004 | What The Journal Doesn't Say
646 Words
She looked at him from halfway down the stairs.
He wasn't pushing. He was just standing there with his hand in his pocket and his eyes not quite meeting hers, like he'd said the thing and was now prepared to take it back if she needed him to.
She didn't need him to.
"The important things," she said.
"Like what."
She came back up two steps. Not all the way. Just enough.
"The things that would change how someone treats me if they knew." She paused. "I'm not telling you here."
He nodded. That was enough for him apparently.
They went their separate ways and she walked to her next class and sat down and didn't retain a single thing the teacher said for the entire period.
She found Hana at her locker after, two packets of chips balanced on top of her bag.
"Sour cream or barbecue."
"I'm not hungry."
"Wrong answer."
Nora took the sour cream. Hana ripped open the barbecue.
"I saw you walk out of Lit with Caiden Yoo."
"We have the same class."
"So does half the school."
Nora swapped out her books. "He helped me with something yesterday apparently. Sora showed up at the gate."
Hana went still. "Sora was here?"
"Journal said so. Caiden stepped in. We have an arrangement." She closed her locker. "He pretends to be my boyfriend until Sora stops coming around."
"And you trust him."
"Past-me did. I trust past-me."
Hana followed her down the hallway with the look she got when she was calculating how worried to be. Nora had written about that look enough times to recognize it without thinking.
"He's not bad," Hana said finally. "Something happened with his family last year. He kind of went quiet after. But he's not the type to make things weird."
"Good. I don't need weird."
They pushed out through the side exit into the cold air alongside the building.
"Will you do something for me," Nora said.
"Depends."
"I'm going to write about today tonight. If I get something wrong, will you check it." She paused. "You can read the entry tomorrow."
Hana looked at her with the expression that was never quite one thing. Not sad exactly. Not fine either.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "I'll check it."
They reached the gate and said goodbye at the corner and Nora took the long way, the route past the small park with the two vending machines. She sat on her bench, not the one with the man always sleeping on it, and put her bag down.
The thing people never understood was that she wasn't absent. She was completely, entirely present. Everything landed on her with full weight. She felt all of it.
She just couldn't keep it past morning.
She was still sitting there looking at the vending machines when footsteps stopped nearby.
She looked up.
Caiden stood at the edge of the path with his hands in his pockets, looking at her like he hadn't expected to find her there.
Neither of them said anything.
Then he sat down on the other end of the bench, leaving plenty of space, and said nothing.
She looked at the vending machines. He looked at whatever he was looking at.
A minute passed.
"You followed me," she said.
"I walk this way sometimes."
"The station is the other direction."
He didn't say anything to that.
She looked at him. He was looking at the ground in front of him, jaw slightly tight, like he was still thinking about the stairwell question and hadn't let it go.
"The two pages," she said.
He looked at her.
"I'll tell you," she said. "But not here. Not like this." She shifted on the bench. "Buy me something from the vending machine and I'll tell you."
He looked at the vending machines. Back at her.
He got up without a word.
- Writer
