Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [31]
Then she went into the bedroom and caught Rocky’s scent on a fleece scarf tossed on the back of a chair. She went straight to the dresser, as if it was meant to be, as if she should find it, and she put her hands on the black journal and opened it.
“Oh, this is good, this is very good,” she said to the dog, reading the first page.
It was a black book, the kind with blank pages. She had received a blank journal for her last birthday and had not used it once. Her grandmother had sent it to her, a pastel blue and yellow book with delicate flowers on the cover. It was so wrong to write in something that her grandmother thought was good. If she lost more weight, she might be able to write in it, but not before.
She ran her fingers along the lightly embossed cover as she read the entries that started last spring. She saw the labored handwriting, erratic spiking and pages that had been scratched, destroyed by a pen dragged fiercely across the page in a tantrum. “I’m sorry…I hate you…I want to die,” was the message in jagged lines. She began to thumb her way through the pages, slowly, hungrily, savoring each entry and noting the date.
July 16. There is no one here to give me caution and I am glad of that. I do not need to close the cover of this book to protect someone else’s sensibilities. I leave it open at night and in the morning, no hand has disturbed it, no eyes have scanned my thoughts. What would it take to join you, my love? Is the human organism difficult to extinguish? You were not. Of all the ways, carbon monoxide seems the best and the surest, the least likely to alert the outside world. You would be furious, shocked, disgusted if you saw me plotting my death. But I am not worried about your disapproval, I am terrified about the unknown, about not finding you if I kill myself.
Melissa closed the book. She had been sitting on Rocky’s bed and stood up startled, and dropped the book to the floor. She hurriedly smoothed the blankets on the bed, grabbing the book from the scratched floorboards. Where exactly had the journal been? Which direction had it faced? She would be more careful when she came back tomorrow to read more. She would know everything about Rocky.
On the way out of the bedroom, her eye caught on a silky thing in a green laundry basket, a camisole. Yes, she thought, that’s what it was called. It was red, bordered by lace along the top. She ran her fingers along it and without knowing why, she folded it tight and slipped it into her jacket pocket. The dog looked at her from the doorway.
She knelt by Lloyd. Melissa had one hand on the slickness of the camisole as she ran her other hand over the ridge of Lloyd’s neck. She felt him press his head into her hand and a tremor ran from her tight and empty belly down the length of her thighs. Her cheeks flared with heat, and even though she was alone with the dog, she turned around to see if anyone had seen this thing that had moved into her.
“Come on, Lloyd,” she said with a sense of alarm.
At home, Lloyd stayed between Melissa and the door, any door, at all times. If she moved to the kitchen he gathered himself up from what looked like a deep sleep and repositioned himself. If she went to her bedroom for another round of science notes, he rose up and took his post between Melissa and the bedroom door. Once, when she walked into her bedroom, she looked at the cross-country jacket that still had the red camisole in the pocket and she ran her thumb and index finger over the fabric, pausing at the lace, letting