Ugh. I really needed to take lessons on focus and concentration.
I offered the lunch lady my tray, and she gave me a plate of dry-looking spaghetti and the same soup as Colin. I asked for a bottle of cold water, which she handed to me. While Colin handed the lunch lady his money, I opened the other front pocket and successfully found the black notebook.
However, as I was reaching in and taking the notebook into my hand, the feel of its rough leather brushing my skin, Colin took his tray and started moving away. My hand was caught in the pocket and I was unwillingly pulled along.
I stumbled forward and my sneaker slid against the floor but abruptly stopped when it got caught on something sticky—probably a spilled drink that had dried up—and I went down to the ground. Oh, and let’s not forget my other hand, which was still holding my lunch tray, which in turn got dragged along as well.
Needless to say, it was messy.
I fell down face-first into—I almost wished it was the floor—my plate of spaghetti, my hand no longer in Colin’s bag and no longer holding the black notebook. Unfortunately, he was alerted to the fact that I’d fallen in the most embarrassing fashion ever known to human beings. And not only him, but also the entire cafeteria witnessed my little accident due to the sudden clattering of my tray and string of curses that left my mouth as I fell.
Colin looked back, not noticing that almost all of his bag pockets were open—courtesy of yours truly—and raised his eyebrows at me. “Hey, man, you okay?”
I pushed myself up and gasped after inhaling a mouthful of spaghetti. I started to get up but my hand accidentally landed on my bowl of soup and I crashed back down.
Laughter resonated through the whole cafeteria and even the lunch ladies were sniggering. I was glad for the hood, though, because nobody could see how red my face was—almost as red as the tomato sauce that covered my nose, flecked my lashes, and made me look like a clown with a grotesque red smile painted around my lips.
I hurriedly got up to my feet, ignoring the helpful hand Colin was offering me, and ran out of the cafeteria.
I sprinted to the nearest girls’ bathroom and removed the black sweatshirt. I turned the faucet on and splashed icy water on my face, scrubbing the spaghetti off. Some had even reached my neck.
Once I was clean, I checked the damage on the black sweatshirt. I picked out the spaghetti bits here and there and sprinkled water on the soup stains. I still needed to use it later on, but I definitely wasn’t using it in school; people would recognize me as the clumsy freak that’d fallen into her plate of pasta.
I took deep breaths, my heart thundering inside my ribcage like an army of horses. Even if nobody knew that it’d been me, what happened was really humiliating and I could still remember the sound of their cruel harsh laughter.
Tears filled my eyes and I angrily wiped them away. Why was I crying? It was just a little slip-up, that’s all.
And then the image of Colin’s outstretched hand appeared in my hand and my heart swelled. He was so nice.
“Nice, yeah, right,” I muttered to my reflection in the mirror. “If he was really nice, he’d give back the black notebook.”
I sniffed and shoved the black sweatshirt into my backpack. I pulled on my gray cardigan and deposited my backpack in my locker before going into the cafeteria once again, but as another person.
As I passed by a table, I could hear them whispering and laughing over what had just happened. “Did you see that? It was so hilarious!”
I tried my best to hold back a blush and to keep my expression blank as I took a tray and got the same exact food I asked for earlier on. The lunch lady who handed me my second bottle of cold water gave me a suspicious look but didn’t say anything. I paid for my lunch, theatrically looked at the scattered food on the floor with a tilted head, as if I was wondering what had happened, and simply stepped over it.
I walked towards Karen, Jeremiah, and Lola and took a seat at their table. “Hey, guys,” I said breathlessly. “Sorry I took so long.”
“It’s fine,” Jeremiah said, taking a swig of his drink, “but it sucks you didn’t get to see it.”
“See what?” I asked curiously. “Does it have anything to do with the spilled food over there?” I pointed at the place where I’d graciously made a fool of myself just a few minutes ago.
“Yeah, some kid slipped and fell straight into his food,” Lola explained, giggling. She coughed and said, “Everybody laughed but I guess I do pity him a little. I wonder where he ran off to.”
“Wait, he?” I echoed incredulously.
“It was a guy who fell,” Karen stated.
“Are you sure?” I asked. I couldn’t believe they thought I was a guy!
“Um, pretty sure,” she said, looking at me weirdly. And then her eyes trailed up to my hair and widened at whatever she saw there. “Seven?”
“What?” I asked, looking over at her. “What’s wrong?”
She reluctantly reached up and retrieved a small piece of spaghetti noodle, which she showed me. “Why do you have spaghetti in your hair?”
I gaped at it. I probably didn’t notice it when I was washing up! Who knew how long it had been there!
I laughed nervously and joked, “Oh no, I think I’m growing spaghetti noodles up there. Ha, ha ha…”
I hated my life.
***
At four o’clock, after the bell had signaled the end of another day of school, I called up my mom.
“Hello?” she answered at the second ring.
“Hey, Mom, it’s Seven. I’m coming home a little later than expected. It’s just, you know, some important project that I have to do at a friend’s house,” I lied.
“I wish you could’ve told me a little earlier. I already made dinner for you,” Mom replied, her voice tinted with dismay. “Oh well. Will you be coming home for dinner, though?”
