Chapter 5: The Notebook

The next morning I woke up on Pearl's couch and read my notepad before I opened my eyes all the way.

It had grown.

Under my own handwriting, there were three new entries, two of them in Pearl's square print.

Your mother came with a deputy. You told her no. I threw her off my lawn.

Below that, in blue ink and a different hand, someone had written: Devin. I slept on the floor and didn't try anything.

Pearl had added underneath: He really didn't. I checked twice.

I laughed into the blanket, and the sound surprised me.

Then the other thing came back, slowly: a pink coat in a driveway, a voice cracking on the word Christmas.

I knew it only because Pearl had written it down.

I did not remember the moment itself at all.

I sat up and wrote on a fresh page, in capitals so large the pen went through the paper in places.

TAKE IT BACK.

I looked at it for a while.

Then I added: In front of every person who clapped.

When the doorbell rang, I knew it would be Devin.

I knew it before I saw him, and that scared me more than anything else that week.

He stood on the porch in jeans and a grey sweatshirt, holding a paper bag from the grocery store.

"Oranges," he said. "Pearl said you'd forgotten what breakfast tasted like."

"I wrote your name down," I said. "It's on the page."

"I read it. Very flattering." He came in and put the bag on the counter. "Do you remember me this time, or are you going on the notepad?"

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