The Black Notebook

Entry 1: The Secret Keeper

A/N: Yes, it's another story, but I'm really excited about this one. Give it a chance, guys! Pretty please? :D

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Entry: 1

Title: The Secret Keeper

Date: March 7, 2013

Keeping a secret can be very exciting. To be trusted to hold something so delicate, to know something no one else knows—things can become pretty interesting. But it was also exhaustive.

Unfortunately, I only realized that last bit in the spring of my junior year. I was sitting quietly in Bio class, my tongue dry and a headache pounding inside my temple, when I started feeling the effects of it.

Usually, classes granted me a brief moment of freedom and relaxation, where nobody would interrupt the teacher's lecture and the only occasional disturbances were whispered words and paper conversations. I know that sounds weird and definitely not what a normal sixteen-year-old girl would think, but I had my reasons.

Somebody whispered my name, and I turned my head microscopically to the side, indicating that I'd heard it. The person sitting behind me slipped their arm around my chair to shove a tiny, carefully folded piece of paper into my hand.

My fingers automatically closed around it, just as a soft sigh escaped my lips. Here we go again.

Part of me already knew what message the note would hold even before I cautiously spread the paper over my textbook, my eyes following the teacher's movements. I looked down.

Seven, I've got something to tell you later after class! – M

I knew it.

This, sadly, was nothing out of the usual.

I had always wondered why it was that people trusted me so much with their secrets. Or perhaps it was just all one big coincidence that almost my entire batch—close to being the whole school, in fact, told me everything.

A lot of people would gladly swap places with me, to have the opportunity to know others' deepest secrets. For some, it was simply because they wished to know someone more, to feel as if they were trustworthy, but those were rare. More often than not, people just wanted to use those secrets to their own advantage.

Maybe that was the reason why they trusted me; I didn't want to hurt anybody and genuinely liked helping other people.

But no matter how goody-two-shoes that sounded, I'm also human and have a lot of limits.

It had started out to be a little fun at first, pretending I was some Mother Goose, but as more secrets flowed into my life, things began getting more complicated than I bargained for. Even for me—and I wasn't even part of the whole equation. I was only supposed to know the problem and find a solution.

Take Bianca, for example. Before I went to Bio, she had practically dragged me out of the busy hallway and into a quiet corner so we could talk privately. With a blush on her cheeks, she told me about her childhood friend, Brant.

You see, she has had this huge crush on him for almost her entire life. She was still unsure of his feelings for her, but there were times when he'd show some hint of affection that seemed to be for someone who was more than a friend. And just recently, she realized that perhaps she was already in love with him.

Now, although it was less frequent for boys to approach me with their secrets, Brant was one of the few who did. And what did I find out?

Brant liked Bianca for almost as long as she liked him. Great for them, right?