Journal 3 Pages Novels & Stories

" ohh!! You mean the assignment they asked us to write a ten page on the our daily lives" (I implored and her head nods affirming my words) "Yes please, I don't think I can be able to write more than two pages, ". Maria Jose accidentally scraped soap on her forehead, without knowing, I smiled seeing that.

"That's the only kind worth doing." After we hung up I sat at the desk. The paper on the screen. Sixty-one pages of careful work by my daughter who had decided at ten years old what she was going to do and had done it with the complete commitment of someone who had never needed the decision confirmed. The limitations section, four pages long. The next thing already waiting. I opened my journal — not Claudia's, my own, which I'd kept since the autobiography was published — and wrote a single line. *Claudia: the most Claudia thing in a document full of Claudia things.*

As I perused the shelves, my eyes landed on a weathered journal, its pages filled with untold stories. I carefully opened the journal, my fingers trembling with anticipation. The pages crackled under my touch, revealing a glimpse into Alexander's life—a life he had chosen to keep hidden, even from me. The words on those pages painted a picture of a complex and enigmatic man, a past fraught with secrets and shadows.

About everything, about the way he makes me feel, about the restless nights he fills my mind; about the way my chest tightens whenever the tip of his ears goes bright red. So, I find myself typing. Me: right, okay... The three dots appear and then disappear, before it appears again. Liam: Any news on the journal? Oh right, the journal. Reading his mother’s journal is like having a sneak peek into an obvious romantic’s life, the way she pieces down her story is elegant, she describes everything in detail, she would have made a great writer, maybe that’s why Liam is blessed with writing. Me: nothing special yet! If there’s anything worth mentioning, I will inform you.

“I don’t have anything to share—” “Oh, don’t be modest. I’m certain you have plenty.” Knox swirls the bottle lazily. “Or better yet — save yourself the rigor of thinking too hard. Just read from that journal you’ve been keeping. You know the one.” His voice is conversational. Almost pleasant. “Leather cover. Cramped cursive. A little hard to read, to be honest. Detailed entries going back — what, ten years? Twelve? I lost count somewhere around the section on dosage calculations.” The silence that follows is deafening.

RAVENNA’S POV. The final click of my red pen sounded unnaturally loud in the silent study hall. Slowly, I lowered the pen onto the scratched wooden table while my tape-wrapped fingers trembled so badly I could barely unclench them properly. It was finished. Thirty-two pages. Fully cited. Carefully structured. Every argument had been revised repeatedly until I was certain there were no weak points left for Professor Green to dismantle. I had spent three straight days forcing myself forward through exhaustion, hunger, pain, and sleepless nights, and somehow I had actually done it.

The worn leather cover looks even more weathered beneath the flashlight's glow. Jenna Maroney. I run my thumb across the faded lettering. And before I can think better of it, I open the journal to a random page. The first entry is dated over twenty years ago, and I still find that difficult to believe. The pages crack softly as I turn them. The first thing that surprises me about the page I've opened is how normal it all is. I don't know what I expected. Ancient warnings, perhaps. Secrets. Mysteries.

2107 words for my third chapter, hope you love it. Just comment what you think below, feel free. VOTE!

“I didn’t realize the third floor was your territory. Should I be paying rent?” The corner of his mouth lifted. “You can stay.” He stepped closer, slipping the journals onto the edge of her table and she caught the title of one of them, The Victorian Review. What? That was the issue that carried her viral essay on its contents page. “What are you working on?” he asked. “The first batch of essays,” she replied. “I’m trying not to crush anyone’s soul while still telling them the truth.” He chuckled. “That’s the hard part of the job."

She thought about the paper and the garden and the sage planted that morning and the conversation with Professor Mensah about the symposium and the twenty years of her mother’s framework arriving at completion. She thought about forty-one pages submitted to a journal. And eleven pages filed in a court in eighty-three minutes. Two different kinds of argument. Both built from the same quality of thinking. Both moving toward the same thing. Accountability. The formal, documented, permanent acknowledgment that what was done required a response proportionate to its damage.