010 | The Diary Finds Him
844 Words
She read the note three times.
Three words. Same handwriting each time no matter how many times she looked at it. She folded it back under her notebook like that would do anything useful and spent the rest of class staring at the board without retaining a single thing.
Across the room Sora had turned back to face the front. Calm. Like he hadn't just slid a note across mid-lesson, like he hadn't transferred back without warning, like none of this was something he'd done on purpose.
She pressed her foot flat on the floor and breathed.
The journal said walk the other way. Said he used her condition against her, started arguments knowing she'd forget them by morning. Said she ended it for good reasons and to trust those reasons even when she couldn't feel them.
She trusted the journal.
But the journal wasn't sitting two rows from him right now with no memory of what his face looked like when he was actually sorry versus when he was just waiting her out.
She pulled her phone out under the desk.
Opened Caiden's contact. New this morning, still felt strange.
he's in my class. sent me a note. says he wants to talk.
She put the phone face down on her knee and watched the board.
Twenty seconds.
Don't answer it. I'll be at the door when the bell rings.
She read it twice. Put the phone away. Looked at the board.
Did not look at Sora's side of the room for the remaining eleven minutes even though she felt the pull of it the whole time, that specific thing that happened when someone was watching you and you were pretending not to notice.
She noticed. She didn't look.
The bell rang and she was up first, bag on her shoulder before most people had moved. She kept her eyes on the door and walked straight to it and Caiden was already there, exactly where he said he'd be, leaning against the wall across the corridor with his arms loosely crossed.
He looked at her. She looked at him.
"He's behind me," she said.
"Not yet. Still packing up."
"Okay. Let's go."
They walked without hurrying. Fast enough to put distance between them and the classroom, not fast enough to look like running. She could feel Caiden slightly behind her and to the side, that quiet positioning he always did near crowds.
They made it to the stairwell and she was two steps from the door when she heard it.
"Nora."
Sora's voice. Not loud. Not aggressive. Just her name said like it belonged to him.
She stopped. Caiden stopped half a step after.
She turned.
Sora was at the end of the corridor, backpack on one shoulder, looking more tired than she expected. His eyes moved to Caiden. Back to her.
"Five minutes," he said.
"I don't think I want to," she said.
"You don't even remember why we broke up."
"No. But I wrote it down."
"The journal isn't the whole story."
"It's my story," she said. "That's enough."
He looked at Caiden again, that kind of look that was asking something without asking it directly.
"How long," he said.
"Not relevant," Caiden said. Flat. Not unkind. Just closed.
Sora looked back at her. "I came back to explain. That's all."
"I know," she said. "And I'm still saying no."
She turned to the stairs. Caiden turned with her.
They went down and she kept her breathing even and didn't say anything until they pushed through the door at the bottom and the hallway noise wrapped around them and Sora's voice was somewhere above and gone.
She stopped. Put her back against the wall. Closed her eyes for three seconds. Opened them.
Caiden was in front of her. Not crowding her. Just there.
"He said the journal isn't the whole story," she said.
"People say that."
"What if he's right."
Caiden was quiet for a moment. Actually thinking about it.
"Past-you made a decision," he said. "And you already know which one of them you trust more."
She held his gaze.
She did know. She'd known the second she read the note and her first instinct was to text Caiden. That was its own answer.
"I'm going to write about this tonight," she said. "Everything. I need you to know that I know right now, while I still remember feeling it, that I made the right call."
He nodded once.
They started walking and she thought about Sora's face when she said no and the way her voice hadn't wavered and she filed that feeling away as carefully as she could.
She was going to write it down word for word.
She wasn't going to let that one slip.
But when they turned the corner toward the cafeteria she stopped.
Because Sora was already there.
Standing near the entrance like he'd taken a different route. Like he'd been expecting this.
He looked at her and said, "I know about the deterioration, Nora. Your mom told me. That's why I came back."
- Writer
