Unwritten Documents

She Becomes Outspoken

Graciella always kept a notebook on her person: a large, black notebook with countless pages both tucked in between the folders and that were actually a part of the notebook. She'd mentioned before that she wanted to be a writer, that she had novels in the works.

William had read a few of the pages. They'd fallen out of the pockets separating areas and he couldn't help but read them. He'd found himself lost in the lettering, which left an imprint on the way he looked at Graciella. It was a part of a story where a girl went missing during a freak cold snap, leaving a boy unsure of how to react. He went off to find her, but William was unable to finish reading the rest as the rest was on other sheets of paper.

He'd given her the papers back the next class period, and she had flipped out, for lack of a better term. She wanted to know if he had read it.

"No, I didn't want to disrespect your privacy, so I scanned to figure out whose it was," he'd lied.

"Oh... Thank you. W-would you like to read it," she'd asked, flipping through pages in her notebook.

"Are you sure?"

"A-absolutely. It's better for someone else to read my writing, I think," the determined look on her face had looked so out of place for her, William had almost laughed. She pulled out several papers and handed them to William, putting a clip on the papers. "P-please try not to lose any of the papers. I spent a really long time on it."

He'd nodded and began reading off the first page silently. Once again, he was absorbed in Graciella's writing, not stopping until the end.

Was it really true that authors left parts of themselves in stories?

William found himself contemplating this the next morning as he handed Graciella her story. She'd blushed, smiled, and accepted her story back, counting the pages quickly.

She had sighed; they were all there.

"It was very good," William said, "I somehow managed to entirely absorb myself in the writing. The ending was unexpected, but at the same time, I really liked the ending especially."

"Th-thank you," she smiled and slid them carefully into her notebook.

"Hey, Graciella?"

"Y-yes?"

"Have you ever considered using a binder or perhaps one of those book-folder-things to put your stories in? Maybe it would help you keep better track of your stories, and drop them less."

She'd blanched. "N-no, I haven't thought of that, actually... Good idea. I think I have an extra binder laying around m-my house."

The next day, Graciella came to school probably the most organized she ever had been, with a multitude of separators and folders and even different areas in her new binder for different genres of writing.

William just smiled when he saw the binder's color: black. Black like her clothing, black like the color everyone assumed her eyes were, and black like her choice of the color of her soul.

She really was a darkness-oriented person