I obviously couldn’t tell her that I was in a boy’s house, in a boy’s room, and was in a boy’s bed (it’s not like what you think) around six in the evening. She’d go ballistic. So I simply said, “I, uh, my foot got caught in a crack in the cement and I fell.”
“You have to be more careful next time, Seven,” she told me, worry lines forming on her forehead. “You’re lucky you didn’t get a head injury or something worse…”
“Mom,” I said exasperatedly. “You’re becoming paranoid. I only got a sprained ankle. Don’t worry, I promise I’ll be more careful, okay?”
“Alright,” she said, heaving a sigh, “but no more school for you for the rest of the week. You can go back on Monday, if you really have to, since you’re almost finished with your junior year.”
“That’s great! That means more reading time for me!” I exclaimed and laughed when she shook her head and rolled her eyes at me.
For the next two days, I did nothing but sit in my room, my ankle wrapped in thick bandage and propped on a pillow, and read the new books I’d bought. Although I was glad that I could be free of all the secret keeping and chasing after Colin, another part of me was itching to escape out of my room and sneak into Colin’s room to search for it again.
But I had to rest. I could gather my energy for another plan on Monday.
On Saturday I got my first visitors—my cousins Nate, Nick, and Neil. Nate was already in his fourth year of college, Nick in his second, and Neil was my age. Their younger sisters, April and May, were still in the sixth and third grade respectively, which was probably why they didn’t come but I didn’t mind; I was closer to my male cousins anyway.
Call me an attention seeker, but I loved how they all showered me with kindness and protected me as if they were my three older brothers.
They all had brown hair, getting it from my dad’s side of the family, but they inherited their mother’s blue eyes. You could say that these three were a bunch of lady-killers in their school. We all used to attend the same middle school, the one April and May were currently in, and even back then you’d hear several girls giggling over them and whispering about how lucky I was to be related to them.
Faye, the rich girl who came from that same middle school with me all the way to my current high school, had a crush on Nick, for some reason.
Out of the three, Nick was the most quiet, the book reader in the family, and we often exchanged titles of books we liked and bought each other novels we knew we wanted for Christmas. He was my favorite cousin, but he usually didn’t care about girls, hence my confusion.
Despite being the eldest brother, and supposedly the most mature, Nate was the noisiest. He was in football college, always loved roughhousing with his brothers—which Nick disliked since he was the slimmest—and going to parties with a girl on each arm.
Neil was more like his eldest brother than the second, but less noisy. He used to be a really shy boy and was even bullied often, but when girls started noticing him he turned into quite a playboy.
Oh, and one more thing about these three idiots: they didn’t observe the proper etiquette of knocking before entering.
This could be easily proven by what they did first thing Saturday morning, when I was still sleeping with a book left wide open over my chest, and they simply barged in and Nate, in his loud voice, boomed, “Good morning, Seven! Rise and shine!”
My eyes snapped open and I blinked at them in surprise. I sat up immediately and pointed an accusing finger at them. “What on earth are you three doing in my room?” I demanded and I thought distractedly that this must’ve been what Colin felt like when he found me in his room the other night.
Neil grinned, casually walked over to my bed, and sat down as if he owned the place. He said, “Of course, we’re here to entertain you. It must’ve been boring doing nothing but reading all day.”
“No, it’s not,” I said at the same time Nick did. I shared a glance with him and smiled knowingly. He grabbed my desk chair, dragged it closer to my bed, and sat down. He then observed the stack of books I had beside my bed. “Are these new, Seven?”
“Yup, and I finished half of them yesterday,” I stated proudly.
Nick smirked at me and countered, “I finished a series of seven books in one day.”
I frowned at him. Nick and I were always competing on who was the fastest reader, and though sometimes I skipped sentences or paragraphs just so I could be done with a book, Nick always won. How could he read so fast?
There was a time that I actually accused him of cheating, but he asked me to test him on a book that I knew really well from cover to cover. He read it right there in front of me for an hour and a half, and then said, “Done.”
I asked him the hard questions, the details, the characters’ descriptions, but he answered all of them, even correcting some of my errors and quoting lines to prove it. He was definitely an alien, no doubt.
“Okay, before you two go into your own little corner of the universe and talk about books again,” Nate said with a roll of his eyes, “can you tell me what happened to you, Seven?”
“Didn’t Mom tell you?” I asked, yawning while scooting back and leaning against my headboard.
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “She said something about being at a friend’s house with Uncle Sean”—he meant my dad—“and that the three of us are going to be your babysitters for the morning.”
I scowled at him and whined, “I don’t need a babysitter, much less three!”
“Well,” Neil said, crossing his arms, “she wouldn’t want you to get yourself hurt again.”
“By doing what, flushing myself down the toilet?” I countered. Nick sniggered and Nate rolled his eyes—again. “Just answer the question, Seven. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said, shrugging. “I was just walking back home when I tripped over a crack in the cement and twisted my ankle.”
“You didn’t see the crack?” Neil asked, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Uh, it was around seven in the evening and I was thinking about…something, so I didn’t notice.”
