Amateur Book Society

I was new to this whole book club thing. 

But I was fairly sure closed curtains and four Victorian-style chairs surrounding a wooden table with only potpourri-scented candles for light read more as “VSCO girl seance” than “Amateur Book Society” like their poster had advertised. 

It was just me, and three other girls who had obviously been doing this a lot longer than me: Lilith, Opal, and Leanne. They greeted me into the room like three separate heads on the same mom-jeans-ed, cardigan-ed mythical creature.

“Welcome in, have a seat,” Lilith said.

“We invite you to our society,” Opal said. 

“Hello new amateur book lover,” Leanne said. 

They told me that, as an initiation into their society, I had to read for them the first few pages of their collective favorite book. The title? An Ever Changing Love Story. 

Blegh, a romance. The book’s cover was the least promising part. It was a photo of a man with his shirt off, a candy cane caught between his perfect teeth. Was I surprised though? What else was I expecting from a book society that admitted to their amateur title? I preferred a good gory mystery thriller over anything overtly romantic. When I said as much to the club’s members, they all were clear that I would not dislike the book.

“We insist, you must try it,” Lilith said. 

“I’ve read it ten times,” Opal said. 

“Oh, you’ll just fall right in,” Leanne said, to which the other two club members giggled. 

Oh, well. What harm would it do to just read the first page? It was a book.

I opened to the first page. Was this the year that the small town Christmas tree farm suffered without her, she wondered, if she was busy with her even planning job in the big city?

I felt a breeze blow in my face and looked up momentarily. I wasn’t in the Amateur Book Society’s seance anymore. The book (and really everything) had vanished, replaced with a generic-looking big city apartment, with high beige ceilings and a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a concrete jungle below. I was now seated at a white dining room table decorated with generic T.J.Maxx Christmas memorabilia. I had an empty plate in front of me, and a mug that read “Joy”  in Rae Dunn font. I wasn’t the only one at the table, either. 

The young man, whose face I recognized from the cover of the book, sat across from me at the table. He was in fact wearing a shirt this time. A checkered flannel rolled up to his elbows. At the head of the table sat a beautiful woman with long black hair and a siren stare. Unfortunately, it wasn’t aimed at me. She wore a long red dress with a dipping v-neck and matching ruby-red earrings. It was obvious who had put more effort into looking good today. 

“Thanks again for inviting us, Darcy,” the man said, addressing the host at the head of the table. 

“It was my pleasure, Ethan,” Darcy said, a grin spreading across her red lips. “How about a toast?”

Darcy swiped her black hair to the front of her neck, as if posing for a photo, and then raised a glass of red wine. I noticed the man, Ethan, also had a wine glass. My wine…was in a Rae Dunn mug. 

“Here’s to new friends, who may be with us a while, or for just a short time,” Darcy said. She leaned forward to clink Ethan’s glass, completely exposing anything else that was hidden under the dress’s neckline. I noticed that she decisively ignored my offered cup to toast as well. Her eyes remained trained on Ethan. 

“Drink up,” she said, and Ethan took her words to heart. He engulfed the contents of his glass in one gulp.

“Sorry again I only had two wine glasses,” Darcy said to me. The way she said it made me think she wasn’t sorry at all. Who was this chick? As a matter of fact, what was I doing here in the first place? 

Didn’t a toast usually occur during a meal? Where was the food?

Ethan reached across the table and took my hand in his. I held the urge to barf. What was he going to do next, pour his heart out?

“I know this must be hard for you,” he said sincerely, “but the Christmas tree farm will be fine without you this year. I want you to know that we understand you must feel so guilty since you’ve always done the event planning for the farm’s annual Nutcracker Festival. And with my mom’s recent passing, we weren’t sure if anyone would be able to pull that weight. But really, we’re all so happy that you’re here pursuing your passion in the big city.”

Dang, I wasn’t feeling guilty before but I sure was now. 

“Big city…Do you know where we are exactly?” I asked.

Darcy and Ethan stared at me blankly. And then Darcy began coughing. No, choking. How had she choked? There was literally no food at the table?

Suddenly, she was on the floor holding her throat and gasping for air. Ethan and I rushed to her side. Darcy began foaming at the mouth, and her gasps for breath got weaker and further in between until finally she went completely limp. 

I was no doctor, but this girl looked extremely dead. 

