A (Black) Book Of Our Own

It wasn’t a gloomy day when she had come across the notebook, as one always seems to do in an espionage novel. It was actually an unusually warm weather for February that allowed the golden hue of afternoon light the park in a warm manner. Annie had just finished her online classes for the day, and as per her Wednesday routine, she had gone to the park to unwind after a long day. It was not until she had come to her regular bench by the river that her daily routine changed drastically.

On her regular bench stood a small black leather-bound notebook. It didn’t look anything out of the ordinary; it basically was what any person would draw if they had been asked to draw a notebook. Annie picked it up along her walk, fully intending to post about it on her college’s lost and found website to find its owner. It wasn’t until that evening that she realized the notebook was far more bizarre than she had initially thought it to be.

What was bizarre about it was not what it contained, but rather what it did not contain. The dotted notebook was completely empty except for the first page. On the first page an aesthetic handwriting in black told her to return the notebook to the fourth bench at Arula Meadows Park, but these weird instructions were not even the most bizarre part. The reward for returning it was $20,000 – for an empty notebook! Thinking that she might be getting pranked or somehow have fallen in the midst of a foreign intelligence play in motion, she analyzed every page one by one for a sign of previous use. She even held the pages above the stove to see if someone had written in it with invisible ink – an action that gained her questionable looks from her roommates. But at the end, it was just an empty notebook with an extremely high reward for returning it.

The night before she was planning to go to Arula Meadows Park to return the notebook, she wrote the following words to the notebook:

“Dear Stranger (whom I assume is either extremely rich or is playing a prank on me),

I found your notebook a couple of days ago in the very same park to which I am now returning it. I hope you’re having a good day despite everything that’s going on in the world these days. I assume this empty notebook must be quite important for you – for reasons that I cannot comprehend, but perhaps one day will grow to understand. Hopefully you’ll find your notebook before someone else does.

Hope you’re staying safe out there,

--A”

I was exactly one week later that she found the same notebook again – this time on another park bench on her regular route. She opened it up to see the following addition to her letter:

“Dear “A”,

Firstly, allow me to thank you for your kind words. It had been a while since I had not talked to anyone outside my daily quarantine routine.

You might be wondering why I have promised to pay such a high reward prize for an empty notebook. The reward lies not in what the notebook contains, but in rather what it could contain. A story is nothing if you have no one to tell it to. If you can look past my cheesy, “poetic” sentences and would like to be a part of my story, check the back pocket of the notebook.

Hoping that you’ll take a lonely writer up on his offer,

--The “Stranger”

In the back pocket lied a check worth $20,000 with the recipient part left blank. It took Annie four sleepless nights to decide that she could actually cash it in, and that she could always donate the money if it turned out to be questionably sourced. Still not believing that the money would not come through, she went to the bank to cash her newly minted mysterious check. While the bank tellers gave her, a college student with a need-based scholarship that definitely does not look like she would be carrying a $20,000 check on a Monday, questionable looks, the money was deposited to her account in two days without a problem.

Feeling guilty about spending the money she got from a stranger, she decided to write a little bit in the notebook about her doubts about spending her newly earned cash as a college student who could not pay them back. She included that she didn’t know anything about her mysterious benefactor and that she would donate the money to a charity if the “Stranger” did not come through with an answer about his intentions. She left the notebook on the bench again after her Wednesday classes, and not that she would admit to anyone, but she was disappointed when she found the bench to be empty the next day. Luckily, the notebook was on the very same bench the following day – with the following addition:

“Dear A,

You writing your doubts and the ethical consequences of your actions tell me that I have given these funds to someone who deserves to have them in the first place. I can tell you that I donate to various charities enough that you using this amount for yourself would not be a terrible loss. Therefore, you needn’t worry about it at all.

While I acknowledge that it is quite unorthodox to write someone over a notebook, my main aim is not only a personal one. I’d like to share the joy that a little bit of money can bring into your life, especially to the one of an honest college student. If you’d really like to make an old man happy, you can always go to 504 Clemens St. It used to be one of my favorite places to frequent regularly.

Sincerely,

--Your “Stranger”

P.S. I’d recommend #5”

That weekend, Annie checked out the address in the letter to find a quaint coffee shop. She ordered the fifth item on the menu – a delicious spiced mocha with whipped cream on top. She took a picture of her drink in front of the coffee shop, fully intending to printing out a copy for her next letter. Even though her benefactor hadn’t explicitly told her that he was expecting her to write him back after this, she instinctively knew that those letters were the work of a lonely person who would write back until the other stopped. It took one to know one after all.

Annie now had something to look forward to in her monotonous routine. She looked forward to every Wednesday that she got to drop off the notebook, and every Friday she got to receive her latest “assignment” along with the cordial letter from her mysterious benefactor. She invested in a small polaroid camera, taking pictures of her assignments to allow her benefactor, who was on the fast track to becoming her friend and confidante, to experience them from her perspective.

Annie and the mysterious owner of the notebook wrote to each other for months. Their letters got longer and longer, and they now consisted more than her latest assignment, whether it was to visit an antique bookshop or walking across a frozen lake in the nearby nature center. They talked about their lives, loves, and everything in between. Annie learned that her new friend was a widower residing in a nearby home and could not leave his bubble due to underlying medical conditions. Annie talked to him about her anxieties about life after college. They both seemed to be lonely before the notebook, and it had allowed them to get to know each other without the cross-generational barriers that generally prevents people from mixing with other age groups. On paper, they were just a different voice in each other’s heads, brightening the other’s day with their words. Her newly gained funds from her friend not only allowed her to live her life a tad more comfortably, it also allowed her to experience things that she would never have experienced by herself in the first place. All while sharing them with a person she had yet to meet.

It wasn’t until the end of the pandemic that they decided to meet up – on the very same bench that had started off their friendship. They talked until sunset came and went, thinking how rare it was to gain someone new in your life in a time where all people seemed to do was lose the ones they held dear. When it was time to part again, Annie handed her new friend the notebook along with a grateful smile and the promise that she would get the notebook back from him the following week – this time in person.