Nick furrowed his eyebrows and asked, “What were you doing out so late?” He knew my everyday routine as well as I did—school, bookstore, and then back home.
I swallowed nervously and said, “I was at a friend’s house.” Although I couldn’t exactly count Colin as a friend, I was at his house so it wasn’t a lie, but my cousins wouldn’t buy it.
Nate narrowed his eyes at me, scrutinizing me, and then concluded with a mischievous smile, “I think you’re hiding something.”
“What?” I asked, my voice pitching high. “What are you talking about? Hiding something? I’m not hiding anything…”
Nate continued to stare at me for a while before he turned to Nick and asked, “What do you think, bro? You know her best.”
I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of this when Nick stated, “I don’t believe her either.”
“So what could she have been doing so late at night?” Neil asked his older brothers curiously.
Nate shrugged and said, “I’m not sure. She’s definitely doesn’t want us to know because we’d tease her about it or tell Uncle Sean, so it’s probably something really important to her and something that would make Uncle Sean’s eyes fall out.”
I was both horrified and amazed at how they knew me so well.
“Could she have been doing something illegal?” Neil wondered aloud and I cleared my throat loudly. “Hello? I’m still here.”
They ignored me. “I don’t think so,” Nick said quietly, rubbing his chin in thought. “Seven isn’t the type of girl who’s interested in those kinds of wild things. It must’ve been something that any ordinary girl around the age of sixteen to seventeen would want to do.”
I glared at the three of them. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!”
They ignored me still—until Nate widened his eyes and snapped his f
ingers in excitement. “I’ve got it!” he proclaimed to the world. He pointed rudely at me and announced, “You were with a boy, weren’t you Seven?”
Someone shoot me, please.
“That’s ridiculous!” I denied but I couldn’t help the blush as I recalled how Colin had effortlessly pinned me to the bed and teased me about my sudden lack of oxygen. I remembered how intensely his green eyes bore into mine and—
“Aha!” Neil said, jumping up and pointing at me as well. I should talk with Uncle Douglas —their dad—about their lack of social decency. “The red taint on her cheeks proves it! She was with a boy!”
Nick smiled at me, amused. “I definitely wasn’t expecting that of you, Seven. Sometimes I forget that you are growing up.”
“So, who’s the boy we’re supposed to beat up?” Nate asked, cracking his knuckles and grinning.
“You’re not beating up anyone!” I insisted, fisting my hands tightly.
Neil patted my knee gently and nodded solemnly. “No need to be shy about it, Seven, we can understand how your hormones at this age can easily get out of hand.”
I groaned and dug the heel of my hands into my eyes. Man, this was exhausting. “You guys are not listening,” I said.
“Look, Seven,” Nick said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees, “we’ll stop annoying you if you just tell us what is going on between you and this boy you were with last night.”
It was pointless trying to deny it now. The assumption that I was with a boy last night (which was actually the truth, but I wasn’t admitting that) had turned into a solid fact for my cousins. They weren’t going to let this one slide.
“There’s nothing between us,” I said, sighing exasperatedly. “It’s just that…he has something that I really need.”
“What’s this ‘something’ you’re talking about?” Neil asked and then widened his eyes. “Did he steal something from you?”
“That son of a—” Nate started, looking like he wanted to rip Colin to pieces. I frantically waved my hands around and said, “No! He didn’t technically steal anything from me”—yeah, right—“he just…won’t return it.”
“Seven, that’s almost the same thing,” Nick said matter-of-factly.
“No, it’s not!” I protested some more. I didn’t know why I was reacting like this. Didn’t I want to get the black notebook back as soon as possible and save what secrets were left? This was my chance to get it back—but I was more than a little hesitant to take it.
Maybe I just wanted to do things on my terms. Besides, who knew what these three would do to Colin once they’d got their hands on him?
That thought made me pause for a while. I swept a quick glance over my cousins and noticed how leanly built they were—Nate for his football games while Neil had gotten stronger so that no one would bully him anymore. Nick was the most slender among them but he was strong, especially after working out with his brothers during his spare time.
And then I got an idea for my next plan.
“Okay,” I said, “do you guys really want to help me out?”
“Of course we do, Sev,” Nate said, his hardened expression softening as he looked at me, “which is why we’re going to beat this kid up for you.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that you’re not beating up anyone?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Alright, if you want to help me, then you have to promise, swear, cross your heart and hope to die, whatever, that you’re most definitely not going to hurt him.”
Neil turned sharply to me and raised his eyebrows. “My, my,” he drawled, smiling, “is little Seven in love with this boy?”
“You’re getting off topic, Neil,” I said, avoiding the question I didn’t know how to answer. I looked each boy in the eye, one at a time. “So, do you guys promise?”
The three brothers glanced at each other, a hidden message being sent to one another without having to say anything. Finally, they sighed and then turned to me. “Fine,” they all said in chorus, but unhappily, I noticed.
“Good,” I said, grinning at them. I ripped a piece of paper from my school notebook and grabbed a pen. As I drew what were supposed to be straight lines, I told them Colin’s address and asked if they knew where it was.
