this real gradual thing,” Alicia argued. “That makes sense. Nothing lasts forever, right? Not even malls.”

“Shopping is forever,” Elena argued.

“Shopping is eternal,” Alicia giggled, remembering the weird phrases Tabitha had pulled out of her seemingly bottomless hat of ideas back there to impress the Hot Topic girl. “Hark thee and pay tribute, mortals! Pay tribute to commercialization! Pay tribute, sinners!”

“Shopping is… the social side of economics,” Elena insisted, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. “For as long as people exist, they’re going to socialize. And, as long as there’s resources exchanged, there’s going to be an economy. Where these two things meet, there will be malls, so yes—malls are forever, malls are eternal.”

“Tabs says that in the future, people don’t really socialize much in person, it’s all done from remote control, like over the world wide web,” Alicia said. “It grows up into this whole big thing called social medium.”

“Okay, well that’s another one of those things that sounds stupid and made up,” Elena rolled her eyes. “Talking on the phone with people is an entirely different thing, it’s not a substitute for actually being around people and interacting. Plus, this is real life, not Bye Bye Birdie, parents aren’t going to just let everyone rack up their phone bills all the time.”

“Bye Bye Birdie?” Alicia gave Elena a quizzical look.

“It’s—a stupid musical,” Elena held her hands up. “My mom loves musicals, alright? There’s a bit where like, all the girls in town are on the phone singing with each other, to like, make fun of girls always wasting time gabbing on the phone. When it’s not really even like that in real life to begin with. I hardly ever—”

The dressing room door opened a few inches and Tabitha peeked her head out.

“The one you liked doesn’t fit,” Tabitha said. “I think… I think I lost some weight?”

“You have,” Alicia scoffed. “I told you earlier. I was like, Tabs, you’ve lost weight, and you thought I was just being polite or whatever. I wasn’t, you’ve lost weight. I’ve got an eye for these things.”

“I—uh,” Tabitha paused in embarrassment. “I really did think you were just being polite.”

“I’ve been drawing you from that big blown up photo, so I can tell,” Alicia said. “You can see it a bit in your cheekbones, your neck. You’ve lost weight. It’s super obvious.”

“It’s not super obvious, I can’t tell the difference,” Elena frowned. “You look the same as you did before. Step out and let us see the outfit.”

“No, it, ah, it doesn’t fit,” Tabitha shook her head. “The uh, the cups don’t. I either—”

“Shit, Tabby’s boobs are going,” Alicia threw up her hand at the travesty. “That’s the last thing you want to go.”

“I, um, I either—well it doesn’t sit right in the front, there’s like, it makes this big gap,” Tabitha blushed. “I’m going to try the other one.”

“Open up and let us see it, first,” Elena said. “C’mon.”

With a heavy sigh, Tabitha opened the stall’s door and let them see. Alicia found herself surprised—some part of her had expected Tabitha had been being modest, and that when she stepped out it would be this stunning moment that took their breaths away. The dress was a gorgeous floral print one and the dominant blue patterning was supposed to perfectly complement the color of Tabby’s hair. Unexpectedly, it wound up looking… awful on her, ill-fitting, and she couldn’t immediately put her finger on why.

“Huh,” Alicia quirked her lip. “Definitely doesn’t fit.”

“I think it’s like, a lot of the time Tabby wears actual hand-tailored clothing,” Elena mused, tapping her lip as she looked Tabitha up and down. “That her and her grandma work on. So, when she instead tries on store-bought stuff like this, it just… disappoints? No offense.”

“That’s what I said in the first place!” Tabitha growled, pinching the fabric at her waistline and trying to pull it back so that the dress would sit correctly. “I can tell it doesn’t fit right.”

“Let’s see if that one has any smaller sizes,” Elena said. “It’s not… completely bad. It just needs to be taken in in a few places.”

“Tabs—Elena doesn’t believe in social medium,” Alicia tattled.

“Social—what?” Tabitha burst into laughter. “Social medium? Are you doing that on purpose? It’s social media.”

“Pfft, well, close enough, same thing,” Alicia flushed. “She thinks it sounds stupid.”

“Well, she’s right, it’s so stupid,” Tabitha made a bitter face.

“But—” Alicia froze. “You said it was a real thing, in the future. That everyone was into it?”

“It is a real thing, it will be,” Tabitha made a disgusted face. “Doesn’t make it any less stupid or awful.”

“That’s a contradiction,” Elena pointed out. “If it was stupid and awful, everyone wouldn’t be into it.”

“I wish that were the case,” Tabitha sighed. “It brings to mind this bit from a Neil Gaiman book I read, about a gambling den where everyone was getting cheated—‘Davy, why do you go there—don’t you know the game is crooked?’ ‘Of course it’s crooked,’ Davy replies, ‘but damn, it’s the only game in town!’ It’s a little bit like that. Once all of your friends and family are using it, you always get sucked back into it somehow.”

