Life In A Year Book Novels & Stories

"By the way, our wedding anniversary is coming up soon. Do you want to have a big celebration or just one with the two of us?" As Kyron said this, it reminded me of how Fiona ruined our anniversary every year. I was sure she wouldn't let me have peace this year, either. "Either way is fine," I said with indifference. Kyron agreed enthusiastically. … On our anniversary, he booked a top-tier restaurant with exquisite dishes. We had just sat down when Kyron's phone rang again. He took a quick glance at it, and I knew he wouldn't be staying. "Courtney, it's company business. I have to go."

Maya December had arrived and gone as well as another year. We were already in January, and if I had thought about everything that had happened in the last year I would have seemed to have lived a hundred lives of different people. A year ago, Nate and I had just come out of limbo, and we decided to be together, to give ourselves a chance, despite the many doubts and fears we had chosen.

Author's Note: Hello. If there is someone who is reading this book, as you can see I made a mistake for publishing the other chapters. I'm so sorry. My phone lags that's why it happens. Forgive me. I hope you guys still enjoy reading my book. I will try to finish the book this month. ~*~ KEVIN'S (HIRO'S) POINT OF VIEW

After all, I was turning 20 in a couple of days. I still couldn't believe I was turning twenty though. It felt so unreal. I mean, it's me. I still felt so immature and unready for life; even though life had hit me hard a lot of times in the past. It's amazing how I've been through so much in just 19 years of my life. And all through my life, year 19 had to be the most dramatic and disastrous one. A lot had gone on in just this one year. In one year, I dated a murderer, serial killer and chronic abuser.

Every one of his debts was tracked down, and everything in his name was frozen. No one knew where they had gone. Our old place became a target. An angry mob showed up at the door, yelling curses at the empty house and vandalizing it. Joanna's disappearance took me by surprise. I never expected her to vanish just as the police were about to move in. I never imagined she'd stay hidden for five whole years. Five years brought huge changes. My leg healed so well that I could walk without anyone noticing a limp. My pinky never fully healed, but it didn't bother me anymore.

"The rejection. The slow burn. The ceremony. Getting pregnant. His birth. This whole year." "Best year of my life." "Even the sleepless nights? The crying? The constant worry?" "Especially those. Because they were ours." --- The baby book sat on the dresser, and I picked it up, flipping through the pages. First smile. First laugh. First roll. First tooth. First steps. A year of firsts, all documented. I added today's entry:

"I almost succeeded last year before I started writing a diary of my life. When I held the knife in my bedroom in Port-Harcourt, I was standing next to a blue cupboard that had cracked glasses. The same blue cupboard that Dad used when he got married to Mum. Dad kept a couple of fancy items we never used inside the cupboard. He believes in preservation so do I. The day I held the knife was on Monday morning. Nobody was at home except for me. Christle and Danny had left for school. Dad had left for work while Mum went to visit one of her friends. I didn't go to school because I told them I had malaria. I told them I was sick and they believed me. It was obviously a lie and they still believed

And then she wrote about the thirty years. The village with the narrow road and the house that had become full of books because books were the company available without risk. The photograph in the wooden box. The annual calculation about whether this was the year to come back, and the answer always arriving as not yet, and the way not yet accumulated into a decade and then two decades and then three. The specific quality of a life lived in the anteroom of a decision that kept refusing to be made, and what that did to a person across thirty years.

Placing a finger on the plastic-covered sheet, I caress her image, wishing she were alive to see me now. “This is our yearbook. Not the silly one that the school puts out, but the real yearbook. The Legacy Book.” “So everyone in this book is a Legacy?” I look at the other images on the page. There are newspaper articles and awards, as well as images from special events. My mother was a debate team champion and excelled at horseback riding. “Yes,” he confirms. "And these books go back generations. This is only one volume. There are dozens of others. I can show them to you if you’d like. We keep them in the Legacy library."

He sealed the letter and sat with it. He thought about the year of the attending. He thought about the seven-year-old drawing the library corner in eleven months and the nine-year-old knowing the sea in all its months and Ellie keeping the building's first year in the lined notebook through the October and the November and the December and the January and the February and the March and the April. He thought about all of them drawing the year of the attending from all the way in. He thought: the practice aspires to what they do naturally.