Work Text:
Peter hadn’t meant to look inside the notebook. He hadn’t even thought there was anything in there besides history notes. All he had known about it up to this point was that it was a regular black and white striped composition notebook that belonged to Y/N, the girl who sat a few seats to the right of him. She seemed to hold it in high value, constantly jotting down notes in it.
Which is why when she accidentally left it behind one day, he picked it up to give it back to her. But she had already slipped into the crowd and vanished. Peter stood on tiptoes, trying to see over peoples’ heads, but she was gone.
Peter shrugged and carefully put the notebook into his bag. He’d give it back to her tomorrow.
Which brings us to after school, when Peter was opening his backpack to retrieve his math assignment. He had completely forgotten about the book, so when it fell out, flipping open to a random page, he was momentarily confused. He went to pick it up and his eyes automatically scanned the words at the top--or rather, bottom, it seemed she had flipped the book upside down to write--of the page.
Misvale was cold and damp most of the time, averaging at about ninety days of sunshine a year. Good ghost weather, but not usually a big pull for people to move.
“Alright, now that that’s done, I need you two to work on that missing person case. I assume you can get some information?” Chief asked me.
Wait. What was he doing? And what was this? Definitely not history notes, that’s for sure. Although he knew he shouldn't, curiosity got the better of him. He flipped back to where the writing started, on the last page of the notebook.
The first thing you need to know about ghosts is that they’re dramatic. Really, really dramatic.
The next paragraph had a lot of eraser marks, signs that it had taken Y/N a long time to get the wording right.
Take this morning for example. I woke up to the lovely sound of my ancient shutters banging open and closed.
Over the next half hour Peter read through nearly forty pages of story separated by sketches of various characters or a half page on what the main setting looked like. It seemed to be about a detective that could see ghosts and was just done with the whole thing. Although his conscience--and his homework--were scratching at the back of his mind, he couldn’t bring himself to stop until he came to the final words written so far.
“I’m sorry, she’s bad at people. What’s your name?” Lolan asked. His voice was the perfect mix of interested and casual. I raised my eyebrow, a bit
It stopped there. “Wait, no,” he said, flipping the pages. Empty. He turned to the front of the notebook. There was more writing here, yes, but this was just what he had initially suspected the book’s contents being; boring old history notes. Well, not necessarily boring. The second page contained a small comic strip of stick figures that seemed to depict Great Britain and the thirteen colonies as a parent and their unruly children. But still, it wasn’t the story. He groaned, putting the book back into his backpack.
°•°•°•°
You, on the other hand, were freaking out. You had cleaned out your backpack twice, practically turned your room upside down, even retraced your steps back to the bus stop, all to no avail. Your notebook was gone.
“This is why you use google docs,” you mutter to yourself as you sit down in history the next day. “At least for your weird stories. Then you’d know where it was, plus there would be less chance of someone stumbling across it and-”
“I need you to write the rest of this.” You look up to see Peter, the boy who sat a few seats down from you, holding your notebook.
“What?” Oh no, oh no oh no oh no. Please, please tell me he didn’t read it.
“Your story. About the detective. It’s good, I’d like to know what happens.” He stumbled over his words a bit, clearly embarrassed. He holds the book out to you and you snatch it.
“Really? You didn’t think it was cringy garbage?” you ask disbelievingly.
“No, of course not. I mean, are you taking a creative writing class or something?”
“Uh, no, not this semester. My friend convinced me to take it with her next semester, though. I haven’t ever taken it before.” Why is he still talking to you? This was very out of the norm, in more ways than one.
The bell rings, startling the both of you. “Well, I should probably go sit down. But please, I wasn’t kidding. Keep me updated.” He smiles and goes over to his seat, leaving you trying to process what had just happened.
“Okay. Well. That was unexpected.”