Alicia felt herself smiling for no reason, and she was glad she didn’t have Tabitha’s lily-white complexion, or she was sure one of them would notice her blushing out of turn. Her weird maybe-a-crush feelings for Tabitha always seemed to catch her off-guard at strange moments. To her surprise, it wasn’t that her friend had stepped out of the dressing room stall looking like a runway model—on the contrary, the dress they’d expected would look good on her instead draped in potato-sack kind of ways for some reason. No, what affected Alicia was these unbidden wistful Tabitha moments popping up, where she was able to pull a fully formed thought out and unfold it into a clever quote or expansive idea. All while looking back on these things that hadn’t technically happened yet with the bittersweet nostalgia of someone looking back over days gone by.

It was bothersome just how charming it was.

It interested Alicia and annoyed her in equal measure, because she wanted to figure out some way how to capture this nuance in a sketch somehow, but had no idea where she would even begin puzzling out how to convey it. Something in Tabitha’s gaze, maybe—but whenever Alicia had felt that spark and rushed to pencil out Tabitha’s eyes, they would simply stare back at her from the sketchbook page in a blank and meaningless way, absent of that special Tabitha thing. It was infuriating. More than anything concrete and visible like some specific detail Alicia could depict in a drawing, it was this abstract sense she got. From this fascinating way Tabitha carried herself, the cadence of her tone and the way she moved.

She’s absolutely been there before, Alicia thought. To the future. What comes ahead isn’t this blank canvas, for her—much of it, a lot of it maybe, has been filled in once before, and now she has to navigate that mess and interpret it in the new way she experiences things, in this entirely different approach. Revisiting really old linework and creating something unexpected and impossible with it, and it just—it just—she draws you in.

“Sorry, I can’t even picture it,” Elena shook her head. “‘Social media.’ You make it sound like, like—like the Riddler’s mind control ray thing, from the Batman movie. That one with Jim Carrey.”

“Batman Forever,” Alicia groaned. “Which was awful, by the way.”

“It’s… hard to describe,” Tabitha let the folds of dress drop back down and put her hands on her hips.

Though they’d had to wait to get into a dressing room, things had cleared out a bit and no one was pressing them to hurry. All of the people who’d been behind them in line were now in the other stalls changing, or had already finished and moved on towards where a traffic jam of people was waiting to be rung up for their purchases.

“It displays as a page, obviously. Or maybe not so obviously, I don’t know. It’s called your feed, and it’s like… picture it like an endless magazine page. You can keep scrolling down it forever and ever. All the um, ‘articles’ and photos though, they’re curated over from the list of other accounts you follow. Friends, family, fandoms. In semi-chronological order, it’s—not quite in the exact timing order that other accounts post things, because more popular things have more weighting. Popular meaning more people clicked like or thumbs up on it. It’s complicated.”

“Give us an example, then,” Elena pressed. “And spin around, let us see the whole thing.”

“Okay, so I’d open up… Facebook,” Tabitha cringed, looking from Alicia to Elena as she awkwardly turned around. “It’s honestly weird that you guys don’t know to judge me for that. There’s a lot of different kinds of feeds. Facebook, Twitter, Alphapage, Instagram, Weibo, Reddit—a lot of big ones even basically went extinct, like Tumblr, Google Plus. Anyways, so if I was on Facebook, that basically means um, older family members like my parents, a few of my coworkers I was on okayish terms with, and some old acquaintances. You would normally just, uh, assume that from me mentioning Facebook, and it’s not something I would have to explain.”

“So, all of these social mediums are like… different flavors for different occasions,” Alicia guessed. “Same as there being magazines that cater towards different groups. Right?”

“Right! Kinda,” Tabitha made a face. “Social media, not mediums. But like, Facebook is like the first big one for boomers, uh, people our parent’s ages, so while our generation moves on to all these other better ones, older folk just tend to stick to this one thing they know.”

“‘Face… book,’” Elena sounded out the name. “It… it sounds dumb, Tabby. It’s the first big social media?”

“I know it sounds dumb,” Tabitha groaned. “You’re not even wrong, it is dumb! But, uh technically no, the first big innovative platform was called Myspace. It sort of dwindled out of relevance and rebranded into some kind of music thing, though. I think. Facebook started off as strictly a social media thing connecting college and university students, but after a couple years opened up to everyone. It snowballed into a tech giant and remained relevant far past when it should have disappeared, simply because by then, everyone’s parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles were dug in there like ticks and not leaving.”

“I… don’t think my mom and dad would be into that kind of thing,” Elena said in a blunt voice. “Don’t see that happening.”

“They would, though, they will,” Tabitha said. “Because, it connects them to you. They know you’ll mostly be on these other online platforms where you can be yourself a bit more. They acknowledge and accept that whatever you post to Facebook is a bit more… sanitized. But, whenever you go on a beach trip or canoe trip and take pictures, whenever you get a new haircut, or start at a new job, they’ll want to see. Facebook’s where you’ll put that.”

“So, it’s like a family photo album?” Elena couldn’t help but remain skeptical. “We already have those, they’re called—family photo albums.”

“She’s kinda got you there,” Alicia raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a bit like that, and a bit different,” Tabitha shrugged. “I’m not saying all of these future things are completely ground-breaking, totally brand new concepts. A lot of things just sort of evolve and merge into bigger entities—that’s social media. Part of it’s that it’s a family photo album, but one your entire family sees in their feeds, instantly, as soon as you post up pictures. It’s instant connectivity.”

