Denying to herself what she thought happened...

[bookof_lies]

She finds the notebook sitting on her nightstand, the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes in the dimness of her basement room, just like it belongs there. She thinks it must be a joke, Billy snuck in the night before and put it there, or maybe even Hayley, but then she remembers that she'd never told anyone about it. Even if she had, they

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[jill_langston]

With her hands shoved into the pockets of her shorts, a pencil shoved through the thick bundle of hair at the nape of her neck, Jill wandered down the beach. Her sandles slapped against the bottoms of her feet as she walked, studying the figure on the beach as she approached. The girl sitting there was in her pajamas, but Jill had seen stranger things during her time on the island.

"Hi," she called as she approached, not wanting to startle the girl. She looked like there was something wrong, something bothering her.

[bookof_lies]

The woman is someone Tracy has never seen before. Tall and dark haired and friendly enough looking, but Tracy really wasn't prepared to deal with friendly just then. She had this crazy urge to bury her notebook in the sand. Maybe sit on it or try and hide it under her tank top. Anything to keep the woman from seeing it.

She wipes hastily at her eyes, plastering on a tense smile and turning her face toward the stranger without really lifting her eyes.

"Hi," she answers, and that's about as far as she gets. She doesn't know what else to say. Not when her mind is racing on overdrive, the book still clutched in her hands when she knows it has no business being there.

[jill_langston]

Even if the girl hadn't wiped at her eyes, Jill probably would have noticed something was wrong. A person could only spend so much time with Bob, trying to read his behavior before they got pretty decent at reading people in general. Considering she'd probably had one of her worst weeks on the island to date, Jill felt oddly sympathetic.

"You okay?" she asked, her eyes going to the book held in the girl's hands briefly before she looked back at her face. She was pretty. Young, definitely young, but pretty.

[bookof_lies]

"Oh, yeah... I'm fine," she insists, pressing her journal to her chest and folding her arms self-consciously across it, trying to hide as much of it as she could.

[jill_langston]

Thinking of her laptop, of the things other people have had arrive, Jill took a chance and asked, "Is that something that couldn't be here? Something from home?"

[bookof_lies]

"It's... yeah," Tracy murmurs, suddenly looking even more confused, "It's no big deal or anything. I just wasn't expecting it to be here."

[jill_langston]

"I would say that was the point of these things, but I'm not honestly sure what the point of them really is," Jill admitted. "I've heard of people getting horrible things."

[bookof_lies]

"It's not horrible," Tracy admits quietly, loosening her arms enough so that she can look down at the familiar book. Honestly, she didn't know what it was, "It just... I don't know. It shouldn't be here."

That part of her life had been put away long ago, tossed in the waste bin or shoved under her bed, hidden in the shadows. Gone, but not really forgotten. But that's what happens when you grow up, right? You put away childish things and move on. But that wasn't at all what she had done. She'd given up writing for a very different reason, and now, so far away from home, she couldn't help feeling stupid for throwing it all away.

[jill_langston]

In Jill's opinion, the island seemed to have too many things that shouldn't have been there, but she doubted that would be a particularly helpful observation and so she kept it to herself.

"I'm Jill," she offered after a moment. "I got my laptop." Which hadn't been so bad initially, but now every time she looked at it she saw all her failures as well as her accomplishments.

[bookof_lies]

"Lucky you," Tracy mutters, ducking her head and letting her hair fall down to shield her face.

"Tracy," she adds after a long pause, resting her chin on the edge of her notebook and looking up at the woman through strands of pale blond.

[jill_langston]

"Not so lucky me, actually," Jill admitted, her lips pursed thoughtfully as she looked out at the water. "It only served to remind me in all the ways I failed back home and how I can't do a damn thing about it here."

Not unlike that book, she imagined. "It'd be nice to go home, wouldn't it?"

[bookof_lies]

"Yeah," she admits quietly, toying with the hem of her tank top, "People keep telling me I can't. That there's no way, but how do they know that? What if there is a way, we just don't know it? I mean, people disappear all the time, maybe they did something so they could go home."

[jill_langston]

"I guess they don't know. Not really," Jill replied, her shoulders rolling a bit in response. "My friend Bob is working on a way to get home. I'm not sure how well he's doing."

[bookof_lies]

"If he figures it out, tell him to let me know, okay?" she says quietly, trying to keep her voice light but there's very little joking in her tone.

[jill_langston]

Jill looked down at that, watching Tracy before she nodded. "Of course," she said quietly. For another long moment she was silent, just watching the water and then she asked, "How long have you been here?"

[bookof_lies]

"Two months, I think," she answers, examining the tips of her pigtails like she's looking for split-ends, when really she's just trying to find something to focus on that isn't the woman or her magically-appearing notebook.