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I’M NOT SURE WHY I’M doing this. I don’t even know where to start. It’s been nearly 40 years since I’ve looked at a diary, much less written in one. The last time I set pen to paper, I was probably mooning over David Cassidy.
But I didn’t need an excuse then. Why am I looking for an excuse now?
When I was young, I never sought permission. Not for things like this, for writing my experiences and emotions. It was taken for granted that a young girl needed time to herself, time alone with her diary, to work through the changes that were happening in her body, in her life.
Well, I need that time, too. My body is changing. My life is changing. I need this.
Hear that, diary? I need you. Now more than ever.
Because right now, more than any other time I can remember, I have nothing. I have no one. Except this house. I have this house. And the girl in the basement, though we haven’t even met.
Apart from that, my whole world has come crashing down. Or did I tear it down? I’m not entirely sure.
Let’s start with the house, shall we? This house is an instigator. This house started everything.
Or perhaps it was a phone call that started everything.
My brother called to tell me this place was on the market again. The house we grew up in. This house. He’s the only one in the family who’s kept in touch with friends from the island, from this small town where we were raised.
When we were teenagers, the one thing everybody had in common was a deep, spiritual thirst to leave this town. Go far, far away. Most of my friends left even before I did, but I got out eventually. How the place didn’t become a ghost town, what with droves of teens leaving on an annual basis, I’ll never know.
I suppose some people stayed. That’s how my brother found out our old house was up for sale. He heard it from someone who’d stayed.
We got talking about the old days. My siblings and I don’t get together much, so we like reminiscing whenever we get each other on the phone. We talked about the many quirks of this creaky old farmhouse. No double-glazed windows, no sir. Those panes rattled and shook any time there was the slightest breeze outside.
Those old windows didn’t do a great job of keeping us in, either. We started sneaking out when we were, oh, say, eleven? Twelve? They talk about kids today, but we weren’t much better. In some ways, we were worse. Climbing down the trellis. Me and my sisters running around with older boys, with the ones who hadn’t yet fled. Dreaming about the day when it would be our turn to shake off the dust of this one-horse town.
And yet, here I am. Back again. After all these year.