“I shall tell you what I believe. I believe God is a librarian. I believe that literature is holy...it is that best part of our souls that we break off and give each other, and God has a special dispensation for it, angels to guard its making and its preservation.”
Sarah Smith

Friday, October 24, 2014

The Diary

SATURDAY: Jami. I can hardly stand to think the words, let alone write them down in permanent ink. Jami is gone. Aunt Clare found her this morning, dead in her bed. I don’t know how I’m going to live without her.
Dead in her bed. Just dead in her bed.

SUNDAY: They found an empty pill bottle under her bed. So that’s it, then. Suicide. What was going on at that stupid performing arts school? She never told me. This never would have happened if she had stayed at Belmont High with me, with our friends. Where I could see her every day. Why wouldn’t she tell me?
I tried to get her to come out with us on Friday night. She wouldn’t, and I could hear in her voice that something was wrong. She said it was just a fight with Aunt Clare, and I believed her. Why did I believe her?

WEDNESDAY: The stupid funeral was today. Everyone always says how beautiful the dead person is, and how they almost look like they were still alive, only sleeping or something. She didn’t look alive. She looked pale and pasty and dead. It was the first time in as long as I can remember that she wasn’t singing.
Poor Aunt Clare had everyone over to the house after. Mom said she tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen.
When no one was looking I sneaked upstairs to the bathroom and pulled her diary out from where it was taped under the sink. I know I should have told Aunt Clare about it, but instead I brought it home. I just needed a little piece of her with me for a while. Only now I can’t make myself open it. It’s sitting next to me on the bed right now. But I can’t even touch it.

THURSDAY: This morning when I went to the closet to get dressed I saw the sweater she lent me on New Year’s Eve. I was stupid and didn’t even bring a jacket to the party. I thought it would mess up the “little black dress” look. She told me I was an idiot before we even left the house. But she still let me wear her sweater later when I got cold. I could never remember to return it. Guess it doesn’t matter now. But it made me think of her, and suddenly I missed her so bad I couldn’t stand it, so I grabbed her diary and started reading. That was three hours ago. And I still miss her so bad.

FRIDAY: I’m almost halfway through the diary already.
She talked about the disaster of a double date we went on last year, when those two artsy guys from her school took us ice skating. She never mentioned to them that we had both taken lessons for years, and these guys, well…I said they were artsy, right? We ended up skating circles while they sat on a bench with hot chocolates all night. Wusses.
She talked about last summer when I broke my wrist and couldn’t do anything fun, so she sat at my house for three months reading old Nancy Drew books with me, like we used to when we were little.
She said she hated my new haircut.
I had to stop reading, because if I read the whole thing, then it will be over. I’ll just think about this stuff for a while.

SUNDAY: I couldn’t stand it, I had to keep reading. I probably should have started at the end, to see if she said anything about why she did this. It’s not like she left a note or anything. But I wanted to remember her for a while, before I read about when everything went wrong. What went wrong?
I’m trying to pace myself, so I can make the diary last as long as possible. We’ll see how long I can hold out.
Mom went to see Aunt Clare today. She said Clare was crying and crying and couldn’t stop. It’s all I could do to keep myself from calling her up to tell her about the diary right then. Not yet. Soon, just not yet.

MONDAY: I went back to school today for the first time since it happened. It was weird and terrible. Everyone kept looking at me with these puppy dog eyes, and whenever someone spoke to me they touched my arm. They all knew her, before she changed schools, and nobody – not a single person – mentioned her all day. Funny, that just made me think about her more.

TUESDAY: The diary has started mentioning a guy named Rhett. Not mentioning, more like talking about non-stop. I was her best friend and she never even said the name Rhett to me, not when she talked about her new friends, or when she told me who was in her classes, or when we went through last year’s yearbook to rank all the cutest guys. But the diary says they went on dates. And kissed. And talked on the phone every night. There’s a rose petal pressed in between two of the pages. I never saw any roses in her room.

WEDNESDAY: I don’t think I like this guy, Rhett. She kept gushing about him all over the pages, but he seems kind of…creepy. She thought it was cute that he was jealous, but I think it’s possessive. She says how sweet it was that he drove home behind her “just to make sure she gets there safe.” Sounds weird to me. The last couple pages mentioned that he’s trying to get her to have sex with him, but she’s not sure. I wonder if she ever did. I thought she would have told me about it if she’d done it.
  
THURSDAY: I can’t keep myself from reading now. It drives me crazy that I have to go to school all day, instead of staying here with the diary. I’m getting close to the end now, and I don’t know if I can stand to finish. It’ll be like losing her all over again. But also, it will mean that I might find out why she did this. I have to know, but I don’t want to.
I can tell by the dates at the top of the pages that what I’m reading is several months after she met Rhett. It’s so strange, she doesn’t mention him anymore, but I can tell he’s still there, like he’s lurking in the background of everything she writes. The entries have become melancholy, and I can tell that something happened, but she doesn’t say what. She doesn’t write anymore about how much she loves that stupid school, or wanting to sing on Broadway, or even fighting with her mom. It’s like she’s writing all these words, but not really saying anything at all.

FRIDAY: I can’t read anymore. I’m on the second-to-last page of curly-cue writing and heart-dotted “i’s,” and I can’t make myself turn the page. The last thing I read was labeled “Wednesday.” Just two days before she did it. It’s strange. We’ve been best friends since birth. We’re blood related, and heart related, and I can hear the pain in her writing now. But I have no idea why, and she never gave me any clue. Every day on the phone with her, every day we talked. We saw each other several times a week. I should have seen what was wrong, should have heard it in her tone and the way her words deflated on the last syllable. But I didn’t. And that’s on me.

SATURDAY:
Rhett.
I swear on her grave, before the end of today, he will wish I’d never read that last page.

One of us will be seeing Jami before the sun rises.

3 comments:

  1. Whoa. Wow! I mean, Wow! That was awesome! Where's the next page?

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  2. The ending wasn't too fast at all! I'm glad you didn't watch videos or cook something something for RS. Totally leaves me wanting more. Good work!

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  3. Ooooh. Wow. You are EXCELLENT at suspense.

    ReplyDelete