Josh leads the way through the central passageway.
‘If the final clue is hidden on one of these post-it notes and we’re expected to check all of them, that band is dead to me,’ Elliot says to me flatly.
‘Ditto,’ Hennie agrees, gazing wide-eyed at the abundance of them.
‘That would be impossible,’ I reply. ‘No one has the time to do that.’
‘Or the eyesight,’ Owen chimes in, squinting at the post-its at the very top.
‘What even are they?’ Hennie asks, stopping to inspect a bunch.
I pause next to her, my eyes dancing across the post-its in front of me. Every note is scribbled in different handwriting, and some look like they’ve been added recently. Others are turning up at the edges with the ink fading, possibly years old. I walk tentatively down the corridor, feeling a tug at my heart as I read over them:
I want to go home
I want to forget about her
I want to sleep
I want to understand what’s wrong with me and how to fucking fix it
I want to create something that matters
I want to be pretty
I want to work somewhere that doesn’t make me
want to die
I want my mum
Others are less serious:
I want ollie to bum me
I want MONEYYYYYYYYYY
I want to be rimmed
I want to move to a cabin in the woods where the internet doesn’t exist and no one knows I even exist and I eat leaves to survive
Hennie clears her throat. ‘Quite a lot to take in.’
The post-it confessions have left me speechless. My eyes stick to one post-it just above my head. It looks like it’s been there for some time, the words faded and almost illegible now:
I want to believe that love is real
I hover next to it, wondering if the person who wrote this message however many years ago has found someone to love by now. If they might have discovered that loveisreal. I wish there was a number on the back that I could check in with and ask.
The smell of clean, warm woodiness reaches me before I see him. I’m beginning to take serious issue with how glorious he smells and how much it messes with my cognitive functioning.
I peek at him over my shoulder and his face is as plain as always, his gaze moving across the wall decorated with the desires and dreams of so many.
‘Seems only right that we do one,’ Hennie says brightly.
‘Yeah, why not?’ Owen replies from behind us.
‘I’ll find where the post-its are,’ Hennie says.
