Chapter 3: The Shared Notebook
I can't sleep that night. I stare at the ceiling, thinking about Alex. About how he didn't ask me why I was alone, or why I write in a black notebook, or why I wear this expression like the world weighs too much on me.
He simply... understood.
I get up at three in the morning. The house is silent. My grandfather is snoring in his room; my grandmother left the TV on without sound, as she always does. I go down to the kitchen, make tea I won't drink, and sit at the table.
I open the notebook. I think about my mom. About how she's been gone for seven years. About how with every day that passes, I forget a little more of her voice, how she smelled, what it felt like to be loved unconditionally.
I write:
"Sometimes I think that if I can just hold on for one more day, eventually it will hurt less. But it's been seven years of 'one more day' and it still hurts the same."
The next day, I get to school early. I head straight for the corner. Alex is already there.
"You got here early," I say.
"I didn't sleep well."
"Me neither."
We sit down. Today the silence is different, more charged. As if we both had things to say but didn't know how.
Alex takes out his notebook—a plain, spiral-bound one—and opens it to a page that holds only one drawing: two figures sitting back-to-back, mutually supporting each other.
"Sometimes I draw what I can't say," he explains.
I take out my black notebook and place it between us.
"I write what I can't scream."
We look at each other. And without saying anything else, Alex tears a sheet from his notebook and tapes it into mine. He draws a line down the middle, dividing the page in half.
"Your side, my side," he says. "You write, I draw. Or vice versa. Whatever we need."
It's not a question. It's a proposition. An invitation to something neither of us understands yet but which we both need.
I pick up my pen. On my side, I write:
"I'm afraid this is just a dream."
Alex takes his pencil. On his side, he draws a ladder climbing toward the clouds.
Beneath it, he writes:
"Then let's dream together until it becomes real."