“But, people take the time to actually do all of that?” Elena crossed her arms. “It’s not instant if everyone has to go through and prepare it, put it all up. Magazine articles aren’t instantly created, they take an entire team of people to put together and a ton of hard work. Photography isn’t instant at all, either.”

“No—it’s instant,” Tabitha laughed, turning to regard Elena. “I really mean that; instant. These little amateur articles aren’t full-blown essays or travelogs, but you can expect a few lines or a paragraph of people you know, typing in what they want to say. Photos really are instant in the future. They aren’t taken to be developed over a weekend, then paid for and picked up, scanned through a fax or copier into digital, put on a disk, disk loaded into a computer, and then slowly uploaded to this internet feed. That whole process is instant. Everyone’s phones are portable, everyone’s phones have camera functionality, and everyone’s phones are connected to social media. From picture-taking to posting takes literal seconds, it’s just you tapping your finger on the screen a couple times, and—that’s it.”

“Very futuristic,” Elena rolled her eyes again. “How high-tech. How convenient.”

“Well, it’s coming and it can’t be stopped,” Tabitha said. “The cell towers are already going up, coverage will be complete. The different carrier networks are probably in their infancy being programmed or coded or whatever right now as we speak. Once everyone’s connected with their own little devices, that’s it—civilization changes, and social media is here for good.”

“We already have television,” Alicia pointed out. “It doesn’t sound that different.”

“It’s extremely different,” Tabitha said. “Television is media, but it’s one-way. One side creates and sends, the other side receives and watches. Social media is everyone creating and sending, everyone receiving and watching or reading.”

“So, it’s like anyone can have their own TV channel?” Alicia let out an incredulous laugh. “That’s great and all, but who would watch them?”

“Hundreds of thousands of people do set up their own Youtube channels or Podcasts or Twitch channels or streams of different kinds and become minor celebrities, yes,” Tabitha said. “Millions upon millions of people watch and comment and follow these things.”

“Wait, what about—like me, would I make a channel for like, showing off my artwork?” Alicia’s eyes lit up.

“You could,” Tabitha shrugged. “But, I’d imagine you would mostly use a platform specifically for that, like DeviantArt. While also posting your stuff to Twitter and Pixiv, maybe? To get your art the most reach. Even an unknown artist can suddenly get a big viral following if they post up Harry Potter fanart or something and groups pick up on it and share it everywhere.”

“Harry Potter,” Elena repeated. “Harry Potter like, the children’s book Harry Potter?”

“You…wait, you know about Harry Potter?” Tabitha appeared stunned. “How?”

“I haven’t read it, no,” Elena shook her head. “But I know it’s a book, it was at the last book fair.”

“Wow,” Tabitha chuckled, her gaze going far-off. “Well, it’s maybe one book now, but it gets big. Seven books, eight movies—because they split the last one into two films—and then a spin-off prequel trilogy and a few TV series, even.”

“Wait, big like, Star Wars big?” Alicia’s eyes went wide.

“Yes,” Tabitha gave a decisive nod. “About that big. Maybe more?”

“So, it’s really good?” Alicia felt herself getting hyped up. “Like, if it gets huge, it has to be really good, right? But, you’ll know all the good stuff so we can get right in on it!”

“It’s—” Tabitha’s expression went through a full range of faces from smiling to cringing and back again towards laughter. “It’s something. Oh, it’s not bad, except maybe the spin-off stuff where they were obviously just milking it’s brand name value. Harry Potter’s a very… compelling series of youth novels that you’ll enjoy reading, just—some parts don’t hold up too well if you think about them too hard, stuff like that. The fanbase also started to get a little cringy, it was always an alpha meme that ‘lennials and zoomers couldn’t grasp anything going on in politics without relating it in Harry Potter terms.”

Alicia exchanged a confused glance with Elena and then arched an eyebrow back at Tabitha.

“Okay…” Alicia ticked up three fingers one at a time. “Alpha meme, lennials, zoomers?”

“Oh, uh, those are the generations,” Tabitha explained. “Generation Y is us, we get called millennials or just ‘lennials. If you were born anywhere from ninety-five to two thousand and ten you get labeled gen Z, they get called zoomers. After that is generation alpha, and then generation beta, which is this entire stupid rabbithole of memes all on its own.”

Tabitha stared back at them for a moment.

“Oh, um, memes are inside jokes on the internet, conveyed with poorly put together images. Mostly… recognizable faces or expressions from different things we associate with certain reactions or situations. Or mashups of older memes, lazily applied to whatever current context with someone shopping—um, photoshopping in a line of text. That’s memes. I just had to explain memes, F-M-L. I’m so done.”

Tabitha had begun her explanation in earnest, but her expression drew into a pained one as she continued, until she delivered the last bit with a somehow defeated look of disbelief, as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying. The redhead then turned on her heel and strode back into the dressing room, closing the door behind her. A distant thump that followed may have been Tabitha knocking her forehead against the far wall in aggravation, or that might have been Alicia’s imagination—with their strange friend again out of earshot it was difficult to tell.

