Operation Sal | Sally Face x Travis Phelps

26

   It was March 4th, which meant that, finally, the springtime weather had begun to melt away some of the thick, freezing snow and ice that covered Nockfell during the winter months.

   It was around fifty-five degrees outside most days, give or take, which was still cold, but much warmer than it had been in weeks past.

   Travis thrived in moderate temperatures. He didn't like the cold all that much but he didn't like the heat either, so spring and fall tended to be good seasons for him. He felt a little better now that it wasn't so freezing.

   It was sometime in the middle of the week; Travis had lost track of the days a long while ago. He found that being preoccupied did that to him.

Despite Sally Face's empty promises of time together, they didn't see each other nearly as much as usual. It wasn't Sal's fault in the slightest, and it wasn't Travis's either. It was just how things worked out.

With no classes together, and no shared lunch period, and Kenneth Phelps looming over Travis's shoulder like a goddamn turkey vulture, there was simply very little time to hang out in person, to talk face to face.

it was lonely, of course, and Travis's days felt longer than usual, but things were still okay.

He and Sal texted frequently, perhaps more so than they previously had. Travis had even changed his name from "Sal Fisher" to just "Sal" in his cellphone, which was bizarrely nerve-wracking considering how simple of an action it was.

   They texted before, during, and after school, and when they weren't talking on the phone, Travis turned to his other saving grace: Writing.

   He wasn't very good and it was fairly embarrassing to scrawl out his feelings without a filter onto paper, but he always felt better after writing things down, lighter, calmer.

   Travis had come to learn that bringing a personal notebook with sensitive diary entries to school was not a good idea.

   In fact, he realized that he shouldn't have been using that old, disheveled notebook anymore in the first place, so he had gone down to the corner store to buy himself a new journal, paying with a pocket full of spare change.

   It was a sad little thing, the book, small enough to fit in Travis's palm when closed, and adorned with a soft, brown, leather cover. The pages were frail and thin, and Travis found that if he pressed too hard down on them with a pencil or pen, they would tear, and maybe he should have considered that before purchasing it, but its small size made it so cheap that he decided it was plenty good enough.

   He sat at his desk that night, hovering over the journal with his back curved. He leaned against his free hand as he wrote down whatever came to mind.

   His room was lit only by the lamp sitting to his left, making the usual grayness of his bedroom look remarkably warm and orange.

   It was a school night, around eight p.m. Travis would surely be disciplined if he was caught up at this time, so he'd pushed one of his shirts under the door to block the rectangle of light that his lamp would have created in the hallway.

   He was in socks, sweatpants that were much too big for him, and a light-colored tee that was almost too small for him. He wrote for a while, his legs folded at the ankles, underneath his chair. It had become routine, doing this. Journaling at night seemed to have its benefits. He felt more relaxed before bed, and less stressed in the morning too.

   What wasn't routine was the quiet tap on Travis's window.

   The noise was too purposeful, too deliberate to be a knocking of a branch, and he didn't have any trees that tall beside his bedroom anyway.