002 | The First Entry About Him
750 Words
The entry was two paragraphs long.
Nora sat on her bed with the journal open and read it twice. Her own handwriting looked back at her, small and unhurried.
Grabbed a guy's arm at the gate today. Caiden Yoo, Lit class, two rows behind you. Sora showed up and you panicked. Caiden played along without being weird about it. You asked him to keep pretending. He said fine. Three conditions: don't get attached, don't ask about the journal, don't feel sorry for you. He agreed to all three without making a face. He seems okay. Trust this.
She read it one more time.
Trust this.
Past-her had good instincts. She usually did.
She got dressed, made toast, forgot to eat it, and took the train with the journal in her bag and a name in her head she was already trying to attach a face to. Two rows behind her in Lit. Never raises his hand. She knew that from an older entry. She'd noticed him before apparently. Just never had a reason to do anything about it.
Now she did.
He was already at the gate when she got there.
Not waiting in an obvious way. Just standing slightly off to the side with his hands in his pockets, watching students go through. She almost walked past him. Then she stopped.
"Hey," she said.
He looked over. "Hey."
She shifted her bag. "So. You know about the journal."
"You mentioned it yesterday."
"Did I explain it? What it's for?"
"No."
She nodded. Past-her had decided to wait on that, which made sense. You didn't hand everything over at once. "I have anterograde amnesia," she said. "My memory resets when I sleep. Whatever happened yesterday is gone by morning."
He looked at her. His face didn't do anything dramatic. He just processed it the way you process something that changes a few things but not everything.
"So yesterday," he said. "You don't remember any of it."
"No. But I wrote it down."
"And you trust what you wrote."
"I trust the details. Specific things I couldn't have made up." She paused. "The entry said you just said fine. One word. That felt true so I kept it."
He was quiet for a second. "It was one word."
"I know. That's why I kept it."
They stood there while students moved past them, the usual morning rush, nobody paying attention. The sky was flat and grey, the kind that couldn't decide if it wanted to rain.
"Does it bother you," she said. "That I don't remember."
He thought about it, which she appreciated. He didn't just say no.
"Ask me again in a week," he said.
That was more honest than she expected. "Okay."
They walked through the gate and she matched his pace without thinking, slower than hers usually was. The courtyard was loud, someone dropping a water bottle near the fountain, two girls laughing at something on a phone.
"The journal," he said. "Do you write everything?"
"Everything that matters."
"How do you know what matters."
"I don't always. Sometimes I write something small because it felt true and then tomorrow-me reads it and doesn't know what to do with it." She paused. "But I'd rather have too much than not enough."
He nodded slowly.
They reached the building doors and he held one open and she walked through and the warm hallway air replaced the cold outside and neither of them said anything for a moment.
"The entry said you seem okay," she said.
He glanced at her. "That's what you wrote?"
"Past-me. Yeah."
"And you agree?"
She looked at him sideways. This boy she was meeting for what felt like the first time even though apparently it wasn't.
"So far," she said.
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile but almost.
They started up the stairs together and she was about to say something else when she saw it.
The pen.
He had it out, turning it between his fingers absently as they climbed, not writing anything, just turning it. She almost asked right then. But they had reached the top of the stairs and the corridor split and he said "see you in class" and turned and was gone before she could find the words.
She stood there for a second.
Then she went to her classroom and sat down and looked at the empty desk two rows behind her and thought about that pen the entire time before class started.
- Writer
