The heavy oak door of the History classroom closed with a quiet click, shutting Elara inside with thirty other first-year students and the weight of the secret in her backpack. Mr. Abernathy, a man whose tweed jacket seemed as old as the school itself, began lecturing about the prestigious families who founded Blackthorn Academy centuries ago. His voice droned on about legacies and endowments, but Elara couldn't absorb the words.
Her mind kept replaying the moment in the locker hallway. The aged diary. The impossible appearance of her exact thought: I wish they'd all disappear. It felt like a brand seared into her memory. How? The question looped endlessly.
She sat rigidly at her desk near the back, pretending to take notes. Her eyes, however, kept drifting. She scanned the faces of her classmates. The girl with the tight ribbon from her dorm room smirked at something a friend whispered. A boy two rows ahead, one she recognized from the group laughing loudly in the courtyard last night, yawned ostentatiously. Suspicion coiled inside her. Could one of them have planted the diary? Could they somehow know her thoughts? It seemed illogical, impossible, yet the evidence lay heavy in her bag. The feeling of being watched intensified, but now it wasn't just the faculty – it felt like the other students themselves might hold a hidden key to the strangeness. The diary felt like a physical weight strapped to her back.
The lecture continued. Names of families – Blackwood, Ashworth, Thorne – blurred together. Elara tapped her pen against the notebook, unable to focus. The need to look at the diary again, to understand, became an insistent pressure. Was it a one-off event? A hallucination brought on by stress and lack of sleep? She had to know.
When the bell finally rang, signaling the end of the period, Elara moved quickly. Instead of heading towards her next class, she slipped into the nearest girls' restroom. It was momentarily empty. She went into the last stall, the one with the faulty lock she remembered from the previous night, and pushed the door closed as best she could.
Her heart pounded against her ribs. With slightly trembling hands, she pulled her backpack onto her lap and retrieved the leather-bound diary. The worn cover felt cool beneath her fingers. She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself.
Okay. Test it.
She opened the diary to a fresh, blank page. Holding it open on her knees, she closed her eyes for a second and focused, trying to project a simple, neutral thought. 'The restroom tiles are cold.' She thought it clearly, deliberately. Then, she opened her eyes and looked down at the page.
Nothing. The yellowed paper remained blank.
A wave of frustration washed over her. She thought it again, louder in her mind. 'The restroom tiles are cold.' Still nothing. Maybe it was just a bizarre coincidence? Or maybe she was losing her grip, imagining things? The doubt felt almost as unnerving as the initial discovery. She let out a quiet sigh, the tension easing slightly, replaced by confusion.
Then, another memory flared: the faces laughing down at her from the dorm windows, the whispers in the dining hall. The girl with the ribbon. The boy who yawned. The shame and anger surged back unexpectedly, hot and sharp. Without conscious intent, a different thought leaped into her mind, specific and fueled by resentment: 'I hope she tears that stupid ribbon.'
She glanced down at the diary page again, almost dismissively, expecting the same blankness.
But it wasn't blank.
Faintly at first, then rapidly darkening, lines began to appear on the paper, coalescing into familiar, looping script. The faded brown ink seemed to bloom directly onto the page. Elara watched, frozen, as her spiteful thought etched itself into existence:
I hope she tears that stupid ribbon.
Her breath hitched. She stared, horrified. It wasn't a coincidence. It wasn't random. The diary hadn't reacted to the neutral observation. It had reacted to the anger, the ill-intent directed at someone else. The connection was undeniable and terrifying.
A noise outside the stall – footsteps, running water at the sinks – jolted her. She slammed the diary shut, the clasp clicking loudly in the small space. Her hands felt clammy. Shoving the book back into the deepest part of her backpack, she felt a new kind of fear. This wasn't just a passive recorder of thoughts. It seemed to respond specifically to negativity, to harmful intent. What did that mean? What else could it do?
She took several deep breaths, trying to regain composure, before unlatching the stall door. Walking out into the restroom, she avoided looking at the other girls washing their hands. Hurrying out into the busy corridor towards her next class, the weight in her backpack felt heavier than ever, charged with a dark and reactive potential she was only beginning to comprehend.