The Burgundy Notebook
By Nellie Melton

The sun dawned on a grey, overcast October day, just like it always had. Instead of songbirds singing cheerily, as one may expect on mornings, one may have heard the lovely sound of traffic, or perhaps crows or other such scavenging animals going through trash cans. Songbirds were a very rare thing to find in such a city. If one were to fly over it, they would be inclined to quickly turn around and fly back from whence they came. It wasn’t exactly the prettiest of cities, being as grey and dull as it was, but it was certainly a place for the inhabitants to call “home”, nonetheless.

Cail awoke at the same time as always, and went about his morning routine. He took a shower, got dressed, combed his hair, ate his breakfast, and gathered all of his things for school; all with a well-practiced efficiency that came from years of doing the exact same thing. After brushing his teeth, he was out the door of the small apartment building, and walking to school. He had put a note on his parents’ door: “Going to school now, see you later.” They’d find it when they woke up, or got back from work. Their work schedules often changed, but one thing remained constant; he hardly ever got to see them.

His thoughts were interrupted by the soft sound of somebody clearing their throat, and he looked up to see Lizzie. She was a bit of an odd girl. She was rather shy and reclusive, and yet everyone still seemed to know her. “Oh… hi,” Cail said, stopping in front of her. She smiled a bit and waved. “Hi, Cail,” she said in her usual wispy, almost inaudible voice. They both started walking again, heading towards the same school. Cail wasn’t really sure why he walked with her to school every week, or why she even waited for him. They had been very good childhood friends, but times changed, and they had grown apart. Despite this, they were at least on good terms with each other.

Cail didn’t really like school; he only went because he knew it was necessary to get a good job. If you didn’t graduate, there was no chance of making any sort of living in this place. He just wanted to write stories; it was the only thing he ever genuinely enjoyed. He used to be bullied for a while, but eventually the populars moved on to someone else. Now he was mostly just left alone. He spent any free time in class he got writing about observations he’d made during the day.

He trudged through the day as usual. Mr. Lamorte droned through 3rd Hour class in his usual condescending way. A hyperactive sophomore named Gabe jumped into his seat and joked through several classes (Cail had 4th and 6th Hour classes with him), and a popular girl named Cathi gossiped with her huge group of friends. Lizzie was a part of that group, though she never seemed interested in what Cathi had to say. Lastly, there was May. She had large round glasses and freckles, with her mousy brown hair parted into two braids. She was considered a nerd, and was still picked on by the bullies. She reminded Cail a lot about how he was before he was left alone. For a while he considered letting her know they’d move on to somebody else eventually, but she seemed to already know that, due to her enduring nature. She acted pleasantly towards everyone, regardless of how they treated her.

Cail was interrupted in the middle of his reading assignment by a loud collective chortle emanating from the group of “popularity-drones” (as Cail mentally called them) that swarmed around Cathi. She had obviously constructed another mean-spirited anecdote about May. They teased her for the entire rest of the day, their vile “loser-hunt” reaching its pinnacle when Gabe made a song about that rumor to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”. The only one besides Cail and May who didn’t seem to be amused by this was Lizzie.  She sat quietly in the back of the room, watching May bury her face in her book in response to another rousing chorus of  “…then she put a diaper on and said ‘I gotta wee-wee!’”

Cail did his best to ignore the rest of the kids as much as he could, and made it through the rest of the day this way. He returned to his apartment, dropping his bag by the door. He closed the door, and then locked it behind him. His parents probably wouldn’t be home for a long time; he wouldn’t be surprised if they returned after he had gone to bed. At one time, he had felt it was almost as if he was just lying to himself that he had parents. Now he was mostly just indifferent to the whole thing. He spent the rest of his night on writing, watching TV, and having a hastily thrown-together peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner. He fell asleep that night with the TV on.

The next day, he was up and out the door with the same timeliness as usual. Lizzie was in the same spot as before, though she seemed a bit upset. Cail knew it was best to stay quiet, so they walked in silence for a while. She silently fumed over something, but after a while she calmed down enough to have a short, forced conversation with Cail about this and that. Cail could still see a small twinge of anger in her light blue eyes, making them almost seem to resemble some sort of blue flame. It made him feel uneasy, and he stayed mostly quiet except for answering the random question that popped up in the midst of the hollow conversation. They made it to the school and wordlessly parted ways. “I wonder what that was about?” he thought to himself. He finally decided it was none of his business anyway, and went on his way.

Gabe wasn’t there that day. Cail didn’t think anything of it; Gabe was known to skip school every now and then. After a week of no-shows, however, he began to wonder about it. For one thing, nobody seemed concerned. This kid was missing, and there weren’t even any rumors floating around concerning the disappearance. He finally asked Lizzie about it on one of their walks to school. “Well… maybe his family just moved out of town,” she commented. “Yeah, but wouldn’t people have talked about it at least a little?” he asked. “They probably didn’t want to dwell on it,” she answered. She didn’t seem to want to dwell on it either, since all further attempts to get her to talk about it failed.

That day, Cathi decided that she didn’t like her “best friend” Jamie anymore. She’d rounded up the rest of her popularity-drones and started a vicious rumor about Jamie that spread from one side of the school to the other within hours. Cail, apathetic as usual, still wrote about it in his observation notebook. Even if he didn’t really care, he still figured he could use it for writing material later. Jamie was also a friend of Lizzie’s, so Lizzie definitely wasn’t amused by this. At lunch she stood up to Cathi over the matter. Needless to say, she was instantly put down. “Huh, if you’re sympathetic to a cheating, lying, thumb-sucking loser, you must be a loser as well! Get out of my face, you dork!” Lizzie left the lunch room that day smeared with thrown food and covered in trash, with hot tears burning in her eyes. She went home early that day.

