The Book at the Top of the Closet

Chapter Nine

The next four pages are blank, and for a second, I think the rest of the book must be blank. I flip the pages quickly with my fingers and feel something that sticks out. There's something taped to one of the pages.

I turn to the page and see Aria's handwriting on the first two lines, and then a crisp white piece of paper taped down beneath it. It has a heading like a class paper, and it's cut down to size. The story goes on to the next two pages, the printer paper carefully arranged so none of it sticks out over the edge of the journal's pages.

My stomach tightens when I start to see the words, but I read them anyway. I need to know the rest of Aria's story.

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Dear Diary,

It's been four months since I wrote last. I was busy with Hayden and school, and I wasn't over the breakup with Everest. I have more time now, I guess, since things went south with Hayden too. I wrote a short story about it for a class- I couldn't think about anything else, so I figured I may as well write about the one thing my mind kept replaying.

{The next section appears to be typed, rather than handwritten}

A Tale of Two Breakups:

When Everett came over to talk the night we broke up, he brought an overnight bag with him, as if he still hoped that he would be staying.

When Hayden came over to talk the night we broke up, he brought a box of my stuff.

Everett and I talked, he tried to understand my reasons, most of which in hindsight were total bullshit. He really listened, and he told me we could work things out, even after all that had happened between Hayden and I. I wanted to choose him, and I still don't really know why I felt like I couldn't. I loved him.

Hayden did not want to talk about why we were breaking up. He had a false front up, constructed to hide anything he was feeling, unwilling at the end of it all to be vulnerable, to let me see that I wasn't the only one in pain. I hated him.

Hayden hung around just long enough to see me break down, seemingly unable to resist pushing my buttons one last time, watching me break. I was so angry, and I wanted to stay angry, and I couldn't. He knew me, he knew me, and he still left. I loved him.

Everett stayed for pizza and an episode of Star Trek after we broke up. He left before I started crying, he let me save face. If he had walked back into my living room ten seconds after he'd walked out, he would've found me sobbing, ready to ask him to stay, ready to take it all back. Instead he walked straight to his car. I hated him.

For weeks after Everett and I broke up, I was a mess.

I couldn't be alone without throwing up or hyperventilating, or both. Sometimes I ran out in the middle of class, reminded of him and unable to keep my composure. Friends tried to help- my friend Louisa spent inordinate amounts of time keeping my hair out of my face while I retched. It felt like my whole body was rejecting his absence. Over and over I had Louisa hold my keys so I couldn't get in my car and drive off to find him, to fix things. I loved him.

For the first few hours after Hayden and I broke up, I felt like I might die.

I was disoriented, destabilized, debilitated. It wasn't just losing him- Louisa and Wendy (the red hat girl) had been his friends long before they met me. I felt convinced on some deep level that I was losing them, too. I almost walked in front of an oncoming car, not even aware of my surroundings. It felt like my entire world was collapsing like some cosmic explosion, spiraling into a black hole that would consume me whole. I hated him.

I loved them both and hated them both with unequal, unbalanced measure.

I loved them in gasps and hated them in sobs, I lost myself over them.

I will find myself again in their absence, in the lack, in the aftermath.

I loved them.

I hated them.

I will learn to love myself.

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I feel betrayed. Two minutes ago I was right there with Aria, swept away into a kiss in the snow. I believed in her love story. I believed the promises Hayden made her. Promises that melted faster than snow in Texas.

How could he do that to her? How could anyone look someone in the eyes and profess to love them and then leave them four months later? I don't understand how you go from planning a life together to showing up at someone's door with a box of their stuff. My heart hurts, and I swipe away the tears running down my face.

I feel stupid for believing in Hayden. If love is so fragile it can be shattered like that, maybe there's no point to it. Maybe believing in lasting love is pointless, maybe it's even less probable than magic.

I push the journal down deep in my backpack and walk back to my dorm. Depending on someone else is a waste of time. I want to do real magic, and I can't wait for Aria's journal to reveal more of its secrets. It's time to make some magic of my own.

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