Chapter Text
The summer I turned sixteen arrived without ceremony.
No celebrations, no dramatic changes—just heat pressing against the windows and cicadas screaming like they had something urgent to confess. Every afternoon, the sun lingered too long, turning the streets pale and empty, as if the town itself had learned how to hold its breath.
My days followed a quiet pattern. I woke up late, helped my mother with whatever needed fixing around the house, and spent the rest of the time wandering aimlessly with nowhere in mind. The old bookstore on the corner became my refuge. Its door chimed softly whenever someone entered, though most days, that someone was only me. I liked the way dust clung to the shelves and how the pages smelled faintly of age and rain.
That was where I found the journal.
It was thin, its cover worn smooth, tucked between two hardback novels that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years. There was no title on the spine, no author’s name—just a faint stain on the corner, like a thumbprint left behind too long ago. I bought it without thinking, feeling oddly certain it had been waiting.
At home, I opened it expecting blank pages. Instead, the first line was already written.
It described a memory I recognized instantly. Not in detail, but in feeling—the weight of a moment I had never spoken about, the kind that settles in your chest and refuses to leave. Page after page unfolded like that, each one echoing something familiar, something uncomfortably precise.
I told myself it was a coincidence. Old stories repeat themselves all the time. Yet every night, the journal gained new lines, and every morning, I read them with the strange sense that I was being followed—gently, patiently—by words that knew where I was going before I did.
I kept turning the pages, convinced that somewhere ahead, there would be an explanation.
The entries began to stretch further into my days. At first they stopped just short of the present, as if hesitant to cross an invisible line. Then one morning, I read a sentence describing me standing in the kitchen, holding the journal with one hand while my coffee went cold in the other. I lowered the mug slowly, heart thudding, and checked the page again. The ink was dry.
I tried changing my routine after that. Took different streets, stayed out later, avoided the bookstore entirely. It didn’t matter. The journal followed the shape of my life, adapting effortlessly, recording not just what I did, but what I thought I might do next. Sometimes it described moments that hadn’t happened yet—small, ordinary things that later unfolded exactly as written. A cracked glass in the sink. A phone call I wouldn’t want to answer. A name I hadn’t heard in years appearing on my screen.
The most unsettling part wasn’t the accuracy. It was the tone. The writing felt calm, almost intimate, like it trusted me to keep reading. Like it knew I would.
One evening, a new entry appeared that made my hands shake. It mentioned the final page. Said I would hesitate when I reached it. Said I would consider closing the journal and pretending I’d never found it at all.
I flipped through the remaining pages, counting how many were left. Fewer than I expected.
That night, sleep refused to come. The journal lay on my desk, closed but heavy, as though it had its own gravity. I wondered what would happen if I stopped reading. If the words would still appear. If my life would continue the same way without them.
By morning, I had already made my choice.
The next entry waited for me, neat and patient, beginning with a line about how some endings only exist because someone insists on reaching them. I swallowed, turned the page, and read on, unaware of how easily I was doing exactly what the story wanted.