The day after that, Cail found it to be a lot more quiet at school than usual. The popularity-drones still chattered amongst each other, but it was without any sort of direction. They had lost the loudest one of them all; rendering their group leaderless. This already struck Cail as odd, because unlike Gabe, Cathi had come to school every day. She was always hell-bent on winning the best attendance award; she came in early every day, even if she was sick to the point where she really needed to stay in bed. Nonetheless, she was gone. He listened to a few directionless conversations, but nobody seemed to mention her at all. Finally he got up the nerve to ask another one of Cathi’s “best” friends, Monique. She just looked up at him like he was crazy. “Cathi?” she said, “Who’s that, some nerd or something? I never heard of her.” Cail was taken aback. “Uh… okay. Never mind…” he mumbled before going back to his work.

“You know Monique,” reasoned Lizzie, as the two walked to school the next day, “she was most likely lying just to freak you out.” “I know, I thought that too… But there’s no way she could convince Cathi to give up her chances for an attendance award to just play some prank,” answered Cail, still lost in thought. Lizzie gave him a bit of a sideways look, but he was too busy staring at his feet as he walked to notice. She stopped him, and then dug through her bag. He looked at her with curiosity as she pulled out a burgundy notebook. She handed it to him and explained, “I’m writing a story for one of my classes… Do you mind proofreading it for me? It’s not exactly finished, but I think you might be interested in what I have so far.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I might have a lot of homework tonight, myself…” Seeing the uncertain look on his face, she smiled. “C’mon, you’re the one obsessed with writing! I trust your judgement.” With that, she started walking again, leaving him standing there, looking dumbstruck. He placed it into his backpack, looking down again to hide the slight blush on his face from nobody in particular.

The classes that day had kept him so busy that he didn’t have time to look at it until he got home. He microwaved some dinner first, and when he was finished with that he dug through his drawer for a red pen and slouched down on the couch with Lizzie’s notebook. It was sort of a thick notebook, and flipping through it, he saw that at least three quarters of it were filled up with her writing. He didn’t get too worried since she usually wrote big. He turned to page one, uncapped the red pen, and began to read.

The story was weird in that it seemed to start from the middle. Not in the usual way either, where it would eventually explain what happened before. It was as if it was part of a series of stories instead of a stand-alone story. He reminded himself that she may have made ones before this one for that class, and he kept on reading, marking grammatical and spelling errors as he went. He found that Lizzie had taken to writing down occurrences in school as well. She did so in an odd way, as if she were a psychic predicting the future. What would be “There was a pep rally today” in his notebook, was “There will be a pep rally today” in hers. This type of writing continued as he made it halfway through the notebook. It was a lot like his notebook of observations, like a journal of sorts. In her case, it was more likely a journal of correct psychic foresights for the day ahead.

As he neared the end of what she had written, the written events began to get more recent. Curiosity overcoming him, he skipped a few pages to the day before Gabe had disappeared. He didn’t know why he even thought she’d know something, let alone write it down for a class, but there was a strange feeling he got that compelled him to look either way. His eyes scanned the page. “October 16,” it began as usual, “Today will go on as usual, and there will be a pep rally at 2:00.” It looked simple enough, but then some writing below it caught his eye. It said, “Wait, I’ve changed my mind. Gabe needs some rewriting. Until then, he’s out of the story.” Cail paused after reading this, then reread it again. “What the…?” He flipped over another week before reading what she wrote for when Cathi was gone. “I finally erased Cathi… I am a little sad, since she’s been in the story for a long time. Still, she’s really gone too far. I’m sorry Cathi… I’ll rewrite you to be a little nicer next time.” Cail started to feel a bit edgy, like he was being watched. Despite this, he turned forward another two pages to the last one written. The words were chilling, to say the least. “Hi, Cail. I told you that you’d find this interesting. I hope this answered your questions. Yes, both Gabe and Cathi were erased, which is why nobody else remembered them. You and I are the only ones to remember them, because you were my first creation. I guess I really just bonded with you more than anyone else…” Cail almost didn’t want to keep reading, but now it was like watching a train wreck. “The truth is… I’m going to scrap this story tonight and start over from scratch. Goodbye, Cail.”

He put down the notebook. The pen had long since dropped to the floor. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but he was certain that he was in shock. Was this some kind of weird joke? He let out a small laugh, a nervous sound that died out pretty quickly. Lizzie had always seemed so serious. Why would she suddenly…? He slowly turned his head to look out the window. He stared intently, looking for any sort of apocalyptic sign. There it was, starting at the horizon and working its way through the streets. Everything was dying, withering and crumpling up and darkening like burning paper. Cail panicked, and only one thing came to mind. He searched for the pen.

Lizzie stood in front of a fireplace that contained a pile of burning notebooks. She watched the covers twist up and smolder, the pages turning into crumbling ash. She idly looked down at the most recent notebook she had written in; it was still in her hands. She flipped through it, ending at the last page where she’d written to Cail. Below her writing, in hastily-written, messy red ink lettering, were the words “Please let me live”. She gazed at it momentarily before throwing that notebook into the fire as well. “I need to stop getting so involved in my stories,” she sighed heavily.