47 Hours To Write

“It’s not in the backyard,” the teenager said, slurping the last drops from his giant soda.

“It’s not in the glove box either,” his mom replied, hands on her hips.

“Why would it be in the glove box?” he asked her, flopping down on the sofa.

“Why would it be in the backyard?” she countered, her face contorted in frustration and irritation. “I have to find it. Everything depends on that little black notebook.” She began throwing cushions off the couch, searching in between the cracks and crevices as her son moved to a recliner to resume his video game.

“Where was the last place you had it?” he asked absentmindedly, furiously pushing buttons on his controller.

She stopped for a moment and tapped a finger to her lips. “The coffee shop,” she said, grabbing her purse and cursing the car keys which always fell to the bottom of her purse. After a brief but caustic search, she remembered they were still in her hand from her recent search of the glovebox.

“You’re going out like that?” he asked her pointedly.

She looked in the mirror by the front door. She was wearing leggings (not her best pair) and a stained sweatshirt with her sneakers. Her hair looked like it had been styled by an anime creator. But it was clean, and her teeth were brushed. She’d been planning on writing all day. She was dressed only for comfort.

“Yep, I am,” she said as she opened the door.

“Don’t tell anyone you’re my mother,” she heard him yell as she stormed out, slammed the car door, turned the ignition, and ground the car into gear.

Mercifully, she found a parking meter close to her favorite coffee shop, the one she frequented at least twice weekly. She hurried inside and was struck by the familiar scent of strong coffee and homemade pastries. Despite the mid-morning line, she walked straight to the counter.

“Excuse me?” she tried to get the cashier’s attention.

The young cashier looked to be about the same age as her son. He was ignoring her just as well, too. The customer placing his order was not nearly as good at it. “The line forms in the back, lady,” he said, turning his body to block her from the cashier.

“I’m not ordering. I’ve lost something, and I may have left it here,” she explained as patiently as possible. “It’s very important.”

“I don’t care if it’s life or death. I’m running late for a meeting and if I don’t show up with my boss’ coffee, I’m going to be fired. As I said, the line forms in the back.” He completed the turning-his-back-to-her maneuver and placed his order.

She eyed the woman next in line, whom she was certain had overheard their conversation, but the woman wouldn’t look her in the eye.

Seeing no other option, she shouted, “I need to see the manager, please.” The din in the busy shop silenced, and she felt every eye on her as she sighed heavily. She had to get more organized if for no other reason than she was beginning to understand why her son wanted to maintain a cloak of invisibility around her.

She’d forced herself to believe that she did her best work at the last minute, under pressure. This was the first time she’d lost her notebook. But things falling apart right before the deadline was nothing new.

Within seconds of bellowing her request, the manager arrived at the counter, sweating from the heat of the kitchen and not, she was sure, because he suspected an oncoming confrontation.

“Hello, I’m sorry to disturb your work,” she began as politely as possible. “I was here this morning, and I’m afraid I left something behind.”

“What is it?” he wiped flour from his hands on a towel he wore on his shoulder.

“It's a black notebook,” she answered.

He wriggled his eyebrows in a suggestive response. “A little black book, eh?” he grinned. “And what’s in this book? Phone numbers? Dates?” He suddenly seemed very eager to help her.

“No, no, nothing like that. Just doodles and ideas. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, but I must find it as soon as possible.”

His smile dropped. “Hang on,” he threw his towel on his shoulder and walked into the kitchen. In less than a minute, he returned. “Nope. No one here has seen a little black book,” he told her.

“It’s not a ‘little black book,’” she corrected him. “It’s a black notebook, filled with brilliant ideas. Award-winning ideas.”

“Oh, well, that’s different,” he responded sarcastically. “I didn’t realize there were brilliant ideas in it. Maybe we should close the store and do a grid search.”

He saw the hope on her face and realized that his sarcasm was lost in her desperation. “We don’t have it, lady. Good luck.” And with that, he returned to the kitchen.

She exhaled deeply. Seeing that the crowd was gone, she ordered a shot of caffeine before deciding what to do next.

“Where was the last place I remember having it?” she asked herself aloud as she waited for her brew. The post office? It had to have been there, she thought. She was mailing a card and needed the address she’d scribbled on a scrap of paper. In the middle of the morning mob, she had to empty the contents of her purse, tampons, breath mints and all, to find it. The book had to have fallen out then.

And they had cameras everywhere in the post office!

She took her coffee as soon as her name was called. It was easier to walk the five blocks to the post office than to try to find another parking space. She plopped two more quarters in the meter and tried not to burn her lips as she power-walked to her next destination.

