Molly's Journal

It was around midnight when I was walking through a part of town I hadn’t been before. I scuffed my shoes across the pavement, cocked my head upwards to gaze at the dense patches of dark clouds hanging above the suburbs. A cat jumped off one of the yellow bins and leaped across my path, entranced by the aroma of boiling chicken and noodles trailing from the back door of the takeaway. Breeze blocks stood between the road and the concrete squares of yard for each building, a man nursed his back against their gritty surface. His face was sheened by a day’s hard work in a stifling kitchen. Cupping his hands around the final stub of a cigarette, he shielded the dying spark from flatlining.

This neighbourhood made my little apartment into a penthouse suite. The most appealing feature of my home was the glass tank window protruding out onto the skyline. It would have been perfect for someone who wasn’t afraid of heights to perch a cushion upon the sill and place plants there; being on the eleventh floor made me nauseous and every real plant I’d ever owned had shrivelled back into the pot, but I knew I was going to miss it when I got evicted. My supermarket job wasn’t enough to save me from the bills and notices piling on my welcome mat. The man’s cigarette had expired when I looked back at him. He struggled back indoors; his body weighing heavy, built out of the breeze blocks. It was my past self, observing the future. I could have afforded the rent of one of these houses…just about.

The alleyway ran to an end and I was stood at a T junction. I yawned. I hadn’t been sleeping well, the walks were to make me tired enough to sleep. I decided it was time to go back home. The quickest way was through the same alleyway. There was a huge clatter behind an overflowed bin. I peered around it; the same black cat fled away from the scene again. My eyes adjust to a small black rectangle peeping out from underneath, I squat down to examine it. It was a notebook. I picked it up and ran my fingers along the letters scratched into its leather surface: ‘Molly’s journal’. It seemed wrong to look inside. I didn’t know who Molly was, but I was sure she wouldn’t want me reading her journal. I heard another clatter, it was probably another alley cat, but I shoved the journal inside my coat as though I was shoplifting. Reading someone else’s journal may just have been the excitement I’d been needing those past few months.

I was back at home and boiling the kettle for a cup of coffee. It seemed that my walk that night had inspired me to stay awake longer into the early hours of the morning, rather than sleeping. I was stood in the kitchen staring at the notebook I had acquired, disinfected by me and placed upon my kitchen counter. The coffee was to drink as I was reading. The kettle clicked, I absentmindedly filled my mug, coffee spilled over the side and splashed onto the edge of the white pages. I tutted heavily and quickly fanned the pages by pinching the corner and letting it dangle open. My clumsiness hadn’t obscured the writing, but the edge of every page had stained brown. I’m sorry Molly.

I decided not to bring my coffee over to my desk in fear of repeating the same mistake twice. I had saved reading anything in it for this moment: sat in my comfy chair, my lamp propped to project a yellow glow over the pages. I’d tacked snippets of my own writing and drawings on the wall in front of me, as a reminder of what I loved doing most. I pictured Molly as a teenager, maybe even a little girl. It reminded me of my own childhood, sat up on my bunkbed, drawing a padlock on the cover of my diary. I think that’s why I picked it up, I didn’t have any of my childhood writing anymore. I needed a time capsule.

Hi! I’m Molly.

This is my journal if you couldn’t already tell by the cover. I turned fourteen yesterday! Most days feel the same right now, but my birthday was great. I got to see my friends for the first time in AGES. I wasn’t in hospital either. Mum got me this new notebook so I can write whilst I’m there, that way I’m less bored, and I have absolutely NO excuse not to do my homework. Haha. I probably still won’t do it. Boring things are banned from my journal. No hospitals, no homework, no boys (okay…maybe one boy…). I want to leave something in the world, and this could be the start of that. But I should really sleep now. Bye for now, notebook!

I woke up with my face pressed against my desk. I looked at the clock, it was two in the afternoon. I’d read pages and pages of Molly’s journal. She was sixteen now. The boy she liked from Geography liked her too, but she was absent from school most of the time, so they drifted apart. Her parents got a divorce and her brother had started hanging out with a bad crowd. But she did great in her exams, and she won first prize in a writing competition. She loved discovering new places when she could, even places that weren’t the most scenic, like abandoned parts of the suburbs, alleyways. There was one journal entry which was my favourite. She was describing a village on a postcard that her Grandad had sent, which was wedged between the pages.

It’s the type of place you’d go to reminisce all the good and bad in your life, where the air is cleaner, and the stars are clearer at night. You’d wonder why you’re normally sat in some box, travelling in another box, to go and sit in yet another box, only to do it all over again. For a small village, it’s bigger than the city. The sky stretches in the morning and evening and welcomes you into its never-ending shades of oranges and pinks. It’s quiet, yet the meadows speak to you, they tell you to run free and to never look back. The tall grass tickles your legs, and the sun flows over you and colours you in yellow. You’d say goodnight to your friends when the crickets sing, then skip home, your cheeks full of red and smiles. Someday, I’ll be there. Free.

That was enough of Molly’s life, I needed to live my life. I checked my emails, double checked the supermarket rota for next week, then skipped down my social media timeline. My eyes linger on one post a little longer when I see ‘$20,000 REWARD’. The post was a picture of a girl. I assumed it was a reward for finding a missing person. It was a missing reward, but not for a person…for a journal. ‘Our dear Molly passed away last week. We haven’t been able to locate her journal, which is very precious to us. We’d greatly appreciate it if someone were to hand it in’. I look at the open journal and the postcard, then at the girl on my screen. The pieces suddenly fit together. Molly was gone as fast as I was introduced to her. She had curly brown hair and glasses, as I had imagined. Her smile was telling me that she wanted me to pick up her journal and read it. I wanted to leave something in the world, and this could be the start of it. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

I handed in Molly’s journal to her family. Her mum hugged me tight at the door and thanked me for bringing a piece of their little girl back to them, and I asked them if it was okay for me to take a picture of the postcard. The place was called Redwater, they told me that Molly had been there, but she was too little to remember. She’d been too sick all her life to travel back. I thought about all the two years I’d read of her life in a single night. I wondered how her journal ended up where I found it. I suspected that she’d snuck out one night, taken the same level of intrigue as I did for a strange part of town. She passed the same takeaway as I did and saw how cooped in boxes the people were there.

As much as I objected to the reward money, her family insisted I take it, even after I explained how I’d spilt coffee on the side (which I apologised profusely for). I paid off my rent arears, so my little apartment was safe for now. Maybe I could buy one plant for my window when I returned from my trip. With a portion of the money, I bought a train ticket. I knew I would lose my job because I hadn’t given notice of leave. I’d find a new one, one with less monotony. A small vacation would give me some more perspective. I was going to Redwater, to leave a little something there in memory of Molly, and I knew that the sunsets would be as beautiful as she had described them.