“See?!” Alicia folded her arms and glared at Elena. “That, all of… that. You’re trying to tell me she made all that up, she just happened to come up with all these super convoluted explanations with all their own weird vocabulary that probably requires graphs and charts to actually make sense of, on the off chance that one of us might bring it up whatever related subject someday?!”

“I don’t know!” Elena held out her hands and gave such a shrug this time that her shoulders remained raised for a full second. “She’s like—she does improv acting practice stuff with her mom. She’s really smart. Creative. So, she’s good at… stuff like this. I guess.”

“Doesn’t explain her prepping for the shooting,” Alicia snarked. “She knew it was about to happen, and was like, literally getting ready for it.”

“No offense or anything, but she lives in a bad area,” Elena countered. “Maybe she saw someone get hurt, or was afraid there’d be a—I don’t know—a robbery, or a stabbing, or people fighting. She’d think about those sorts of things, more than a normal person like us would. Her whole background of being in a trailer park makes her like, more inclined to hyper fixate on her future and the future in general, and what all she’s going to do to get away from living in poverty. A lot of things make sense that way.”

“She saw my artwork in the future,” Alicia said. “Specifically described it to me, when besides the crappy rough version of it I’ve tried that no one else but you has ever even seen is something that still only exists in my head! Explain that, ‘Lena.”

“I don’t know how to explain that,” Elena admitted with another shrug. “We’ll figure that out.”

“What are you gonna do if she’s right about the terrorist thing?” Alicia asked. “Are you gonna believe her then?”

“She’s not right about the terrorist thing,” Elena shook her head.

“You saw her get super worked up about it, you know she believes it’s gonna happen,” Alicia dropped her voice to a harsh whisper, flicking eyes back towards the changing room door. “So, if it happens for real…?”

“It won’t, it’s just—it’s a bunch of little random things coming together, then that gets spun into something else by her imagination,” Elena reasoned. “Think about it. Plane hijackings? Come on, Alicia.”

“What?” Alicia challenged. “It could happen.”

“What big blockbusters just came out in the past few years?” Elena gave her a sardonic look. “Air Force Once came out last year—the one with Harrison Ford as the president, remember? Right before that—Con Air, with Nicholas Cage.

“She saw these high profile movies about plane hijackings, and they made some kind of subconscious thing on her. Just like a whole bunch of impressionable people got scared to get on flights for a bit, right after those came out, I heard my parents chuckling over that from the news. But, Alicia—it’s not real.

“There’s airport security, there’s all sorts of safety things, there’s metal detectors and x-ray scanner machines that see through luggage and drug-sniffing police dogs and everything, in real life you just can’t bring guns onto an airliner and wave them around and take it over. You can’t even fire them, because that decompresses the entire plane, like, explosive decompression. Cabins are pressurized—I’ve been on a plane trip before, I know what I’m talking about.”

Alicia had gotten herself worked up a bit into opposition over Elena doubting Tabitha so much, but each of Elena’s words dampered more and more of the ire she felt. Just like Tabs got so convincing when she went on about these hypothetical futures, Elena’s reasoning started to feel just as sound and grounded. She’s—yeah she does make sense. Fuck. Am I just—naive? Do I just WANT Tabby to be special because she’s, uh, special to me? In that way? Am I letting feelings like, cloud my judgment?

“Not to mention—crashing them into buildings?” Elena went on. “That’s stupid and so pointless. If they wanted to just destroy big, high-profile buildings, they would just use bombings, that’s what terrorists do. Explosives are simple and effective. I mean, flying into a building? Like Japanese kamikaze pilots? There’s a reason that didn’t continue to be a thing even in war. Super impractical, a million things you can’t plan for that can go wrong.

“From Tabby’s version of it, you’d need criminals who are somehow also miraculously trained to fly jet liners, which is like a specialized profession, you’d almost certainly lose those actual valuable hijackers piloting the plane, you’d lose the plane itself, those cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the passengers? All of those could be ransomed for an unspeakable amount of money. C’mon.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Alicia grudgingly admitted. “Still, though.”

“The entire time listening to Tabby I was sympathetic that she’s worked up about it, but also like, are you serious?” Elena ranted. “If a fourteen year old girl like me can poke all sorts of holes in this right away, maybe it doesn’t magically become the biggest terrorist event ever in human history? All that airport security stuff aside, I don’t think an airliner’s autopilot would even let them just dive down into city airspace, and if they did? There’s air traffic control. Flight towers and everything, monitoring all the flight’s positions on those glowy green radar screens, like you see in movies. What she described literally isn’t possible.”

Elena sighed again.

“I just—I don’t believe it. Now, I’m not saying she’s lying to us, either. Yeah, I did see the way she got, how shaken up she was even just talking about it. I know she believes what she’s saying. That worries me even more, because—what happens when we get to whatever date and nothing happens? Does her whole constructed reality just crash down? Does she have a little breakdown, or something? I don’t know. I don’t know what all even pushed her so far that she got to these… yes, delusion sort of things, and that worries me. I’m really glad she’s away from her parents, at least.”

“Yeah… all that really worries me too,” Alicia said at last. “Things seem to be looking up, though?”