She was overly caffeinated and out of breath when she arrived. Thankfully, there was no one waiting for the one postal employee working behind a thick slab of plastic when she walked in.

She must have looked as out of sorts as she felt when she marched herself toward the customer window because the employee’s eyes widened as she yelled out, “Next!”

She leaned over the station, gripping the counter with one hand and holding up one finger on the other, silently advising the employee that she needed a moment to collect herself. Finally, she said, “I was here this morning. I don’t know if you remember me,” she tried to smile, but it was obvious that the woman was not there to make friends.

“Anyway, I think I dropped something, a black notebook. It’s vitally important that I find it,” she explained, her heart finally beating at a normal pace and her coloring fading from beet red to a dull crimson.

The employee exhaled as if she’d been asked to hand-deliver a package to the devil himself. “Let me look,” she said, her displeasure obvious.

By the time she returned, four customers were waiting, not so patiently, for their turn at the window. “It’s not here. Next!”

“No, no, not next. Not next,” she replied, waving her hands. “Are you sure? I spilled everything out of my purse, and I’m sure it fell. I just didn’t realize it. Did you check the security footage?” she asked.

“Seriously?” the employee replied, obviously ready to move on to the next phase of her day. “Next!” she shouted again, a bit louder, with a look that encouraged her to move along.

Dejected, shoulders slumped, dripping the last droplets of coffee onto the linoleum floor, she walked out of the building and towards her car.

Where could it be?

Before the post office and the coffee shop, she’d stopped at the bank, but she’d stopped at the automatic teller. She’d searched every inch of her car, and it wasn’t in there. Where else could it be?

The grocery store! Yesterday evening, before taekwondo and after her son’s baseball practice, she’d stopped to pick up something for dinner. She knew she had it with her because she’d written several ideas in it while she was waiting for him to finish batting practice.

She drove toward the neighborhood grocery, remembering as much as she could about her quick shop. Did she drop her purse? No. She recalled that she hadn’t taken her purse inside. She had grabbed her wallet and run in for some spaghetti noodles and jarred sauce. She used the self-checkout.

Something else happened then that was odd. Oh, she remembered, the register spat out her receipt so forcefully that it flew to the floor. She’d bent to retrieve it and found a lottery scratch-off beside it. She picked it up, too, meaning to throw it in the trash later.

She had as much of a chance at winning the lottery as she did winning the writing contest she was entering.

Anyway, there was no way she could have lost her black notebook in the grocery store because she hadn’t taken it with her.

She spent the drive home psyching herself up. She could do this. She could come up with an idea for a story. She worked well under pressure. So what if she only had two days to write something worth submitting? Two days was forty-eight hours and forty-eight sounded like a lot of time.

“Did you find it?” the boy pulled a plate of snacks from the microwave as she walked in. His best friend had joined him, and it was clear that they were about to do digital battle.

“Nope,” she answered, shaking her head side-to-side.

“You always tell me things will turn up when I lose something,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, and do you believe it when I say that to you?”

“Not really, no,” he said, focused on his controls and the zombies killing his avatar.

“Okay, thanks for the pep talk,” she said. She toed off her sneakers and left them by the front door. She now had forty-seven and one-half hours, she reminded herself as she walked toward the former closet that served as her office. She took a deep breath, rubbed her hands together, rolled her neck a few times in each direction, and turned the light on.

And there it was. Her black notebook was sitting on the laptop, exactly where she’d left it. It held her secrets, her ideas and plans, her sketches and lists. It was her treasure trove.

She picked it up and held it, lovingly and reverently. She said a silent prayer of thanks and set it, carefully, beside the computer. She hit the “on” switch and the machine came to life, its blue screen welcoming her like a friend. As it went through its opening sequence, she took the notebook in her hands again, removed its elastic enclosure, and realized there was something in the back pocket.

She opened it and out fell the scratch-off she’d found the night before.

Hope springs eternal, she thought, as she logged on to the lottery website. She still had forty-seven hours to write an award-winning story. Another five more minutes wouldn’t make a difference.

It took more than five minutes to scratch off the numbers and, when she did, she was sure she read them wrong. She read them again. And she re-read them a third time.

According to her ticket and the lottery website, she’d won $20,000.

“Hey, mom, can we order a pizza?” the boy asked from the doorway.

“Sure,” she answered in a daze.

“Cool!” he exclaimed, “You found your book. I told you it would turn up,” he said as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to call in his pie order.

With a smile that split her face, she answered, “Yeah, it turned up. Now, go eat your pizza and leave me alone. I only have forty-seven hours to write.”