Epilogue

Content Warning: This story contains themes of mental health struggles, emotional isolation, and implied suicidal ideation.

Entry One — Monday

Dear diary,

I'm not writing for those men. I write because this is the only place that will not turn away and nod as one of those dashboard toys. They're all cordial. They nod and say my hoodie looks fine and if i'm "doing okay" with their smile dialed for pity, not for concern. They whisper softly enough to bruise. Then they loiter next to locker slots and car doors and bathroom sinks and make their testimony: “He's unstable.” “He's dramatic.” “He'll do it again.”

They'll say anything except the thing that will be true—to your face.

I promised myself that I'll never turn out to be that kind of person who maintains a diary. The very word seems fragile. Weak. A thing that opens with a strawberry-scented pink key.

But now I find myself somewhere I have not been. I see myselfs that I did not put there. In case I do not answer somewhere, I will forget the way I myself do sound. So I bought this notebook at a drug store—phony leather, hard spine, pages with scents of strangers’ breath—and I am answering here.

Make this the room that never averts its gaze.

Nothing horrible happened today. The English class had the scent of morning coffee breath and dry-erase markers. The fluorescent lights buzzed with the rhythm of earlier anxiety. Ms. Adler read from a poem as if it might shatter if touched. I took notes. As if I would be called on. I won’t. They tense as if I will say something wrong—they are just waiting for the expression on my face when that will happen.

Maybe I'll test that hypothesis. Or maybe not.

A voice behind me called my name. Not harsh, not nasty. Just…testing it. The way mold tests a surface. Slowly. Gently. Ravenously.

I have heard what they say.

They just won’t tell it so that I can look back.

This is for reviewing the past.

Entry Two — Tuesday

I conducted an experiment out of spite. Not science. Pettier than science.

I wrote the sentence in this notebook this morning: They'll say I failed the test.

It had no test on it. Not on the schedule. Not a silent warning.

But last semester, Ms. Adler left on my desk a paper that I had never seen. My name at top. My writing—somehow. My grade: A red F, bold and knife-shaped, as if the knife had been whittled and not just drawn.

“I gave you extra time,” she said. As if that accounted for the weather. “You didn't use it, did you?”

I stared at the loops of my own name and remembered the sentence which I had penned, as if at a joke which I had failed to finish.

They all looked at me as if they look at a fire alarm somewhere else down the hall.

Then, near the locker section, a girl with whom I'm not very close whispered, “I heard he failed.” I walked past her. The sentence followed me home like something with teeth.

I could have thought of telling myself that I forgot. That I forgot something. That there are gaps in the brain big enough to lose hours. But I do remember writing it. I do remember the structure of the dare.

I actually wrote tonight an additional sentence, miniscule, in the margin: They’ll forget my name.

If it is absurd, it will stay here.

Otherwise, well, I'll just have to find out.

Entry Three — Wednesday

During lunch, Milo eyed me sideways as if I’d moved the furniture around in his thoughts.

He blinked and asked, “Who are you sitting with?” It didn't seem serious, so I smiled as you do when somebody has forgotten the punchline.

He didn’t smile back. He merely gazed at Jonah on the other end of the table and said, “He’s at the wrong one. Do you see this?”

Jonah shrugged. There was laughter. It flowed down the table as if it had somewhere it had to be.

I sat nonetheless.

Milo's face reordered itself, as if he had recalled how to be normal. “You good?” he said, casual. Safe.

I said yes. The lie sounded as if it came from someone else’s mouth.

During class breaks, I passed two girls holding their phones as mirrors. One of them remarked, “He wants everyone to feel sorry for him.” The other spoke in hushed tones, “Don’t text it—someone will screenshot.”

They ceased their shouting when my shadow loomed. Returned to normal when it was safe.

My sentence last night was not a metaphor.

It was choreography.

Entry Four — Thursday

I finally had my appointment with Dr. Ash—the school counselor they assigned after the thing-that-isn’t-a-story.

His office smelled of citrus wipes and paper from the printers. One of his diplomas ran off-level two degrees. I looked at it.

He wore a toothpaste-hued tie and sat as if practicing how he would look calm without looking at the clock. He asked if there were mornings. They are weighty, I said.

He asked me what I do if my arms shake. I said, I wait.

I told him the sentences. The experiment. The notebook.

He yawned. Then he did it again…

And again, as I explained, “Some days it feels like the air is sitting on my chest.”

I did not mean the sentence that I wrote this morning as forecasting: He will yawn when I say that I am drowning.

It did, though, line up. Nicely. Quiet

He clarified for me that I have intrusive causality—the idea that I’m building the events that I’m simply observing.