I thought about it carefully, assessing the time needed to accomplish the plan I had in mind for that afternoon. “I’m not sure—probably.”
“Alright, well, one of your father’s clients invited us to dinner; so, in case you do want something, I’ll just leave it in the refrigerator. It’s chicken. You know how to heat it up, right?” she asked me.
“Of course,” I said immediately and as expected of my mother, she added, “Don’t make a mess, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I drawled, rolling my eyes.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Mom,” I quickly denied. “Love you.”
“I know you do, honey. Love you too. Bye.” And with that, she promptly hung up. I detached the phone from my ear and looked around the hallway for Colin’s red head. The place was filled with students talking to their friends, gathering their books from their lockers and making last-minute confirmations with teachers about certain assignments, but I was eventually able to spot him a couple of lockers down, surrounded by several people, as always.
I was tempted to dash to the nearest girls’ bathroom and change into the black sweatshirt again, but I didn’t want to risk attracting attention to my second identity, which was already known to the whole school: Spaghetti Clown. Or so my classmates in last period told me.
So I waited.
I lingered in front of my locker, pretending to be texting when in fact I was simply playing Bejeweled to kill time. People I both knew and didn’t know approached me with new secrets and problems, begging to be solved, and I smiled, gave them advice, and hoped that I would be able to remember it all when I finally had the black notebook back.
By the time the students had all dispersed and most had left school grounds, it was already nearing five o’clock, but according to my watch, only at exactly five-thirteen did Colin decide to go home.
He walked out of the main building, still waving at his friends, and headed to the senior parking lot. I followed him at a distance of ten feet, making sure that I could hide easily in a corner or behind a wall in case he s
uddenly sensed my presence and looked back.
From what I could observe though, he hadn’t noticed me yet. He was even whistling jauntily as he juggled his car keys.
In the parking lot, he accidentally dropped his car keys and cursed under his breath. He skidded to a halt and crouched down to pick them up. This sudden movement caused me to jog backwards as quietly as I could and hide behind a bush.
Colin straightened and looked around him. Save for a few students standing near their cars and chatting, the parking lot was empty. After a few seconds, he continued his walk and was soon juggling his keys again.
I left my hiding place and continued tailing him all the way to a 1979 Ford truck, which was painted a pale blue color. For some reason, the choice of car matched his personality. I tried to imagine him in a sports car or a motorcycle and, although it would certainly make him look like a hot billionaire playboy, it wasn’t him.
I watched as he unlocked the door and stepped inside. As he looked out through the windshield of his car, I turned away and quickly fished out my phone, pretending to take a call. I surreptitiously glanced at him at the corner of my eye and was relieved to see that his gaze merely passed by my silhouette.
I ended the call I was pretending to have and calmly walked out of the parking lot and into the bustling streets full of people walking and cars rushing by. I quickly looked around for any taxis. Luckily, someone stepped out of one at a near corner and I sprinted towards it before the previous person was even finished paying.
As I slipped into the backseat, the driver looked at me through the rearview mirror and asked, “Where to, young lady?”
“Um,” I started, hesitating as I craned my neck and watched Colin’s car weave between the other cars in the parking lot and leave the premises of the school. I pointed at his car and said, “Follow that truck.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Look, lady, I’m not a fan of stalking. If you’re just going to make me follow a boy around, I suggest you get another taxi driver to do it—”
“I’m not stalking!” I almost shouted at the man and it was true. It was all just part of the plan of getting my black notebook back. I had my reasons for doing it and stalking just for the sake of stalking was most definitely not one of them. “It’s just I…look, I’ll pay you an additional five bucks if you do it.”
I could see by the expression of his face that he was taking it into great consideration.
“Alright,” he acquiesced, “fine.” He turned back to the wheel and pressed on the pedal as if his life depended on it.
Colin had already made a right turn while I was bribing the driver, and even though there were several cars that had rushed past us in the heat of traffic, he was somehow able to squeeze in between the tiniest spaces so that we ended up right behind Colin’s truck.
I leaned back in my seat, heaving a sigh. All I had to do now was to wait.
I brought out the black sweatshirt from my backpack and exchanged it for my cardigan. I zipped it all the way up but didn’t pull the hood on. I scooted to one side of the car and looked out the window. The sky had quickly changed to a darker shade of blue with hints of orange just above the buildings. The cars had all stopped, every once in a while moving an inch forward, but after a couple of minutes they all started moving again at a normal pace.
As the cab followed Colin’s truck the streets were becoming unfamiliar. Los Angeles was almost double the size of New York, and the chances of getting lost in it was more than likely, especially when the farthest I’d gone to from my home was the Hollywood sign, and that was when I was eight and we were on a family trip.
It had always been school, the bookstore, and then home for me. Sometimes during the weekends I’d go to the mall or to the library and sometimes the movie theatre, but I was always walking on familiar ground.
Right then the tall buildings with graffiti painted on them were starting to fade away to small restaurants and stores and simple houses. Soon we were surrounded with houses on either side and I didn’t even know the street name.
I craned my neck and watched Colin’s car stop in front of a cream-colored house, matched prettily with a dark blue roof.
