The school day was finally over, and I was sitting on the bus on my way home. It had been exhausting, filled with a ton of tests I’d been studying for over the past few days. I’d rather have spent the time with my friends than sitting at my desk for hours, reading the same pages of my history book over and over.
But today, I finally had time.
My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my back pocket.
“What are you going to wear tonight?” my friend Katie texted. We had planned to go to a party later.
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll choose an outfit as soon as I get home,” I replied, just as the bus came to my stop.
I got up and when the bus opened its doors I stepped outside, into the cold winter air. My house was close to the bus station, so I was home in the blink of an eye.
“Hey, Mom,” I called when I first entered the house, which smelled like freshly baked cookies.
I placed my backpack on the floor, took off the jacket and followed the smell into the kitchen.
“Oh, hey Sadie,” my mom glanced up, then quickly focused back on the cookies she was decorating.
“How did your tests go?” she asked.
“They went okay,” I said, relieved they were finally over.
“That’s great,” she told me with a smile.
“I’ll be in my room,” I announced, heading upstairs.
“Wait, I almost forgot – can you bring the Christmas decorations down? They’re up in the attic.” she asked me.
“Sure!” I replied, though I was slightly annoyed with the thought of going up to the attic, which had always creeped me out.
The attic door was on the ceiling on the second floor. After a bit of a struggle, I managed to pull down the ladder and climbed up into the dark, creepy room,
I tried to switch on the lights, but they didn’t work anymore. Sighing, I used my phone’s flashlight to see where I was going, trying to find the red box filled with the decorations.
As I made my way through spiderwebs and stepped over plenty of boxes, something caught my eye: a cardboard box with my name written on it.
Curious, I kneeled down and opened it. Inside were a bunch of diaries, each in a different color. They were labeled with different years, from red to blue, and ranged all the way back to 2008, the year I was born.
I pulled out the pink diary labeled “2008” and opened the first page. To my surprise, it was written in the first person, as if I had written it myself. But I hadn’t.
I grabbed another diary from the box, this one labeled “2019.” I flipped through the pages and landed on November 2nd. The entry described a test I had taken that day and how I had secretly cheated on it – something I’d never told anyone.
At first I thought my mom wrote them but I came to the realization that she didn’t know about the test, no one did, so who wrote those diaries?
Panicking, I searched for this year’s diary. It was blue, labeled as “2023”. I flipped to today’s date and my heart sank.
Everything I had done that day was written down, from ignoring my alarm that went off this morning to the funny joke a friend told me at lunch. I kept on reading.
The diary described that I would pick out an outfit and go to the party but it also mentioned a car accident.
My heart dropped. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I quickly turned to the next page, it was empty, which meant my life would end that night.
I didn’t know what I should do, but one thing was clear: I would definitely not go to this party.
I searched for Katie’s contact on my phone, calling her. I tried to explain what just happened. But of course she didn’t believe me, after all it did sound absurd; A diary that told me my fate.
No matter what I said, she insisted on going to the party. But I was too scared to go, I didn’t want to risk my life. So I stayed home. Instead I helped my mom decorate the Christmas tree. I didn’t tell her about the diaries, she wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
The next day came and I was still alive. But there had actually been an accident and Katie was involved in it. Luckily she had survived it though.
That’s when I realized: without the diary, I would probably no longer be alive. The diary saved my life.
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