"The brain likes storytelling," he said. "Perhaps too much."

I nodded.

Then went home and didn’t write anything hurtful. That was holding a glass of water with two hands and not breathing.

Entry Five — Friday

I slipped.

I said: They will choke on their lies.

I didn’t mean it. It was not threatening. It was just noise. Just me shouting at a well.

In sixth class, Mr. Carson interrupted himself in midsentence, grasped at his throat, and turned as white as warning lights.

He could not speak. Could not breathe. Someone ran. Someone cried. The room whirled as if the building was going to collapse.

He managed.

They talked of peanut allergy. Or stress. Or destiny.

They will say anything except that which I am thinking.

The corridor thereafter was silent enough so as to appear as space.

No one said that I did it.

Nobody said that I didn’t.

I stared at the page for an hour. Tried to remove the sentence. The ink would not wipe off. The page bunched up like paper on the cusp of exploding.

Entry Six — Saturday

I exercised being kind today.

I penned: The blossom of the tomato flower.

That one at the kitchen window has pouted since June. My mother talks to it in a voice I have not heard since myself as a sick and small child. Vivid. Un-naturally calm-sounding. Terrified underneath.

At noontime, there were yellow flowers sprouted.

“Finally,” she said. Then looked at me. “See? Things listen if you do not give up.” And gently, “If you had stuck with your medication, maybe your week would not have been so difficult.”

She didn’t mean to hurt me. She never means to. That’s the problem.

I also wrote: The bus will arrive early.

It did. The driver braked too late. Nobody got hurt, but all of us breathed as if the car had admitted to something.

I think I know now: there is no such thing as a harmless sentence.

Entry Seven — Sunday

I didn't write.

I devoured every sentence.

Ate leftovers that I didn’t taste.

Watched a show that went on without me.

My mother asked if I were okay, and I said, “Fine,” as if reading lines for a play for which I never auditioned.

They pressed at my teeth all day. I did not release them.

I imagined the notebook writing itself that evening. The letters ran across the page as insects and disappeared beneath the bed.

I woke up when the pages rustled.

The notebook stayed closed.

It did not cease sounding.

Entry Eight — Monday

I said: They will not hurt.

And they were.

First period, three people complimented me. My hoodie. My hair. My writing.

It was the kind of niceness that arrives with a warning label.

As I sat, someone hissed from behind, “Speak up or he will think that we are being cruel.”

Their kindness was at their expense.

At lunch, Milo said, “Did you see the post?” I shook my head. I had.

It didn’t give me a name. But it didn’t have to.

Look after your strong mates, it urged. Mental health matters. Pass on his number if someone has it.

They were burning remarks. Troubles were converted to wealth.

I was called aside by a teacher. “You okay?" he asked, far too rapidly. “Just thought I'd check. No pressure.”

He smiled when I responded.

I said, “I'm fine.”

And the lie didn't raise an eyebrow.

Entry Nine — Tuesday

It opened itself this morning.

No breath of air. No fan. The pages curled as if on breath. The pen rolled to the end and halted—intentional. Still. Conclusive.

I didn't touch anything. I observed.

The page was white. But pressure in the room wasn't.

At school, four people said the same thing to me at four different hallways: If you ever need anything, I’m here.

Not one of them looked at me.

They did not wait for any response.

They said it as if passing the baton—like they’d practiced it.

When I arrived at home, the notebook rested on an open page. The pen rested upright, straight. My writing—my firm pressure—had written: Dear diary.

I hadn't touched it.

I gazed at the lines, and scribbled underneath them: You can write yourself, so why the need for me?

It sounded afraid of being read.

Entry Ten — Wednesday

Dr. Ash smiled when I told him that I was haunted with grammar.

“Language is how we experience the world," he noted. “It sometimes starts responding back.”

I said I wrote The alarm will go off this morning, and then it did. Fire alarm. Right at noon. Everyone evacuated. We stood in the parking lot looking at the sky as if rebooted.

No fire. No drill. A scream and a shrug.

“I'm attempting to use this for good,” I said. “To warn, not harm.”

He nodded. “Sometimes when we want to help, we invent emergencies just to feel in control.”

His voice was soothing, but it stung.

That night, the notebook did not write anything. It just drew a line on the page.

One long black line. As in horizon.

Entry Ten-and-a-Half — Wednesday Night

I did something different tonight.

I tried to reverse a sentence.

I retraced a few pages and wrote the opposite of what I had written that morning:

It will not wake up.

I clutched the pen as if it would strike back.

The room lights flashed. Just one time.

