⇾ 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐈'𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐘𝐎𝐔 | 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐦

| F O U R T E E N |

I twirled a pencil between my fingers agitatedly. I was sitting on John's floor. He was laying in his bed, his arms folded behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling.

"Well, we have to do something!" I said loudly.

"Well, I don't fucking know what you want me to do!" he shouted and I looked down at my lap, keeping quiet. I didn't really like being yelled at, so I didn't want to provoke him anymore. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "But I don't know how you're going to find a book about a band that doesn't exist yet."

"Well, it has to be somewhere," I said in a squeaky voice. I felt tears well up in my eyes and felt a hollowness in my heart. I missed my family, and I missed the rest of the band. I missed home.

I heard John's bed squeak as he sat up and looked down at me. "Oh, come on, Molly," he said gently. "Don't cry. Come here." He patted the spot on the bed next to him.

I stood up and went to sit beside him. I felt him wrap his arms around me and it immediately made me feel better. I leaned against him as I cried, allowing him to hold me. For quite a while, neither of us said a word. I knew that we both felt helpless. We didn't know why this was happening to us and we didn't know what to do about it.

"Where did you buy that book?" John asked me after a while, when I was finally calming down.

I shrugged. "Some local bookstore."

"Well, maybe we should go and check every bookstore in London," John suggested.

I looked at him with my eyebrows raised in doubt. "And how many bookstores is that?"

He shrugged. "I don't fucking know. Does it look like I read?"

I giggled. "Not really."

"Well, how about we go see about it, yeah?" he asked. Then, he leaned in closer. "It's a date."

♡︎ ♡︎ ♡︎

The bus rattled along as we travelled around to each bookstore we could find. We had grown into the he habit of finding a stretch of shops, then getting off and walking down the road, searching every shop that sold a book, and then we'd leave feeling quite discouraged.

The bus pulled into the station and we stood up. The sun was beginning to set now and we were running out of streets to wander down.

Despite how upset I had begun to feel, I couldn't help but marvel at 1967 London. There were so many bright colors on bulldog s and clothes that it was quite spectacular. We had stopped to get me a wardrobe change early in our travels so that I could fit in better, and the bright green minidress we had found was quite beautiful. I had always been fascinated with the fashion from this era, but never really had the guts to actually dress in it, so to have an excuse right now was very exciting.

I turned my head away from the window where I was watching all the people walk by back to John, who I caught staring at me. He blushed when he realized he'd been caught.

I smirked. "Whatcha lookin' at?" I asked teasingly as we finally stepped off the bus.

"You," he responded jokingly. "You look much nicer in these clothes than you did in your other clothes." He put on a dopey smile.

I rolled my eyes. "I daresay I like it better too." I laughed.

We started our walk down the street in silence. There was tension in the air. We could both feel it. We both knew what we wanted to say, but we kept quiet.

"Oh, look, there's another one!" I looked in the direction John was pointing and spied a bookstore called Bargain Bill's Books.

"Bargain Bill?" I asked inquisitively. "Who is that?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," John responded with a shrug. Then, he reached down and took me by the wrist. "C'mon, let's go look!" he enthused.

We entered the tiny and rather cramped shop. It smelled quite musty inside and it looked like no one had been there in years and years, but it was just cramped enough that it had a rather cozy feel to it nonetheless. If it was any smaller, it would be too cramped, and if it was a little bigger, it would just look strange.

Despite how small the store was, there appeared to be hundreds of books stacked on shelves lined all the way from the far left wall to the other side. There was a bizarre-looking spiral staircase that led up to a loft on the top floor, but there was a sign that said no entry, so we certainly would not be going up there.

"I feel like someone does witchcraft in here," John leaned over and whispered to me and I nodded my head in agreement. It was eerily quiet and I wasn't really a fan of it.

"Can I help you?" We both jumped at the sudden noise. Turning around immediately, we were met with a short, scrawny old man behind us. He had his eyes focused on us as he smiled happily. There were black, wire-tinned glasses perched on his nose that were slightly crooked and his hair was stark white. He looked to be no younger than eighty.

"Oh—uh—we're just looking," John said to him politely, placing his hand on the small of my back and turning me back around, leading me towards the bookshelves. "Let's get out of here quickly," he whispered quietly again. "It's pretty freaky."

"Agreed," I responded, my eyes still wide in shock. "Let's just look and leave."

We noticed pretty quickly that everything was alphabetized, so we went straight to the "L" section and began to sift through everything. Once we hit the bottom of the third "L" shelf, we both sat down, discouraged.

"This shop is sketchy," John said, hinting at his discomfort with Thea atmosphere around us for the third time. "And something tells me that this is going to have something to do with getting you back home."

"You think?" I asked him hopefully.

He nodded. "Yeah, I think. I dunno, maybe it's just a hunch, but I really feel like it will."

"Okay, well it's creeping me the hell out, so can we leave for now?"

He nodded. "We'll be back though. Maybe not when tis getting dark. That almost makes it worse." He chuckled.

We stood up off the floor and dusted our pants off. It appeared the floor was just as dusty as everything else.

"Hey, John?" I asked.

"Yes?"

"I bought you food for two weeks, so can you buy me some?" I smiled innocently.

He raised an eyebrow, then sighed. "Yeah, let's go get something, but it has to be cheap! I don't have a fancy fucking ice cream job like you."

I laughed. "I'm fine with anything. In fact, show me the best food that they don't have in America."

He broke into a wide grin. "Oh, now you're speaking my language," he said approvingly. Then, he began to leave the aisle. I stood still for a moment, watching him make his way down the aisle alone until he realized I wasn't following and he turned back around. "Coming?" he asked with a bright smile.

I bobbed my head up and down happily and ran to catch up with him.