The Notebook

The bus doors screech open. Anna settles into an empty seat by the window and watches Franky close up the diner. The neon pink Ruby's Diner sign flickers across puddles left behind from the afternoon rain. As the bus drives away, Anna catches a glimpse of her reflection in the window. The bags under her eyes are deep and gray, and a few strands of hair have loosened from her ponytail. She brushes them away with her fingers and smells the scent of grease and butter lingering on them.

Outside, puddles scattered across the dark pavements resemble pools of melted silver in the moonlight. High heels splash over them as groups of girls walk downtown. Their arms are linked together, their dresses shimmering like comets. Anna closes her eyes and rests her head against her seat. She is jerked forward when the bus comes to a sudden halt. Something hard hits the back of her ankle. The driver raises his hand and apologizes to the waves of angry murmurs as he continues driving.

Anna reaches down and finds a small, black notebook lying next to her feet. She asks the man behind her if it belongs to him. 

"It's not mine," he says.

She holds up the notebook, "anybody drop this?" 

No one claims it. Anna flips through its bare pages and thinks how unlucky the owner must be to lose something that's unused. She stuffs it inside her purse. When the bus reaches her stop, Anna gets off and walks a block to her apartment. The elevator inside her apartment building is still broken. She takes the stairs up to the third floor, where the smell of stir fry permeates the hall. 

Her apartment is small and bare but tidy. There is one shoebox bedroom and a kitchen with stained white countertops. Most of the living room space is occupied by an old maroon couch, which Anna found on the street a month after she moved in.

She hangs up her coat and unties her work apron, retrieving the neatly folded money from the side pocket. She places her purse on the coffee table, next to a stack of unpaid bills, and collapses on the couch. She counts the tips she's earned from her shift. Sixty-dollars. She takes out twenty and puts it in a shoebox labeled Tuition Money.

Anna looks at the time on her phone. It's a quarter till midnight on a Saturday. Her friends were probably out drinking at bars with hazy cigarette smoke air, being hit on by guys who reeked of beer and cheap cologne. The last time Anna went out drinking was during her twenty-fourth birthday eight months ago. Going out is too expensive, she thinks. Bills drain her of her money and work of her energy.

Her phone vibrates. William's name flashes on the screen. She lets it go to voicemail and checks her notifications. 

A text from Maria reads, Can you still cover my shift tomorrow?

Yeah, Anna replies.

Her phone rings again, but this time it's John calling.

“Hey,” she answers.

"Hey, you home?" He asks. 

"Yeah, what's up?"

"Did you check your schedule? Can you come to my game on Monday?"

“Yeah, I'm off that day." 

"Cool. It's at four. We're playing Munford. Don't forget." 

She tears a page from the notebook she found and scribbles:  4pm. Monday. John. Football.

She hears a small crash on the other end, like the sound of glass breaking. 

"What was that?" Anna asks. 

"Dad." 

Guilt ripples through her body.

"Listen, John, you know you can always come stay with me.” 

"You live across town, Anna. Plus, I’m not seven anymore. I can take care of myself, and Dad needs me." 

The sting in his voice is penetrating.

"I know," she hesitates, “just remember that you'll always have a place with me if you ever need it."

"Thanks. I gotta go. I'll talk to you later." He hangs up. 

She goes to the kitchen and sticks the reminder on the fridge with an old Pizza Hut magnet. Next to it is a faded photograph of her and John when they were younger. Anna's dark brown hair is tied in two pigtails, and John is cheesing a gummy smile in her arms. John may never understand why Anna doesn't come home. He's developed a sympathy for Dad that she never could. John was too young to remember Dad's drunken rage. Anna always sensed it was coming by the alcohol on his breath. Age has since put out the fires in him that the alcohol once ignited. Their mom left when they were young, then Anna moved out, and now Dad has nobody to burden except John. 

Anna opens the fridge and takes out a half-gallon of milk. She pours herself a bowl of cereal for dinner and washes up when she's done. In her bedroom, she sheds her clothes. They drop to a pile on the floor. As she gathers them up to throw them in the laundry basket, a crisp bill falls out. Anna picks it up and holds it to the light. Her eyes widen. It’s a hundred dollars.

How could she misplace such a huge bill? She was always careful with her money. It must be her lucky day, she thinks. She places it in her tuition box and takes a quick shower before getting into bed. The springs in her mattress creak as she lays down. Sleep lures her to the outside lullaby of vibrating music, drunken laughter, and loud car alarms. 

In the morning, the diner looks bare and deserted.

"Hi, I'm Kim," a young waitress greets Anna as they wipe down the tables and refill the empty condiment containers. 

"Hey, I'm Anna. I'm covering Maria's shift."

"Oh, cool. I was just hired two weeks ago, and she trained me."

"Welcome to the team."

Kim smiles, crinkling her freckled nose, "Thanks. So, do you go to school around here?"