“I hope so, yeah,” Elena said. “You know she made her parents come to my church a couple Sundays ago? At First Presbyterian. Even that’s weird and surreal. It’s supposed to be the other way around, parents making their kids go. Her mom had this like, terrified look in her eyes the whole time, and the dad was just kinda—there. Going through the motions, showing up because they made him go. It’s so weird.”

“Ugh, you got to see Tabitha though,” Alicia grumbled. “I’m jealous. I hardly ever get to see her anymore, and our church is all the way out in Fairfield.”

“You’re Methodist, right?” Elena pursed her lips. “I think that’s where Tabby’s going this next Sunday, she should be going to church with the Williams and all of them. They’re Methodists. I might try to convince my mom to take us there for service. Matthew and Casey are both there, Olivia goes there, they actually have a big youth group there.”

“I want to,” Alicia let out an exasperated groan. “But, I don’t think my parents will even try it. My mom’s friends all go to the Methodist one over in Fairfield, so she won’t want to go to the one in Springton.”

“I get it, yeah,” Elena nodded. “But, like—talk to them about it. You need time with your friends, too. Right?”

“I—yeah, I really do,” Alicia affirmed. “Maybe I’ll bug my dad about it.”

They lapsed into companionable silence for a minute after that, because both of them had a lot to think about. Alicia really did want to believe Tabitha had been to the future. But, on the other hand Elena’s pragmatic rationality seemed just as realistic as Tabitha’s postulations about the future. There was surely some decisive proving point one way or another, but until then it felt like she was grappling to accept both outcomes at once. When the fitting room door opened and Tabitha walked out, Alicia’s attention jerked back to her as if her choice of outfit would prove something, be more impressive than the one Elena had chosen for her.

“It’s…” Alicia was simply baffled. “Huh. That’s it?”

“What do you think?” Tabitha for one seemed pleased, pirouetting one the ball of her foot so they could see the entire look. “I’d need eyeliner and probably a ballcap and tie to really pull the whole thing off, but. How do I look?!”

“You look… strange?” Elena seemed to struggle to phrase it in a polite way. “It’s cute, I guess, in a… boyish kind of way? Was that what you were going for?”

Unlike the nylon parachute pants Alicia had opted for, the ones Tabby had picked were a bit more militaristic looking, but with the many pockets adding volume they looked more like cargo pants on her petite figure. The top she’d paired with it showed a sliver of extremely pale tummy and otherwise seemed… okayish? Overall, the attire didn’t really make a distinct look, it was just kind of… different things worn together, without rhyme or reason. Alicia didn’t know what to think.

“He was a skater boy—

She said see you later boy—

He wasn’t good enough for her!

She had a pretty face—

But her head was up in space—

She needed to come back down to earth—!”

Out of absolutely nowhere, Tabitha suddenly sang a clever little ditty and bopped along to it.

The affected confidence to her voice magnified the cute-but-tough-girl attitude, and for a brief indescribable moment it all clicked and became more than the sum of its parts. It was a glimpse into something else, something beyond, something really special and compelling that maybe only Tabby could really see, that Tabitha was struggling to convey across to them. The moment passed almost before it even got going, and had Alicia feel like she almost just missed something really big and important.

“Yes? No?” Tabitha grinned down at the outfit again. “I think I really like it.”

“Yeah, it’s…?” Elena looked unsettled now when she spoke. “Go for it, then. If you like it—buy it, for sure. You can maybe make it work?”

“Yeah,” Tabitha agreed, seemingly unaware of the way they were both looking at her. “I mean, plus it has pockets. It has so many pockets!”

After spending more money and then wading through the masses of Black Friday shoppers, they found themselves gravitating towards the Sandboro Mall’s food court. It was even more crowded here, with no apparent vacancies across the wide swath of tables and lines forming up in front of each of the various food vendors. The greasy smell of Sbarros pizza combatted the fresh-baked aroma of pretzels from the Auntie Annie’s nearby them, but the Baskin Robbins and Manchu Wok across the way also looked pretty appetizing.

No! I can’t just keep having ice cream, Tabitha reprimanded herself. I shouldn’t really be having ANY of these. Just, oh my gosh they smell so GOOD…

“How am I so hungry all the sudden?” Alicia seemed to give voice to Tabitha’s rebellious thoughts in a daze of her own. “What time is it?”

“I don’t have my phone,” Tabitha replied on reflex.

“Your… phone?” Elena chuckled. “Uh, you mean your watch?”

“Same thing,” Tabitha sighed, putting her hand to her forehead. REALLY starting to wish I hadn’t let ‘Licia talk me into bringing Elena into the loop on the time travel stuff. I KNEW Elena was going to be against it, never believe it’s even possible.

“It’s a future thing,” Alicia explained in a cheeky voice. “Tabs said that they call everything a phone in the future. Even if it’s a watch, or a camera or whatever. Sort of like how every restaurant in the future is called Taco Bell—no matter what kind of place it is.”

“Okay, I’ve seen that one at least,” Elena perked up. “The one where like, whenever somebody swears, the programmed stuff automatically hears it? And prints out a fine for you, hah.”

“Let’s not forget the three seashells!” Alicia laughed.

“The—what? Seashells? Now I’m lost,” Tabitha couldn’t help but giggle. “What seashells?”

