EXTRACT: Finders Keepers

I walk like a drunk to take my place at the end of the line. I close my eyes. Don’t go crazy. Don’t be Scary Crazy Rose again. It’s just a title, for Christ’s sake. You’re seeing what you expect to see, but it’s not real. You can open your eyes now and read that page and laugh at yourself.
I open my eyes and start reading a random page.

Dear Diary,
Mr. B. took me and Toby home in his Corvette after schooltoday, because it was raining and it was late. I sat in the front and Toby in the back and we dropped Toby off first because he lived closer.

Afterwards we stopped at the railroad tracks to wait for the train to pass. I pointed to my house. I told Mr. B. about the fish tank in our living room, about how when the train rolls past, the water will quiver for a full minute. “To a goldfish, it must be like a tsunami,” I said, and he smiled at me, like I’d just said something sweet but also clever, and I felt a gliding sensation in my chest.

He turned back to wait for the crossing, and I studied the side of his face, his jaw, strong and masculine, his lips the color of ripe plums, the little coarse hair growing over his Adam’s apple. He turned to look at me again, and my heart exploded as the gap between us closed. He caressed the corner of my mouth with his thumb. “I love the way you think,” he whispered.

I love him so much!!!

Love, Emily.

Emily? She signed my journal entries, Emily? Who the hell is this woman? I’m going to be sick. Someone behind me nudges me forward and I look up. The line has moved on, and I’m holding it up. I walk a few steps and open the book again. I have to know if she included the last entries. I mean, everything else I can live with—maybe, just—but not the last entries.

“I’ve told her everything,” he said, his arms around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Emily. I love my wife. You and I, it was all a terrible mistake. You must see that, don’t you?”

I cried for days, but I never spoke to him again, not the way we used to, I mean. Only in class. And not even then. But then I understood the betrayal, how I’d been used and discarded like a piece of trash…

I scan all the way to the end, and for a moment I think I really am crazy, and that’s absolutely fine with me. I don’t care if I’ve lost my mind, if I’ve become the kind of person who blows their nose in their socks and puts coffee mugs on their head, as long as this is not my diary.

Except it is, but not quite.

It’s not just the last entry that’s different. She’s taken every one of my cringe-worthy little fantasies and wrote them like they actually happened. Mr. Bellamy never caressed the corner of my mouth with his thumb. I just imagined what it would be like if he did because I saw it in a movie.

I flick back more pages like a crazy woman. My phone buzzes in my bag. I ignore it. It’s probably Ben wondering where I am.

“Hello! What’s your name?”

I look up, startled. I didn’t realize it was my turn, and I’m completely unprepared. Although how I could have prepared for this moment—other than by bringing a gun—is unclear.

Emily Harper is waiting for me, a big sunny smile on her face, her hand outstretched. I study her face. Do I know you? Do you know me?

I hand her the book, but my hand is shaking. She smiles a reassuring smile at me. “What’s your name, honey?”

“This is my book,” I stammer. I hadn’t meant to, obviously. Otherwise, I may as well turn myself in to the authorities and be done with it. But Emily misinterprets what I said because she replies, “And thank you for buying it. I really appreciate it. Who do you want me to sign it to?”

I’ve tried to remember how often I named myself in the tens of thousands of words I wrote, and I can’t think of a single time. I didn’t like my name back then. I had planned to change my name to Amélie when I was older, after Amélie, the romantic comedy my mother and I watched fifty times, and also because I thought I looked like her. I didn’t. I had the right hair, sort of, but that was about it. But in my mind, we could have been twins. So I would sign my entries with Amélie. Or sometimes, just A.

Love, Amélie.

Did I write Rose anywhere at all? Ever?

Someone clears their throat behind me. Screw it. I’m not taking any chances. I glance at the arrangement of purple flowers on the corner of the table.

“Iris,” I say.

“Like the flower!”

I watch her closely while she writes, “To Iris” in big loopy letters, light-blue ink. I study her face, her impossibly long silky eyelashes, her soft blond wavy hair. She has a yellow butterfly hair clip above her right ear and a barrette above her left that spells out in rhinestones Let It Go.

She signs her name below my dedication. Her signature takes up two-thirds of the flyleaf. Emily Harper, with some kind of blob at the end that takes me a moment to identify as a butterfly.

She hands it back to me. “Enjoy!” she sings, then looks over my shoulder, ready for the next devotee. I haven’t moved. I’ve learned nothing about her, let alone why she is pretending to be the author of my diary.

“Thank you so much,” she says, trying to move me on. I feel the line behind me swelling up like a blowfish, puffing its collective cheeks with impatience.

“But how—”

Someone jostles me out of the way.

“There you are. You made it! Well done, you.” Sally takes my elbow.

“Come this way.” I let myself be guided in a daze. When we reach the bank of cash registers, she takes the book from me and rings it up. I fumble for my wallet and pull out my Visa card.

How did she do it? How the hell did this woman get my diary and publish it, for fuck’s sake?

And more importantly, what the hell is going to happen to me now?

Jail? Death row? Both?

“There you go!” Sally hands me my book in a paper bag. “Receipt’s in there. Have a nice day!”

And now I’m outside. My phone buzzes again. I rummage through my bag with shaking hands. “I’ll be right there,” I tell Ben, and then I hang up.