For now.

It feels good. Because it should. The sun. Being here with a friend. Dana.

But she can’t stop herself from asking: How long will it stay away?

Because you’re never wrong when you spot it. And it will eventually spot you back.

Daphne, she thinks. She couldn’t stop it from coming.

A rumble then, so loud Dana grabs her arm. They’re close enough to see the others and see that they’re all looking to the sky. But there is no lightning, no dark clouds.

And Kit didn’t think it sounded like thunder anyway.

“What was that?” Dana asks. One hand to her heart. The other still on Kit’s arm.

Kit doesn’t know. She looks to the sky, too, then to the island, then to the others. They’re talking about it. That sound.

“Sounded like a fuckin’ truck falling,” Dana says.

But they’re far from the road. And besides, that’s not what it sounded like to Kit. To her, it was more like an old door opening. A garage door. Unused in years. Nearly rusted to the cement drive.

A garage door as big as the sky.

Opening.

Then? Lightning above, after all.

“Shit,” Dana says.

“Come on!” Kit yells.

And the friends race against sudden rain, back to their other friends, back to the cars, both aware that moments like these, the two of them making silhouettes against the distant Samhattan skyline, are fleeting.

Kit Lamb’s “Jolly Journal”—The Day We Went to the Creek

Right, so there’s two schools of thought then. Those who believe if you say something or if you write it down, it will not come true. Like you kill it somehow, or you kill the coincidence. For example: someone boarding a flight, they might wanna text their friend: HOPE IT DOESN’T CRASH. Because…what are the odds then that it would?

But the other school lives in a darker schoolhouse, I think. That’s where you believe it’ll come true if you acknowledge it.

I think that’s me. But I’m not sure. And either way (and just to BE sure):

I’m not writing her name down.

Nope. Not in here. No way.

And who is “she”? Well, sorry, Jolly. You’ll just have to keep guessing and never find out.

Because this isn’t the place for that. These aren’t my notes for a ghost story. This is where I get real with what I’m dealing with. And what I’m dealing with is

anxiety

Wow, I didn’t even know I could write that small. Cool. Maybe that’ll come in handy one day if I’m ever kidnapped and need to write a tiny SOS note.

MOM! DAD! HELP!

Listen, Jolly: Dana brought up the fact that we’ll be living different lives in a year and it messed me up. Not only because it’s probably true and I’m going to miss the living hell out of her, but because I hadn’t thought of this once, not once, on my own. What does that mean? Am I so afraid of being afraid that I’m not even thinking of my future? Not planning at all?