Leo? Is that you? Are you alright?
Someone else was writing in his journal at the same exact time.
Impossible. Improbable.
Magic.
Leo fought the urge to record it; it was there on the page already, so it was hardly necessary.
It’s Ceri. Are you there?
Leo’s heart stopped. Well, it didn’t stop, but it certainly skipped a beat or two.
Oh Gods, not her. Had Ceri read—no, no, no, no. Oh Gods, she did. She must have.
The sickening realization hit him all at once. Ceri had found his journal, which somehow still existed in the world he came from and in which he very clearly no longer was, and she had read it.
She had been the one to tear out the pages.
He flipped through frantically, piecing together from the pages that remained which entries were missing.
All of the ones that had mentioned her.
No, not all of them. But the ones where he’d…confessed. Where he’d written too much, where he’d had to redact some of his thoughts for the sake of posterity.
Those were the entries that were missing.
This seems silly, and perhaps I have it all wrong, but it seemed like you were writing just a moment ago. I guess I’ll keep trying; maybe there’s some kind of delay? I found your journal in the courtyard. I saw the flash of lightning and thought it struck you, but you were nowhere to be found. The only thing that was there was the journal.
Leo could not breathe as she wrote. What could he possibly say to her?
I lied to the others and said I found nothing. I wanted to—
The writing paused. The only sound in the room was the relentless beating of Leo’s pulse in his ear.
—look it over first. I thought there might be things you wouldn’t want everyone to know. Private things. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve removed a few pages that felt—
Another pause. Another terrifying pause. What was she thinking? What had she thought of what she read? Did she expect it? Was she angry? Shocked? Disgusted? She’d removed the pages—that was kind of her. Or maybe it was due to her own humiliation. Maybe he had been entirely too obvious. Maybe she thought she’d spare him, and herself, the embarrassment.
—personal.
Yet another long pause. Waiting was absolutely torture. When he’d nearly given up and brought his pen to paper again, to writesomething, Gods know what, she finally continued:
Were those things true? What you wrote about me? Assuming it was about me. Assuming I’m LBB. Did you mean it?
Leo wanted to crawl under the table and never come out. He wanted to walk back outside and juggle his objects until lightning struck him dead. His ears felt as though they were going to burst into flames. What could he say?
What could he possibly say?
Yes, hello, Ceri. I’m alright.
Great start. Really great.
Positively inspired.
Chapter Twenty-One
MESSAGES BETWEEN WORLDS