“It’s from—” Alicia paused, quirking her head. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Tabitha glanced around them, unable to make out more than holiday music over the sound of so many other conversations going on around the food court plaza.

“Someone just called my name, I heard—” Alicia turned and then did a little hop. “Hey! Over there.”

To Tabitha’s surprise, she discovered Matthew standing up over at one of the tables. Sitting there with him were Casey and Hannah, the former leaning back her chair to wave and the latter focused on unboxing a toy of some kind. It wasn’t easy to pick their way past all the seated people in the food court while handling all the purchases the girls had already made, but they did manage to squeeze through over to them, and they gathered in tight around the four seater table.

“Hey hey hey,” Casey drawled. “What’s shakin’, ladies?”

“Hi Hannah!” Alicia waved. “Do you remember me?”

“Yeah,” Hannah looked up. “You’re—I remember you.”

“Of course she remembers Alicia,” Matthew helpfully supplied. “Hannah, you met her at the Halloween party. She goes to art club with Casey and me.”

“Alicia,” Hannah repeated. “I remember you.”

“Then, this is Elena,” Tabitha reintroduced her friend. “You won’t recognize her, because she dyed her hair and changed her look.”

“I still recognize you,” Hannah nodded, distracted by her toy.

It was more than a little exasperating to realize that either Matthew or Casey was continuing the trend of buying the little girl even more things, but perhaps it was difficult to take Hannah out now without buying her something. From the packaging all over the table this seemed to be some doll with Generation Girl: Dance Party branding, by appearances a kind of Barbie that had been trapped inside a late nineties MTV special. Off to the side a few trays were stacked, a pile of crumpled napkins and paper cups atop them from whenever they’d eaten.

“Were you waiting for us?” Tabitha asked, turning a sheepish smile towards Matthew. “I’m sorry, we lost track of time. I don’t have my ph—um, I didn’t bring a watch.”

“Nah, we were just—here, sit, please,” Matthew seemed to realize they were all standing.

“We were just chillin’,” Casey filled in. “Right, Hannah? Chillin.’”

“We were just chillin,’” Hannah repeated. “We already ate.”

“It’s suuuper crowded everywhere, and we already walked around a bunch,” Casey stretched out her arms. “Looks like you guys bought a ton of stuff, wow.”

“Girls, c’mon, sit,” Matthew asked again with a laugh. “I got told to look out for all of you, especially Tabitha. Make sure you’re not overwhelmed by all of, you know, the Black Friday craziness crowds here.”

“Yeah, siddown,” Casey agreed. “Hannah, there’s only four chairs and you’re little—why don’t you come sit on my lap?”

“Actually, I think we were ‘bout to go around and get food,” Alicia said, turning to Elena. “‘Lena—you’ve gotta let me buy your lunch, since you bought me a thing.”

“Oh—sure,” Elena gave another trademark shrug. “Cool.”

“Tabs?” Alicia asked. “Buy you lunch?”

“Oh, I—no, no,” Tabitha shook her head. “I had a, um, a big breakfast.”

“You did not!” Hannah looked up from fiddling with her doll. “You only had two slices of toast!”

“Hannah,” Tabitha wore an aggrieved expression. “You can’t just tattle on me. That’s not cool!”

“Good job, Hannah!” Alicia praised, offering the seven year old a high-five. “Tabs—buyin’ you lunch, don’t argue. Either of you feeling Wendy’s?”

“Wendy’s is cool,” Elena nodded. “I’m cool with whatever.”

“We can hold down the table here for you, watch your stuff,” Matthew said. “You’re—wow, you guys did buy a ton. Electronics Boutique?”

“Christmas stuff for my cousins—don’t peek!” Tabitha quickly interjected, raising her eyebrows and jerking her head in a meaningful way.

Matthew’s eyes quickly darted towards where Hannah was being pulled into Casey’s lap, showing he understood. Hannah had way too many things, and Tabitha felt sure that if Hannah knew there was a literal pile of brand new Gameboy Colors in their bag, she would also want one immediately. While Tabitha would welcome Hannah into their little group if they were all going to play Pokemon together, she felt it was a conversation to be had first with Mr. and Mrs. Macintire.

“Alright c’mon, c’mon, I’m starving!” Alicia flashed Tabitha a bright smile. “And you need to start getting meat back on your bones, missy. No more skipping meals, or fasting, or whatever fashion model stick figure… bulimic fad diet thing you’re into. Hannah’s gonna make sure you’re eating well when we ask her. Right, Hannah?”

“Right. You have to eat to have energy, school even says so,” Hannah reasoned. “We’re gonna be generation girls, so we need lots of energy. Generation girls gotta groove.”

“That’s right, babe!” Casey echoed, leaning over Hannah to pat out a little drum beat on the tabletop with her palms. “Us generation girls, we gotta groove.”

They ordered burger meals together, and Elena watched Alicia hound Tabitha about eating everything on her tray. None of them missed the fact that Tabby slipped almost all of her fries over towards Casey and Hannah, who were both more than happy to help her finish them. Everyone being together like this was fun, although also a little bittersweet. Elena was over Matthew, mostly, but there was still a little heartache watching him with Casey, as well as a few more realizations she wasn’t sure she was ready for.

