Anastasia

Journals

"Hey, I didn't expect you to be here for another hour." Slash opened the door letting Lara into the house of her deceased old friend.

"What can I say, I had nothing better to do."

"I thought your kids were here with you." Slash followed her into the living room.

"As I said, I had nothing better to do." She sat down on the familiar couch and lit up a thin cigarette.

"Good to know." Slash pursed his lips and sat down across from her.

"So the interviews are done." she stated and ashed her cigarette on the large ash tray she remembered she got Ana Christmas of 89 cause the girl kept using half cut pop cans as ashtrays.

"Yeah, they sent it in for editing today, you got the email?" he caved, and after 5 years of not touching a cigarette, he took the emergency pack from underneath the coffee table and lit one up.

"Yeah, what a month huh?"

"Talking about her was worse than getting over her. I'd had kept so many of those memories locked up that I was even surprised I remembered them. It felt worse, I feel like shit."

"Yeah, noticeable." she raised an eyebrow.

"You are a delight you know that?" he sarcastically rolled his eyes.

"Its a defence mechanism."

"You don't say." he laughed.

"I wanted to see you cause,well, I haven't been fully honest with you. I was gonna give it to you before the interviews even started, but I was scared after reading it you would've not wanted to be involved in the documentary."

Slash fixed his posture on the chair and leaned in closer, "What?"

"I still have two of her journals." she took out two black leather notebooks and sat them down on the coffee table.

He just stared blankly at them, not daring to even touch them, and looked back at Lara, "How long have you had them?"

"Ever since she died. I kind of stole them from her house in New York." her voice was shaky and filled with guilt over the fact that she hadn't given them to the one person they were meant for, "I'm sorry, but they're all I had left of her. You got the house, the clothes, the pictures, her stupid broken car. I only got left with memories and a stupid letter."

He stayed quite and gently took the notebooks into his hands, "Its okay, I get it."

"And you had burned the other ones so I was just scared you were gonna do the same with these journals too."

"I probably would've,"

"Exactly."

He smiled down at the notebooks, the stickers were faded out and the pages were yellow, her initials could barely be seen.

"Whats inside?"

"She is."

"Did you read the other ones, ya know, before I destroyed them?" he asked.

"Briefly, but they were very repetitive, just doodles and poems. These two though, I think you need to read them."

He stayed quite.

"We both thought we knew her so well," she sighed, "we didn't even have the slightest clue as to who she was, we weren't even close to knowing her." she pointed to the notebooks, "that right there, thats your way in, its the real her."

"I get it now." Lara continued, "I get why she was the way she was, I get why she did it, I get why she left. For so long I blamed her, blamed myself, blamed you, but after reading them, I understood that it wasn't that simple."