All I can feel on my body is sweat as I wait for Luna to meet up with me. To tell me whether she likes me back or not.
Best case scenario: she’s in love with me and we start dating.
Worst case scenario: she thinks it’s stupid and rips the letter into shreds in front of the entire school.
I hastily unlock my locker and try not to think about Luna’s reaction. Of course, thinking about not thinking about it only makes me think about it more. I open my locker and on the top shelf, where my books are, I notice something else there: a brown leather notebook, old and worn.
How did that get in here?
I pick it up and flip through the pages, looking for any identifiable information about an owner. It has dark lines to write on, like any other journal, but besides that, it’s empty.
“Hey Suri,” I hear a voice say. I snap my head over and see Luna. My heart rate quickens again and I tuck the journal by my side before turning to her with a smile.
Play it cool, Suri.
“Hey Luna,” I say, my voice higher than it usually is.
Way to play it cool . . .
“So I saw the letter that you wrote for me,” she starts, and I hold my breath, “and I’m so sorry but I don’t really like you like that.”
My heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach. No, it sinks so far it’s deep inside the earth, magma burning it alive.
“Oh, um, that’s fine,” I manage to say. I plaster on a smile to make her believe me.
“I’m sorry. You’re super nice. I hope we can still be friends,” she says with a small, pitying smile.
We aren’t friends. I don’t have any. There is no still. She has all her popular friends anyway. I’m so stupid for believing I had a chance with her. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid—
“Yeah,” I lie when I realize I haven’t answered her.
My eyes well up as I watch her walk away. I blink away my tears and look down at the journal in my arms. I stare at it for a moment before opening it. I grab a pencil sitting on a shelf in my locker.
“Dear diary,” I start to write.
I write about everything that happened. It feels cathartic—I can feel the serotonin coursing through my veins.
But my body feels so heavy . . .
***
After lunch, I make my way to my locker to grab my books for the rest of the day. I seemed to have gotten more and more tired as my classes went on, and it’s only halfway through the day. I thought lunch would help me recover a bit, but it didn’t really help.
When I open my locker, I see the notebook again.
It’s open.
I could’ve sworn I closed it.
I shake the thought off and pick up the notebook. When I see the page next to the one I previously wrote in, I instinctively throw the notebook on the ground and stagger back.
There’s something written in it in crimson red.
It smells repulsive, metallic. Like blood.
It can’t be, I reason. It’s not blood.
When my pulse starts to slow, I tentatively pick the notebook back up and read what is written.
Dear Suri,
I’m so sorry about Luna. She doesn’t deserve you. Just keep in mind that you’re amazing no matter what some girl tells you. Keep your head held up high and don’t rely on her for your self worth.
I try to close the diary, but I can’t get my hands to do what they’re supposed to. Instead, I just stand there and stare at the crimson blood—not-blood.
Who’s doing this? Is this a prank?
I’m pulled out of my thoughts when the bell rings. I snap the journal shut and shove it into my bag.
I’ll return to this later.
***
When I arrive home later that day, I open the diary up again. The note is still in there.
I feel an ache deep in my bones. Write, write, write, a voice that doesn’t feel like mine chants in my head.
I open a fresh page and start writing again. I don’t want to. My hands are moving by themselves, I swear.
I should be panicking, but I’m not. I do nothing to stop it. Writing in the diary makes me feel so . . . alive. Unlike how I’ve felt in so long.
I go over what happened in the afternoon, how I was paired up with Luna for a project.
When I finish pouring my heart out in two and a half pages of writing, I’m exhausted. I decide to take a quick nap to regain my energy and put my diary on my nightstand.
***
I wake up an hour later, and for some reason, feel even more drained than before. I can barely move my limbs. Despite that, I lean over to my nightstand, my heart yearning to look at my diary.
It’s open again, to where I wrote my last entry, and there’s a crimson note. This time, I don’t throw my diary across the room. In fact, I don’t feel anything out of the ordinary. I don’t feel anything at all. So I read the note.
Dear Suri,
That has to be so awkward, being paired up with Luna. My advice is to just not bring the confession up. Pretend she’s just a regular friend of yours.
I hope you rest well.
The thought of someone pranking me pops into my head again, but this time I shrug it off.
So what if someone’s pranking me? They’re being so nice.
I attempt to rub the sleepiness from my eyes, but it doesn’t work.
Oh well, it’ll go away.
***
It doesn’t go away.
This pattern continues for weeks or months or years—I can’t tell anymore. Time doesn’t seem real.
I can’t stop writing in the diary. I do it all the time—at school, at home, everywhere.
And every single time, I get a response.
Writing in the diary is bad. It makes me so, so tired. When I look in the mirror, I see a skinny and pale version of what used to be me. My heart is always racing and I move so slow. I’m sweating but I’m cold at the same time. My grades are falling, and I find myself avoiding even my parents’ company.
But I can’t live without it—my sweet, wonderful diary. It accepts me like no one else.
My diary reeks of the coppery smell of blood.
My blood, I remind myself.
Before I go to bed, I walk over to my backpack to retrieve my diary. My vision is fuzzy.
This happens all the time, I think to myself. Nothing to worry about.
I bite the inside of my cheek and my knees buckle as I open my diary up.
You lose.
That’s the last thing I see before my vision goes black.
Author’s Note:
Dear Diary was inspired by a writing prompt I saw a few years ago. The story itself evolved a lot from there, and it’s the proudest I’ve ever been of a story! I wanted to depict how addiction hurts people and often starts when people are feeling down.
Vidya Alvakonda | 17 | New Jersey, USA