Whatever kind of girl Elena imagined Matthew would go for, Casey wasn’t what she would have ever pictured. Rather than popular or gorgeous, Casey was just—Casey. A laid-back social butterfly who didn’t seem to put much effort into how she presented herself. She didn’t flirt with Matthew, she didn’t try to impress him, they were simply friends from youth group and art club. Friends who’d apparently known each other for forever and gotten closer and closer until they realized they were actually a couple. Not a high school dating couple, they’d just casually transformed from teen friends into something like an old married couple. It was weird how not weird it turned out to be.

Abnormally normal, Elena decided. I’m not after Matthew anymore really now, but I think I’m even more jealous than I was before?

She wanted a boyfriend, but Elena wasn’t exactly sure where a boyfriend was going to appear while she was stubborn on adhering to her gothic persuasion. Ziggy seemed to imply there were a lot of guys for them at shows, which as described seemed like something halfway between a house party and a concert. Those were all a long drive away though, and new friendship or not Elena wasn’t sure she trusted Ziggy so much that she’d go to a show with her. Her mind kept turning back towards it however, because somehow Tabitha had been to one of those already, to see the girl who sung that My Immortal song at some small venue in Arkansas.

It was something to think about.

Conversation turned this way and that while they sat with Hannah, Casey, and Matthew, but Alicia and Tabitha both avoided bringing up any of the future talk, so Elena respected that. Everyone missed Tabitha and wanted her to come back to Springton High, but also each of them were reluctant to actually ask her to—no one could fault her for leaving. Not after getting pushed and breaking her wrist, not after Erica’s absolute insanity.

Then Casey and Matthew both instead pivoted to trying to invite Elena into the school’s art club, while Alicia wore that mysterious smile of hers, pretending to focus only on her burger. Elena was baffled by their interest, because it should have been clear to everyone that she was not an artist. She didn’t draw, or paint, she didn’t have a camera and hadn’t tried photography. After giving them two yeah, maybes and a huh, I’ll think about it, they finally seemed to be dissuaded, but them asking her at all seemed… suspect.

Do they think there’s some sort of… correlation, between being GOTH and feeling compelled to express yourself with art? Elena wondered. Maybe there is? For Ziggy it’s definitely just her thing for music, but for me it’s… I don’t know. I’m not sure yet.

She might give drawing another try, privately, but she wasn’t sure it was suited for her personality. Elena felt sure that she would look upon whatever it was she created, judge it as inadequate and inconsequential, and not want to keep trying to improve. That was already how her stabs at writing poetry had gone. There was a need within her to really excel at whatever she was doing, and realizing her mediocrity at artistic things made her lose all patience for them right away.

I know those kind of things take practice, just—I want to go with something I have more feeling for, something where I have a talent I can bring to bear. Poetry isn’t it. Drawing probably isn’t it, either. I’m—or I was—a people person. My passion is people person things. So, naturally, I instead fuck everything up trying to go goth, because at the time it just made complete sense.

After eating, the two groups decided to go their separate ways. Matthew, being the gentleman, offered to take Tabitha’s purchases home since he was going that way with Hannah anyways, so they discreetly separated out the two Gameboy Colors that Elena had bought from the rest. Unburdened of most of the bags, the three girls waved goodbye to Hannah and headed up the escalator to start checking out the shops on the Sandboro Mall’s upper level.

A now overexcited Alicia was asking Tabitha about the Pokemon games they would be playing, and Elena listened from the side while taking the time to properly brood on her thoughts. Despite the friends finally having a rare big get-together here—Elena honestly couldn’t help but feel peeved at Tabitha. As she soul searched the why in hopes of finding the source of her annoyance, there wasn’t any one particular thing that was bothering her. It was a whole slew of little things, all adding up into a gnawing frustration.

The big one is that she didn’t take Ziggy seriously at all, Elena pursed her lips. Like, I don’t know what I could have even expected with those two meeting, but something about the whole encounter just… rubs me the wrong way.

Playing the situation back out in her head made some jarring inconsistencies stand out. Ziggy was in her element there at the Hot Topic kiosk in the center of the store. Most everyone that went in there to browse through things were gothic to some degree or had that kind of subculture inclination. Elena knew that Ziggy would throw hostile banter towards anyone entering into her store that was dressed too wholesome, clean-cut, or ‘preppy.’

So, it’s not Ziggy that was off—Ziggy was true to character, Elena decided. It’s Tabitha. Tabitha was… OFF. Tabitha’s not like that with confrontational situations, like anytime with Carrie she was always kinda backpedaling. Avoiding her eyes, while trying to be all mature and sensible, phrase things towards some sort of… diplomatic compromise. But, with Ziggy she just wasn’t, and that’s weird. Ziggy can come on really strong, she’s older than us, she can be intimidating.

But, Tabitha wasn’t fazed at all.

It was incongruous with Tabitha as a person, the somewhat flippant ‘oh, it’s just my future perspective’ response they got from Tabitha afterwards rankled, and something just didn’t add up. Why did Tabitha’s future perspective excuse only seem to apply to selective situations? If Tabby was so confident and outspoken, why didn’t she stand up to all of the girls arrayed against her back in Springton High? How could somebody simultaneously be this timid shrinking violet and also waltz into Hot Topic to trade barbs with Ziggy without batting an eyelash?

