“Yo, cheeseball,” Natasha says. “You gonna kiss it? Come on, already. Let’s go.”

The rim’s never lied to Kit Lamb before.

“Coming,” she says.

And she follows Natasha and the others into the locker room, where rapid voices discuss big things, even if some of them are disguised as small. And as she approaches the celebration, Kit thinks no, the rim’s never lied to her before.

Then, more celebratory howling. Including Kit herself.

And everybody in the locker room are wolves with her.

Kit Lamb’s Jolly Journal—The Day Before the Big Game

People say you can’t leave a paper trail when you’re committing a crime, and so this feels like I’m committing a crime. I’m doing it this way, freehand, to hide it (these WORDS, yo) from ever getting out online or anywhere close to that. THAT’S WHY (and this feels big): I’m writing it on actual…paper. Amazing, yeah? Yeah. Mom and Dad, if you ever read this, please recognize how backwards the world is: it’s now NOT a paper trail when you use paper because nobody reads this shit. Ha. In FACT, if someone were to find my Jolly Journal (oh, how I love that ironic name), they would probably throw it out, thinking it had fallen out of the pocket of the year 1990. So, like I said: hello Journal, I am here to tell you secrets, to hide things, big things, like:

How I really feel about the world.

Okay. Everybody is different and everybody has their own take, their own feelings, their own worldview, but some of us like to keep ours safe. It’s not that I don’t want anybody to know the real me, it’s just…

There are parts of me I like and parts I do not and anyway I would like them all kept behind glass before I know exactly what I want to do with them.

Capiche?

What’s that, Jolly? What are the parts I like?

HA. We’ll get to that. But I can say a couple easy ones for now: I’m a good friend. This is true. And I’m brave. Sort of. Brave insomuch as I’m scared all the time but I keep plugging away and so I must be brave. This is mostly true. I do not hide from my biggest enemy. I face it. Mostly. HELLO, enemy of mine, THY NAME IS:

ANXIETY

Was that supposed to feel good? Writing it down? I think it was. I know it was. That’s what I read online. All over the place people tell you it’s better to talk about it. They say you’ll go mad if you keep it bottled up inside. But here’s the thing: if you’re not freaking out, the last thing you wanna talk about is freaking out. And if you ARE freaking out, well, ha, then the LAST thing you wanna talk about is freaking out.

You see my problem, Jolly?

Yes. You do.

And it didn’t feel good. Writing it down. It felt huge and now I wanna cross it out. Maybe that’s because I wrote it in all caps. But hey, that’s how I do. If I’m gonna do, I do. That’s how I do. That’s how we all do. Still, let’s try it again, but smaller: