Monday night, 18 March
Checked my phone again. No Zaps. Not tonight. It’s already nine p.m. Why do I even bother? It’s Monday, first day of school week. It means he’s crazy-busy. It means I can Zap but shouldn’t expect a reply….He’s probably asleep, while I continue to fill the pages of this journal with redundant questions longing urgent matters. Stop. Breathe. Reboot. Then try to form a thought without Ran in it, like…coming up with a list of possible names for the book club.
In the beginning, I didn’t see the point of having one. Neither did the others—Estelle, Matt, and Tanya—especially since graduation is two months away. But CaZZ, whom we unanimously elected president, insisted on it. “We can’t have a legacy without a name,” she said. “We’re the ones who started it, so it is our right and responsibility to christen it. It will make our book club official. But it has to be a name that’s witty, you know, catchy, a title Oscar Wilde would approve of.”
So, come tomorrow, we will meet after school to christen our book club. I’m actually looking forward to it; it’s our first get-together since spring break. I can’t wait to hear more of Matt (mis)quoting Oscar. “The only way to get rid of temptation is to pray to it” (as opposed to “yield to it”) and “Be yourself. Nobody else wants it” instead of “because everyone else is already taken.” Estelle finds his errors hilarious. I do, too. But they irk the hell out of CaZZ and Tanya, a bottom-of-the-pyramid cheerleader who joined the book club to maintain her C average.
Starting to get sleepy. Writing is exhausting, especially if it’s about something I don’t want to forget. Writing is a way of saving memories, of not letting go. I guess that’s why I write. I don’t know how else to save something precious. I don’t know how else to let go. Worse-case scenario: I could be doing something more exhausting, like waiting for the number eight bus. Or for Ran to Zap me.