A Penny for your Thoughts

THE BOOK

L. Wilson / laurawh93@gmail.com

April 2020 – Worldwide quarantine
IT WAS AROUND THE THIRD TIME HE RECEIVED anything from her since 2018.
They haven't spoken in ages, still, it felt like she was somehow trying to reach out to him.
He thought leaving everything related to her aside, would make it all blow away, though deep down, the uncertainty tormented his short hours of sleep, night after night.
The sole reminder pursued him anywhere; every time the doorbell rang, with every incoming call from an unregistered number, at any message left on the answering machine, the smell of pumpkin and apple candle lights, which they both happened to loathe but she would always say it reminded her of a place she'd once been to, she was everywhere; reflected on every car window passing by, going in the elevator he'd missed for a second, getting lost into the crowd.
What could she possibly want after all this years? Everything reminded him of her and that god damn gift so he couldn't help wondering, day in, day out.
Whatever hope of having more than just a friendship, died on that epic February fourteenth three years ago.
That ultimate talk about the same old issue, left no more room for interpretation.
He hoped someday she would knock at his door, regretful and anguished, just like when she broke into his life back in the day, he just couldn't believe that now, four years later, after having lived in perpetual inward struggle with himself, yearning for that day so he could then play the hard to get, when he was almost convinced it wasn't going to happen, She sent a present.
It was a tiresome game.
Of course he didn't want to open it, would be same as letting her in, again, but every time he opened that cabinet by chance, it would all start over.
An endless loop caused by her mere existence.

He had been dreaming he opened it all night long, but he just couldn't get to see whatever it had inside, he couldn't finish unwrapping it, he was stock in a bloody loop, it was a god damn nightmare, and this call from an unregistered number, around 10pm, on an rainy Saturday night.
He took his time before picking up and once he did it he just didn't say a word. He could only hear someone's breath, though no one talking on the other side, and then it just hanged.
There's no way that was telemarketing at 10pm
He rushed downstairs, to open that box he had kept on hold in his desk cabinet for over a month.
That was the only way to get it over with.
He grabbed the thing from the cabinet and basically ripped the packaging off, to finally, find out what its content was.
It was a god damn book, with a note attached and a phone number written on the back of it.
"Fuck!!!" His shoulders loosened as his eyes rolled and he let out a sigh out, probably disheartened.
He didn't't even read the note.
Just a book. He thought, why would she send me a stupid book?, and then he read the cover and came to the realization.
It was a book with HER NAME on it.
The remembrance of her always writing in that old red notebook she carried on all the time popped into his mind, probably had dozens of them hidden under her bed, locked up in her locker, and who knows where else. Those notebooks, those fucking notebooks. She never let anyone read any of them, not a single page, not a single line, she didn't even talked about them. His stomach automatically turning upside down at the prospect.
Why not calling instead of just sending the book as a gift. Suddenly all the secrecy made sense.
The sole idea of her writing a book was reason enough to start freaking out, so he rushed to read the note, his heart lurching.
«I'm sorry H, truth can't be half told» said the note,
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" He curled up in his studio chair, running his fingers through his hair all bewildered.
Now, he couldn't just put it aside just like he had been doing up until then, with whatever came from her. He had to know.
He read the cover and then the note, repeatedly for about half an hour, before he decided to open it up and skimmed the preface, snorting mad at the bottom line.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Diana
He already had an idea of what he'll find if he kept reading, so stupefied with horror, as he was, he continued to do it. Details were so squalid and descriptions were so explicit, every sentence, every paragraph, he just couldn't stop turning the pages. Bottom lines of every page led him to the next one. His eyes getting wider and wider as he kept reading. This couldn't be all just born from fiction, whatsoever. Whoever didn't know her could have thought the author had such a vivid imagination.
It was all so familiar; places, people, even stories, all of them told from different viewpoints, using different names and made-up places, but definitely, too close to the real ones.
He closed the book at one whack and read no more.
He didn't need to read the whole book, to confirm, what for so many years had just been, the only logical assumption he had made up to justify her dejected behavior. This narrative, appallingly filled all gaps from the past, and confirmed his disturbing theory about why things went down the way they did.
He would have never guessed she'd dare to post a single a word about it all. He would have burnt them all in a pyre. He would have had her locked up in madhouse, just like her mom told him to.
This was so much more than bragging about getting over her past. She was speaking out. This meant exposure. Revenge, which was even worse.