"No, but I'm hoping to start next year. You?" 

“I just started my first year at Southwest." 

Anna's ears perk up. Just as she is about to ask Kim about the university, their manager walks in from the kitchen. 

"Anna, can I talk to you for a minute?" He asks. 

He leads her to his cramped office. 

"Listen, your boyfriend can't keep coming down here." 

"He's my ex- "

"I don't care who he is. This is my last warning."

"I got it, Franky. I'll have it under control." 

Anna ties her apron around her waist and begins her first shift. The morning passes by in a daze of refilling coffees, wiping off sticky countertops, and scribbling down orders: Two fried eggs. Toast with butter. Extra bacon instead of sausage. She collects her tips, a few dollar bills here and there but nothing bigger than a five. She smooths them down and tucks them away in the side pocket of her apron. 

During her lunch break, she sees Kim heading out.

"Run. Escape while you can."  

Kim laughs. "You're not ready to get outta here?" 

"I'm working a double."

"Bummer."

“Tell me about it,” Anna says. "Hey, I wanted to talk to you about Southwest. I’m thinking of applying there."

“Sure, why don't you take my number down?" Kim suggests. 

Anna digs in her purse for her phone, but her fingers land on the notebook she found on the bus. She rips out a page and writes down Kim’s number, folding the paper and stuffing it in her apron pocket afterwards.

The sun sets, smudging the harsh pink wallpaper and countertops into soft watercolor strokes. Anna often lets her thoughts unhinge during the slow start of an evening shift. Her daydreams take her to a place beyond the four pink walls of the diner, past her apartment, and even further past the small townhome where she grew up, to a place unrestrained by expectations or regrets.

"More coffee, sweetheart."

Anna pours the burly man in her section another cup. He chugs it, pays for his drink, and leaves. She takes the two dollars he left on the table and tucks it away with her morning tips. The diner is empty except for another table in Carlos's section. 

Through the window, Anna sees a tall, broad figure approach the diner. She stops Carlos as he's taking cups of water to his table. 

"Can you cover for me real quick?" She asks. He nods.

She jolts outside. 

"You can't be here, William,” she says.

He towers over her, glaring at her with bloodshot eyes.

"Why have you been ignoring me?" His breath is coated with alcohol. 

"Because I'm done." 

"You're done with me? Who was it that gave you a place to stay when you left your dads? You need me." 

Anna looks up at him and no longer sees the boy in high school she shared her lunches with. Instead, she sees the man she left when there was nothing left in her for him to take. She walks away, but he grabs her arm. The door to the diner swings open, and Franky stands outside. 

"Is there a problem here?" He asks William.

William lets her go before walking away. 

Anna follows Franky back inside, her eyes burn with fresh tears. 

"I'm going to have to let you go, Anna," He says. "This will be your last shift." 


She throws her coat on the ground. She chucks her shoes and her apron across her apartment floor. Anna sits on the couch, her wet face burried into her hands. She attempts to think of a plan, but her thoughts scatter. There’s enough rent money in the bank to last her the next month. She can tap into her tuition savings while she looks for another job.

In the fridge sits a half-empty bottle of vodka from her birthday. She unscrews it and drinks straight from the bottle as she slumps on the ground. Her apron rests near her feet. She pulls out her tips and counts them—thirty dollars from the morning and forty from the evening. 

She takes another swig from the bottle. Warmth spreads through her chest as the edges of her apartment blur. In another pocket, she finds the ripped page with Kim's number and, with it, a crisp hundred dollar bill.

Once was lucky, but twice? 

The reminder for John’s game stuck on the fridge catches Anna’s eye. It’s an absurd idea, she thinks as she takes the black notebook out of her purse and runs her fingers along the torn edges. She rips out another page, and waits. 

On top of her apron sits another hundred dollar bill. 

She laughs and counts the pages in the notebook. There are two hundred, including the two she's already torn.

Twenty-thousand dollars.

She tears out each page before blacking out. 

The next morning, Anna wakes up on the kitchen floor beside an empty Smirnoff bottle, torn notebook pages, and a pile of hundred dollar bills. She whistles as she cleans up the paper and collects the money. She looks at her phone. It's almost three. She grabs her purse and heads outside. The weather is clear and bright; A perfect day for a high school football game. Anna leaves the hallowed out notebook on top of a pile of broken furniture left on the street and heads to the bus stop. 

* * *

Mark eyes the lamp sitting on top of the broken dresser.

“We could use this. Help me with it, son."

Elijah holds the dresser that’s taller than him as Mark grabs the lamp.

"Look at this.” Mark spots the small, black notebook and flips through its blank pages. 


“Why would someone throw that away, Dad?” Elijah asks.

“Beats me. But one man’s trash is another's treasure, kiddo. You know what that means?”

Elijah shrugs.

“That's alright, I'll explain on the way home.”

He walks to the bus stop with his son, holding the lamp in one hand and the notebook in the other.