After tormenting herself with this conundrum for almost an entire minute, Elena decided to just stop stewing in this if it was bothering her, and be straightforward Elena about it.

“Tabitha—if you’re really from the future, why were you so afraid of the girls at school?” Elena asked.

“She wasn’t afraid, she just avoided all the B.S.,” Alicia predictably leapt to Tabitha’s defense. “Because she didn’t want drama.”

“That’s…” Tabitha winced. “No, Elena’s right. I was afraid, am afraid.”

“Yeah, afraid of having to deal with their B.S. all the time,” Alicia snorted. “It’s not the same.”

“But, you stood up to Ziggy just fine?” Elena probed. “That felt different.”

“Hmm,” Tabitha’s eyes took that far-off look again. “I’m sure it will seem silly to you. If I’m a sixty-year-old lady, or if I have the memories from my sixty-year-old self, why would I care what teenage girls at school think? The thing is… I wouldn’t have let them get to me if I was still sixty. But, right now, I’m not sixty. They obviously won’t treat me with any deference because of a perceived age difference, there’s no way for anyone else to know that I’m not as I appear to be. And, the shadow they cast on me from my last lifetime was… a long one. I did think it might be easier to deal with, coming back again like this. In some ways, it is. But, mostly it’s not.”

“So, you’re fine with Ziggy, because she didn’t cast a long shadow over your heart, last lifetime?” Alicia asked, interested.

“In part,” Tabitha shrugged. “I didn’t have friends who were—well, at that age I really just didn’t have friends—but later on in life I had Julie, and Julie was… you know, edgy. Her writing was dark and horrifying and maybe a little too sexual in the wrong sort of ways. I like to imagine that back in her teen years, she might have been a lot like Ziggy.”

“You mentioned her before,” Alicia remarked. “Julie. You brought her up back then, the night of the shooting when I slept over at your place.”

“I—yes,” Tabitha admitted with some difficulty. “I did.”

“Julie?” Elena asked, feeling that this was another opportunity to catch Tabitha up. “You haven’t talked much about people from your… previous life. Where’s she now?”

“She… doesn’t exist yet,” Tabitha murmured in a low voice. “Julie won’t even be born for another two years.”

“Wait, so she’s—you have, er—had, a friend that much younger than you?” Alicia seemed puzzled. “She’s zero years old? Negative two years old?!”

“Yes, Alicia,” Tabitha said in a dry voice. “She’s negative two years old. Julie was my best friend, she was in her twenties and I was… getting towards forty when we started talking all the time online over Discord, which is… it’s a chat program in the future.”

“So, are you going to find her again when she, uh, grows up?” Alicia laughed. “Reconnect with her, be friends again?”

“Not as friends, no,” Tabitha shook her head. “I’m going to adopt her. I guess I’ll be… something more like a mother to her, really.”

“You… what,” Alicia goggled at her. “That’s—weird? Isn’t that kinda weird?”

“I don’t have any other choice,” Tabitha said in a matter of fact tone, rubbing absentmindedly at the fiberglass of her cast. “Even if it means things change for her so much that she never grows up into being the person who was my friend. Maybe especially so. When she got to be around our age—twelve, thirteen, fourteen-ish, her dad started molesting her. I’m not going to let that happen, I can’t let that happen, so I’m not going to. No matter what. I don’t care if I have to fucking kidnap her as a child. I’m stealing her away from all that, before any of that happens. And, I’ll deal with the consequences as they come, if it comes to that.”

“Uhhh…” Elena and Alicia shared a baffled look.

Is this—is she speaking in code? Saying ‘Julie’ when she’s actually talking about herself? Elena immediately felt like she was on full alert. Because—what the fuck. The ages even match up. If Tabitha’s dad has been molesting her, or anything like that… That’s just not okay. That’s NOT okay.

“When I turn twenty one, I’ll legally be able to adopt,” Tabitha continued. “Julie’ll be six then. I’m helping out the Macintires with Hannah right now, Hannah’s seven, almost eight. So, this with them is my crash course trial run in whether or not I’m good with kids, I guess. For if I try to go through and do things the legal route, have Julia officially become my adopted daughter.”

“Julia? Or Julie?” Elena asked.

“Julia, Julie for short,” Tabitha explained. “Or Brittlestar, online. Julia B. Brittany—J.B. Brittlestar was her pen name, back when we were both in that purgatory between Royal Road serialization and actual publishing with our fictions. I honestly don’t know what the ‘B’ stood for in her middle name, maybe I never really remembered. It was something stupid, she did say that. Bethany? Julia Bethany Brittany? Her profile pic was always a spiky-looking starfish with one of those stupid smug anime faces on it. She was an artist, too—ah, Alicia, you would have liked her.”

“So, she was a web friend?” Alicia arched an eyebrow. “Or, a real life in-person friend?”

“Both, we used to meet up,” Tabitha quirked her lip. “Well, sort of. She was always traveling, always on the move from one place to another. I guess sometimes she just made sure to stop through and visit me whenever she could, made sure my apartment in Springton was on the w