The things we never say.

Chapter 6

I didn't move.

I was scared as I began to read.

I just stared at the words until they began to blur.

"You shouldn't have started writing."

The words kept ringing in my ears. My heart was beating so hard I could hear it.

I reached for the notebook, then stopped.

What if whoever wrote that was still there?

I slowly looked around my room.

The window was closed.

The door was locked.

Nothing looked out of place.

Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't alone.

I picked up my phone and turned on the flashlight.

Nothing.

I checked under the bed.

Nothing.

I opened the closet.

Nothing.

I almost laughed at myself.

Maybe I was making everything worse.

Maybe I had written the sentence and simply forgotten.

That had to be it.

I walked back to the bed and picked up the notebook.

I stared at the handwriting again.

It looked exactly like mine.

The same slant.

The same pressure on the letters.

Even the way I crossed my "t".

I turned the page.

There was nothing.

I turned another.

Nothing.

Then I noticed something.

A small mark at the bottom corner of the page.

A date.

"17 October."

I frowned.

I checked the date on my phone.

"17 October."

My stomach tightened.

Why would I write the date?

I turned back to the first page.

The sentence I had written earlier was still there.

"If I forget, this notebook remembers."

Underneath it, there was another sentence.

One I hadn't written.

"It already does."

I dropped the notebook.

For a moment, I couldn't breathe.

I didn't sleep for the rest of the night.

Instead, I sat against the headboard with the notebook on the other side of the room.

At 6:42 a.m., I finally convinced myself to pick it up again.

I opened to a clean page.

My hand shook as I wrote:

"Who are you?"

I stared at the words.

Nothing happened.

I almost felt stupid.

Then, slowly, a line appeared underneath.

Not immediately.

Not magically.

It was more like watching someone write from the other side of the page.

Letter by letter.

"You know me."

I stopped breathing.

Then another line appeared.

"You just don't remember me."

I closed the notebook.

I didn't want to read anymore.

But there was one thing I couldn't stop thinking about.

If the person writing in the notebook was really me...

Then there had to be a version of me that remembered everything.

And if she remembered everything...

Why was she trying so hard to keep me from remembering?