I close the notebook.

When I went back and opened it, the original sentence was gone. Gone. The page was blank, but I remembered it.

I remember writing it.

I recall intending it.

But the world. It doesn’t do it anymore.

Entry Eleven — Thursday

Milo came up to my door with a bag of grapes looking as if he was carrying flowers to a funeral.

He said he had been distant and he did not know why and he did not want me spiralling. He said the word as if it was composed of soap.

I said the truth would not fit into a sentence.

I sat on the floor of my room and divided the grapes between us. He admitted he missed when they ridiculed individuals on the Internet.

I said, “We still could.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t feel funny anymore.”

He seemed older than he did last week. Or perhaps I looked back harder.

I didn't tell him that the notebook also moves while I am asleep.

I didn’t say that I am afraid of saying a sentence without writing it down first.

Once he had gone, I noted: They will stop whispering when I am present.

And they did.

Not with regard to their completion.

For they did wait.

Entry Twelve — Friday

What I did—the thing that they will not mention but forever imply—wasn't a spectacle. It wasn't a failure.

I said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

I did not show up when somebody needed me.

I ghosted somebody as a friend due to ‘I'm tired’ being an ‘excuse-you-can-cash-in’ sort of thing.

There is no post. There is no image. There is only an outline of lack that people draw and redraw until they dub it scandal.

I thought if I confessed often enough, the story would go away.

I've been confessing for days now.

Nobody has forgiven me. Least of all myself.

This evening, I wrote: I will forgive you.

Then I remarked: You will pardon me.

They sat on the page as actors without an audience.

Entry Thirteen — Saturday

It stormed.

I had penned: Let it rain so loudly it drowns out the other noise.

And the sky obliged.

Thunder as war drums. Lightning as flashes of cameras. The power fluttered and recovered as if shivering.

My notebook rested on my desk.

It didn't turn pages this time. It waited.

Then: Dear diary.

Then: Listen.

I looked.

I said nothing.

And for the first time since this started, I felt that I was interrupting something that didn't belong to me.

Entry Fourteen — Monday

Exactly at 11:17 AM, the cafeteria fell silent.

Then, every voice there—every mouth, every tone, every breath—said my name.

My whole name. Not nickname. Not shortened. Not mean.

Something of an absurd, synchronised chant

Then: nothing.

Talks continued as if playback had been pressed.

Milo blinked. “Strange,” he said, as if remembering a dream.

I didn't move. Not for several minutes. Not until one of the janitors patted my chair and asked, “You finished here?”

I went home and opened the notebook.

I did not write anything new.

Nothing but my name, written once in the margin, as if someone had signed a document which I never knew I signed.

Entry Fifteen — Tuesday

I assume that will be the last day before the day.

It's not an option, actually. Just an understanding. As with gravity. As with breathing.

This notebook wrote the sentence this morning without assistance from others: Write it clean.

I did so.

They will say my name again at 11:17 tomorrow.

And I won't be there.

Not because I'm flawed. Or hazardous. Or weak.

I am leaving the room of which each sentence constitutes the verdict, and every look constitutes a play script written long ago which I never managed to read.

I'm not leaving out of anger.

I'm exiting because there exists one language they are powerless to obscure: silence.

He shifted the pen again. He wrote: Listen.

I cover the word with my hand.

And for a moment, the paper was warm.

Entry Sixteen — Tuesday Afternoon

Mr. Lefevre caught me in the hallway.

"You know you're not in trouble," he said.

I stared at him. “For what would I get in trouble for?"

He opened and shut his mouth. Stepped on his feet.

“Nothing,” he said. “You just looked like… like somebody who needs to know that they're seen.”

I nodded.

But what I wanted to say instead was: Then utter something sincere.

He didn't.

People rarely do.

Final Entry — Wednesday

Dear diary,

They called out my name again at 11:17 AM.

Not loud. Not all at once. Just… enough.

I stood up. Milo looked at me—not afraid, not curious. Just present.

“Hey,” he said.

That was all.

That was all.

I didn’t give a speech. I didn’t toss the tray or slam the book or utter an epithet.

I rose.

I walked.

Nobody made me stop.

No one followed.

It was heavier than expected.

Then it wasn’t.

Outside, the sky was as if it was trying to heal. Not sunny. Not dramatic. Just… softer.

When I got home, the notebook was already open.

Three blank lines waited where I’d left them.

But they weren’t blank anymore.

My handwriting filled the page, steady, deliberate, in ink that was still wet:

“I stood. I walked. I left.”

The last line was different. A sentence I never wrote:

“I did not come back.”