“Call 911,” I called to Ethan. He stumbled pulling a phone from his pocket, and then left the room. I’m glad he would be able to call an ambulance. I would have had no idea where we were if they had asked. But then, I heard sirens almost immediately outside already. 

Literally thirty seconds after Ethan had left the room, paramedics burst into the apartment. They swiftly belted Darcy to a stretcher and left in a hurry. Did she need company maybe? Shouldn’t we be going with her?

I looked to Ethan for direction, but he just stood staring at the doorway. Almost as if given an invisible cue, he turned to me and took both of my hands in his. He was much shorter than I had imagined. 

“Look, I know this is all happening so fast. But I want you to know I’ll always be here for you. Always have been, always will be. Would you like to discuss coming to visit me in the small town where we both grew up?”

Wait, what?

“Ethan--no. We can’t just ignore the fact that a woman just died in this apartment. We need to find out what happened.”

Ethan stared at me for a moment and then said, “But that’s not significant to the plot.”

“The what?”

He didn’t elaborate. 

“Maybe we should clean up a bit?” he asked.

Why not? In my confusion, I felt the urge myself to tidy things around the apartment. Darcy’s glass of wine had fallen over, leaving a red stain all over her tablecloth and carpet. 

I headed toward the kitchen cabinets to search for chemicals that might remove the stains. Ethan went to take the place settings from the table, reaching for my Rae Dunn mug of wine first. And then he immediately spilled it all over his flannel. 

“Oh no,” he said. But he didn’t seem that startled. And for some reason, he took this opportunity to remove his shirt. All he had on top was the flannel. He was now completely shirtless. 

Ethan had storybook abs, just like the picture on the cover of the Amateur Book Society’s copy of An Ever Changing Love Story. This isn’t real, I thought to myself. But that didn’t keep me from staring. 

I realized no one had addressed me by my name yet. I knew Ethan, I knew Darcy, but who was I in this storyline?

“What’s my name?” I asked Ethan, making sure to look at his eyes and not somewhere else.

“Hm, that’s a good question. What do you think your name is?” he said. 

That wasn’t an answer. In fact, that was an extremely sketchy way to address someone he had obviously known most of his life. 

“I think--I know it’s Elizabeth,” I said.

What had happened before I arrived in the book? Had all these characters just appeared when I opened An Ever Changing Love Story, or had they been living their lives this whole time without me here? Was any of that significant to the plot? I asked Ethan to tell me everything he remembered from this interaction with Darcy. 

Ethan looked much less surprised at this question than I had expected. He was still shirtless, but he seemed just as much at ease, taking a stroll over to the living room couch and taking a seat before saying anything. 

“Well, we showed up together to Darcy’s apartment. I’ve only been visiting you from our hometown for two days, but Darcy insisted that you come over for a meal, and so I came along, too. She didn’t offer us any food, she said ‘There will be plenty of time for that later,’ and then poured us all wine. And then…she choked.”

“Alright, well that doesn’t really tell me anything. She wasn’t very nice, though, was she?” I said.

Ethan shrugged. “I don’t know, she was a good enough host,” he said. His nonchalance shocked me. I thought back to how cold Darcy had acted toward me, and how inviting she had acted toward Ethan in comparison. Had Darcy invited us because she liked Ethan? 

I shook my head and laughed to myself. I was here for, like, two minutes and I was already trying to turn this romance novel into a mystery. 

I headed into the kitchen to search for things that would help me clean. Now there were two stains on the carpet--one from Darcy’s cup and one from mine after Ethan’s spill. And dude was lounging on the couch, being of no help at all. 

I started digging through Darcy’s cabinets. She was incredibly well-organized, and her assortment of glassware and plates were even sorted by color. There was a rainbow assortment of dishware, but nothing that would help rid her floor of wine. Next, I tried under the sink. Sure enough, next to dish sponges and pipe brushes was Shout stain remover and Arm and Hammer carpet cleaner. And rat poison. 

Rat poison served as a convenient way to kill off characters in mystery novels. But really, who was I to bring murder into a basic love story?

I laughed at myself again, but this time in self criticism. I had literally judged a book by its cover. No one had told me there would be any lack of mystery in this story, I had just assumed that the shirtless man on the cover told me all I needed to know about this place. 

Had Darcy planned to off me with rat poison? But then why had she been the one to foam at the mouth?

This called for a good old fashioned “confront the enemy” scene. 

“Why are we here at the hospital  again?” Ethan asked. 

