The next few days went by agonizingly slowly. I trudged the halls with heavy feet and a heavy mind from one class to the next, not even bothering to talk to Kye who attempted to get me to talk. After a while he gave up with a heavy sigh and moved along ahead of me.
Those days I was alone, Kye having left during third period every day. It felt like my heart was overwhelmingly heavy once again, like I’d just lost my dad again. There was another weight present there, a fresher one that was caused by the betrayal that I felt when Kye had left. My best friend had left me there, sitting alone in a crowded lunch room while everyone eyed me and whispered false rumors. Somehow, those whisperings seemed to be louder than normal.
It had been three days since I had lost my father’s journal and you could tell it was starting to take its toll on my physical body. Purplish bags had started to appear under my eyes, my hair hung a little limper, and I hunched over a little more. Shuffled my feet a little more. It was like I was a fresh made zombie, not sure how to work my own body.
I stumbled into my room, throwing my bag lifelessly in the corner of my room before flopping down in my chair in front of my desk. My elbows settled on my wooden desk, leaning my head into my hands and using them as a prop.
I wasn’t sure what to do anymore. It felt like I had nothing to live for anymore, nothing at all. I was experiencing the same reason what I had distanced myself from people in the first place. To avoid being broken again. But sometimes, it seemed like life just loved to throw different things at you. It loved to make you dance as it played Russian Rullet. At the moment, it seemed like it had added another bullet to my chance. All I had to do was wait for fate to pull the trigger at the right time.
My hands ran over the drawer that I had hidden the journal in for all these years. I’d widdled out a little compartment in the bottom of the drawer, just big enough for the journal to fit in without shaking around. It had come in handy more than once that I had thought of that because when my mother ransacked my room, she tended to pull out the drawers and shake them. Why couldn’t she see the journal you ask? I’d cut out a wooden plate that would fit exactly the right way as if it weren’t there. It fit snuggly enough to where I had to use a pry of some sort to pop it open, but it was perfect enough to where if she tossed the drawer upside down it wouldn’t fall out.
Gently pulling open the drawer I clambered over to my bed, searching my pillows before finally pulling out my prize. A butter knife I kept in the pillow case for prying off the wooden plate. Jimmying it into a small, unnoticeable crack I wiggled it around biting my cheek gently in the process. Finally it came loose and I picked up the slab, placing it on my knees.
My hand flew to my mouth at what I saw, my heart skipping a beat in the process. There in the secret hiding spot that no one knew about, not even Kye, was my dad’s journal. I picked it up, running a shaking hand over the cover. I could have cried from sheer joy at that moment, but I didn’t. I didn’t like to cry very often, I’d promised my dad I wouldn’t cry.
Something small and white fluttered loose from one of the pages and landed on my foot. Scooting back a bit so I could reach it I picked up the small piece of paper, its edges torn and frayed and ink seeped through here and there as though someone was pressing a bit too hard on the pen.
I thought you might want this. Try not to lose it again.
The note read. Peering closely at the handwriting it seemed eerily familiar for some reason, yet I couldn’t put my finger on who it belonged to.
That still nagged at me to this day.
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