The other night, as I rode in the cab on the way home, I had taken note of the streets names, landmarks, and familiar buildings, and after exploring—which got five more dollars out of my wallet—I considered myself well acquainted with the neighborhood already.
Soon enough, I realized that Colin’s place wasn’t all that far from mine.
“Isn’t that where Lucy lives?” Neil asked Nate, nudging him in the side with his elbow.
Nate stared at Neil with his eyebrows furrowed. “Lucy?” he repeated, unable to recall whomever that name belonged to. “Who’s Lucy?”
“You know—your ex?” But Nate still couldn’t remember. Well, it was understandable; he had a lot of exes.
Nick sighed, shaking his head. “I think Neil means Luscious Lips Lucy. Remember her?”
“Oh right, that Lucy!” Nate suddenly exclaimed, snapping his fingers as he finally realized. “How could I forget? And yeah, I think that’s where she lives.” And then his eyes widened and he asked me, “Why? Don’t tell me you’re going to make me go there. If she sees me, I’m dead—or so she said last time I saw her, and I don’t really want to see if she’s going to fulfill her end of the bargain or not.”
“Sorry, Nate,” I said, not sounding the least apologetic, “but yes, you have to go there because that’s where our target is.”
“May I ask how you know where the boy lives?” Nick asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow. All three looked up at me and I swallowed nervously.
“Questions—so many questions!” I said, waving at them dismissively. “Anyway,” I added, “you three are going to pass through this route since this is the closest to my house and he rarely uses this. What I do know, though, is that he always gets up to go jogging around…”—I glanced at the clock in my room—“fifteen minutes from now.”
This information wasn’t all that hard to recover. Just from plainly observing Colin’s posts in Facebook, I’d noticed long before that he always posted on Saturdays at around nine o’clock in the morning about a certain song he was listening to. His friends would then comment, asking about how his jog was and how ridiculous he was for posting about everything he did, which would then turn into a debate, and it wasn’t that hard to figure out the obvious.
“What does he look like?” Nick asked, while scanning the map I’d drawn.
“Tall, leanly built and has fair skin. He has dark red hair and these really amazing emerald-green eyes,” I said and quickly clamped my mouth shut. That “amazing” part was definitely unnecessary. Miraculously, they didn’t notice.
“So, what do we do when we see him?” Nate asked.
“You’re going to capture him and bring him here,” I said simply, as if we were only talking about where we were going to eat out for lunch, “but make sure that he doesn’t see the way here so he’ll truly be disoriented. I’ll handle the rest.”
Honestly, I had no idea what to do once my cousins had finally brought him to me, or what to say. Panic was driving me to do everything and anything I could think of. I was gambling on the chance that the extreme measures I had been taking would scare him enough to give the notebook up.
No matter what, I need to protect everyone’s secrets. I owed them at least that.
Five minutes later, my cousins set out to do their part of the plan after helping me down to the living room so that I wouldn’t have to hurry down the stairs once they arrived. I killed the time by reading the book that Nick had brought along with him, but no matter how deeply I tried to sink myself into the story, each tick of the clock made my skin itch and my gut twist into tangled knots.
Sometime later, finally easing my restlessness, I heard the frantic knocking on the basement door, which wa
s connected to the garage. I dropped the book and limped as quickly as I could on my bandaged ankle. I wrenched the door open and Nick helped me down the steps and into the garage.
With the car gone and being used by my parents, the place was almost empty and looked even messier than it usually did. Stacked on the walls were boxes of forgotten things, both old and new newspapers unread, and hardware that Dad used for emergencies.
There was a small wooden desk in the corner, its paint washed out and peeling. It used to be my mom’s but she had passed it on to me and you could say that the years hadn’t been kind to it as it aged. Nearby, a red beanbag was pouring out its fillings through a rip beside it.
And right in the middle of it all was Colin, under an old lamp hanging from the ceiling like in one of those detective movies, with his wrists tied together and placed on his lap. If some criminals left signature marks, like a card or a bloody symbol on the wall, my cousins had one of their own: a cardboard box with a smiley face in front, covering their victim’s head.
Under the fluorescent light, Colin’s sweat glistened around his neck and plastered his white T-shirt to his chest, which rose quickly as he panted. He was wearing black jersey shorts that were just above his knees and white Nike running shoes.
“You guys are awesome,” I whispered to my cousins and they all grinned at me. As they filed out of the garage, Nick stayed behind and touched me gently on the shoulder. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright with him alone?” He looked back at Colin with narrowed eyes as if he expected him to jump up anytime and attack me.
I smiled reassuringly at him and nodded. “Don’t worry, I can handle it.”
“Scream if you need to,” he joked and I punched him playfully on the arm. “You’re being overdramatic.”
“And you’re not being anticlimactic?” he countered but didn’t persist. Once he was out of the door I closed it quietly and turned to face Colin.
I slowly made my way to him, circling him carefully and watching for any twitches, any sign of fear. Infuriatingly, there was none.
The Black Notebook Page 9