I said nothing. I wasn’t ready to explain again why we had needed to come see Darcy. He would never understand. From my understanding, he was just a man written for a romance plot. 

After leaving the apartment, the book had transported us right to the entrance of Darcy’s hospital room. I loved fiction. 

Turns out, Darcy didn’t die. After being brought to the hospital, she only fell into a coma. I didn’t know how her being alive was still good for a romance plot? Maybe the lack of PG-13 themes of death.

I knocked on Darcy’s door. Obviously, there was no answer. She was unconscious on a hospital bed. 

I sat in the chair next to her and grabbed her hand. In a good detective story, there was always some sort of villain monologue. If I could just figure out a way to get her to talk…

“Is it really you?”

I looked to Darcy, who had opened her eyes. I couldn’t believe my luck. But, then again, I still needed to get a confession out of the would-be murderer…

“My love,” Darcy said. 

Love?

“Yes, my love,” Darcy said again, “you thought I would have forgotten about our relationship so easily? It would take more than poison to take me away from you.”

Darcy took a long breath to continue, and I didn’t want to cut her off. This was even juicier than I had expected. 

“I’ve always loved you,” Darcy said. “And it’s a shame your hometown farm boy had to come and step in the way of us.” A tear escaped down her pale cheek. “I had no intention of poisoning anyone, but when he showed up with you to my home, I couldn’t take it anymore. I set a glass of tainted wine in front of Ethan, but somehow I ended up with it. I’m so sorry.” 

The gears began to turn in my head. “So all of that coldness you showed toward me…”

“It was just a show,” Darcy said. “If he thought he was safe, if he thought he was the object of my desire, he was less likely to ask questions and then, with him out of the picture, it would be just the two of us. Don’t you remember all the fun we had after event planning meetings at the big city office?”

I paused for a moment. Up until this point, Darcy’s language had been almost too elevated to be part of this cheesy story. But with her mention of “the big city,” I remembered where I was. Would really no one have figured out Darcy’s situation if I hadn’t paused the main storyline to investigate? 

“Darcy,” I began, piecing together this convoluted tale. “Do you actually know where we are?”

“They’ve never told us,” Darcy said. They? “The story writers--we’re just supposed to follow a script, but this is the first time ever you’ve visited me after I am carried away from the apartment. I don’t have lines for this. It’s refreshing.” Her voice took a darker tone, and I realized she was no longer talking just about me. “It’s so sad that the girl swoons for Ethan every time. Especially when they see him shirtless.”

My heart stopped in my chest. This was all just a play. I had stepped into a book, messed with some of the more critical plot points, but somehow ended up being the victim of the storytellers’ romantic imagination.

I excused myself from the room and turned the corner to see Ethan slouched on a hospital bench. He really hadn’t gotten a shirt when we got here? 

“Hey,” I said to Ethan. He looked up at me and smiled as if we weren’t standing outside the room of his victim. 

“Tell me what happens with the wine,” I demanded. 

“The what?”

“The wine, dumbass. Tell me what you were told to do with the wine.”

“Oh, well, I’m supposed to spill a glass on my shirt so that it’s so ruined I have to take it off.”

“What else?”

“Ummm…Oh right, I’m also supposed to switch mine and Darcy’s wine glasses while she’s looking away. I’ve never understood that part of my script, but I guess I’m not really the guy in charge, am I,” he said, adding a genuine careless laugh at the end. 

And even with all that, I believed him. Poor dumb Ethan. He was literally just here to please the female lead. 

Solving this mystery made me realize that there were several more unsolved cases that probably needed addressing in this world. I needed to come back. I needed to save these poor characters, who the writers deemed “insignificant,” and give them a chance of their own. 

But for now, I had done it. 

“We’re done,” I said to Ethan. 

The same breeze that had brought me here began to pick up again. I could smell the familiar scent of potpourri candles in the book club’s meeting room. I didn’t want to leave yet. There were so many other unresolved points of this story. 

“Aw man, I didn’t even get my kiss” I heard Ethan say as I was whisked away.

I was back in the room of the Amateur Book Society. I didn’t realize I was breathing hard until I accidentally blew out one of the candles in front of me.

“So, how’d you like it?” Lilith asked.

“We’re eager to know,” Opal said.

“Would you recommend?” Leanne asked.

I paused, almost too eager to join into their chorus. 

“Can I borrow this book until our next meeting?” I asked. 

The three other members of the Amateur Book Society grinned and said in unison, “There’s a sequel.”