“Stop right here,” I told the driver, three blocks away from Colin’s house. I retrieved the money from my wallet and handed it to the man. He snatched it from between my fingers and examined it in the fading sunlight streaming through his windshield, checking if it was a fake.
Once he was satisfied, he folded it up and nodded, stuffing it into the front pocket of his shirt.
I slipped out of the shirt and checked my watch. It was ten past six in the evening. I had to get this finished quickly.
I quickly tied my hair and hid it under the hood. I bowed my head and started making my way as casually as possible towards Colin’s house. His car’s engine was already cut off and he was nowhere to be seen. He must’ve already been inside with his family.
As my foot landed on the grass of their lawn a part of me still couldn’t believe that I was actually doing this. Begging and stealing the black notebook back in school was one thing, but entering Colin’s house unseen—hopefully—and grabbing what I needed before escaping swiftly seemed more like what a thief would do rather than a person who wanted her stuff back... This made me hesitate.
But all those secrets…and all the people who trusted me with them…I reminded myself. If I don’t get the notebook back, so many reputations and relationships will be ruined because of me. They would all surely hate me! I have to do this!
I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the task ahead. I walked under the shade of Colin’s house and crawled on my elbows and knees under one of the windows on the ground floor. I wasn’t that good in sports or anything related to it, so it took me a while, which lead me to overhear someone I could only assume was his mother: “Oh, Colin. You’re home a little later than usual. School project?”
“Ah, no,” replied my target. “I stayed behind with my friends. Sorry about that.”
Hm. So he was the kind of teenager who was honest with his parents. For some reason, that made me proud of him. I shook my head, the tall grass brushing the tip of my nose. This was silly. I was supposed to be mad at him. I’m mad at him. He stole my notebook. I’m mad at him.
“It’s alright,” his mother replied and I could hear the clinking of plates against wood. They were probably just about to have dinner. Perfect. “Just give me a heads-up next time if you’re going to be late.”
“Okay, Mom,” Colin said as heavy footsteps stomped on what must’ve been stairs. “I’ll just go up to my room now.”
“Don’t take too long. Dinner’s already set.”
I crawled some more until I was done with the windows at one side of the house. The next one, the back, had a large oak tree right beside it with some of its gnarled branches twisting with the railings of one of the balconies up in the second floor. I looked up just in time and saw the lights in that room turn on. I glanced at the other rooms but they’d already been lit since a while ago. That must be Colin’s room.
Suddenly the glass doors to the balcony swung open and Colin stepped out. I dove right into the grass and immediately pressed my back to the wall, my heart hammering. Did he see me?
From my spot I couldn’t see Colin’s expression, but he didn’t call out so I figured I wasn’t caught yet. I patted away some grass that had stuck to my sweatshirt and tentatively stepped forward, my eyes watching for any movements. I spotted a pair of hands hanging limply over the railing. I recognized those hands.
It felt like an eternity as I waited for his hands to disappear or for the silence he kept to end. Finally, I heard Colin sigh, mutter something I couldn’t hear, and then those hands went away. I waited one full minute before I came out of my hiding place. He was already inside his room.
After three minutes—according to my watch—I heard footfalls again downstairs and then Colin’s voice jovially ask, “Ooh, what’s fo
r dinner, Mom? It smells awesome.”
This was my chance. Still crouching, I quickly headed to the base of the tree and tilted my head up. It wasn’t that tall, with only a foot on the house, but I wasn’t exactly the type of girl who climbed trees.
I looked around, trying to see if there were any ladders I could borrow, but the only thing that I spotted was a doghouse with a golden retriever curled up inside, sleeping.
I held my breath. If I made any sound that might wake it up, just one bark from it could make his entire family aware of my presence and location. I had to climb. It was now or never.
I remembered some of the heroes and heroines I’d read about in my novels and tried to summon the courage they’d had when they had to do what I was about to do. My mind went back to the words that the authors had written, describing what to do when climbing a tree.
I hesitantly planted my foot at one of the roots and a hand on the rough bark. My fingers searched for some handholds and found a few holes. I dug my other foot into a small indention on the tree and tiptoed slowly, using my hand to reach for the nearest branch. I strained my muscles and wrapped my fingers around it.
Using my knees to hug the trunk of the tree, I pulled myself up until I could place my foot on the branch. My arms strained with my body weight, my legs dangling slightly, but I refused to look down for any footholds.
I was breathing heavily by then. I wanted so badly to go back down to the safe place where I could feel the ground underneath my sneakers, but it was too late to back down. Besides, I had no idea how to even get down from my position so the only way was up.
Carefully I stretched my arm out and took hold of a branch beside me. Turning my head to the other side, I could see that I was one branch away from the balcony. I shimmied towards another branch and soon I was sitting on it, edging my way towards the railing and trying not to look down.
My hands were trembling as they patted their way to the railing. Once I felt its hard, rectangular shape, I reached out with my other hand and pulled my feet over it. The moment my feet landed on the solid flat floor of the balcony I nearly collapsed. Sweat dripped down the side of my face as I took deep, heavy breaths and tried to slow my heart rate.
The Black Notebook Page 7
