by Camille Hatcher
My life is a book.
The Book writes itself.
And real people, strangers and familiars, consult it daily. Some, to follow a trend set by best-selling book lists; others, to obtain unfiltered gossip about people they know. All attempt to uncover a thirteen-year-long mystery: its author.
Idiots.
The cover is ingrained in my mind: a burgundy background with sunrise-green that curls in an entrancing design. The title stands out in embossed, creamy Times New Roman: Evelynn Writer. I avoid anyone carrying it.
My first encounter with The Book – a girl avidly reading it on the bus – still feels dream-like. The girl glanced up, catching my stare, and smiled conspiratorially as she leaned forward.
“You’re her.”
My ten-year-old self felt so vulnerable, seeing my name on that beautiful cover, wondering what lay within. She was kind enough to show me. She explained that a new chapter appeared every night, even if it was only “She lived another day.” Those were the least interesting, she said, but good reminders to not allow her yesterday or tomorrow weigh her down. To just live another day.
I refused her offer to keep the book. I’d seen enough. My greatest achievements seemed insignificant when written down.
I asked the girl why she read The Book. I could not call it my book. It was a stolen painting someone had taken the liberty to change and sell as the original artist’s.
“It’s cute.”
This meeting became a small star in a large, inky sky. As I aged, the sky expanded, and new stars seldom appeared. Some disappeared altogether.
My parents were enraged at this infringement on my privacy. All their phone calls ended in pursed lips and angry eyes. I told them it was okay; I didn’t mind. I did mind, but I could not take away the bus girl’s daily reminder to live. Besides, The Book would stop adding to itself after a few days or months. It had to have a finality other than my death.
The Book did not receive immediate attention. It had no author, no publisher, no paragraph telling the public why they should read and share it. The only arguments it put forth were the elaborate cover, long table of contents, and last page with “To be continued …” in the center.
Bookstores set their own prices, having found copies in their storerooms with no explanation, but all my attempts to claim royalties or a copyright were mocked and refused. Insufficient proof, they said. I inadvertently caused a scandal that had people rushing to purchase the Self-Writing Book. My desire to recant my original statement of “It’s okay; I don’t mind,” was the lantern from which sprang forth the incendiary catastrophe of my fame.
In a desperate, twisted way, I grew glad of my older brother’s early death. He would have despised it from the start, understanding what I would lose to the world that thought itself my friend.
My grief slipped through cracks in between words to permeate the pages. Teenaged girls loved to hear about him. He was voted Favorite Character on Excerpts of Evelynn. I stopped thinking about him when I turned thirteen, to set him free from The Book. People noticed. It killed me to force him away when I was afraid of forgetting him entirely, but it was the last thing I could do for him.
I refused to read The Book. I knew it would only lock me into the cage I was already tethered to.
My parents publicly scorned The Book and proudly announced that their eyes had never been sullied by its words. I hated myself for wondering if they had ulterior motives.
Curiosity and insecurity were the undoing of my relationships. Friendships ended with ripped pages and threatening phone calls, demands I remove certain passages or phrases over which I had no control. I acquired a sixth – or seventh – sense of whether or not someone had read The Book. I changed friends regularly. Falling in love was out of the question.
When I turned eighteen and decided I would try social media, I didn’t expect my account to be immediately overrun with instant messages and follower notifications. Initial excitement faded to disappointment when I realized everyone had simply read the last chapter and hoped I would reveal my authorship and magical publishing abilities. I deleted the account after two days.
After that, I forwent pretense and fake niceties. People would eventually find out when I was insincere, anyway. I gave myself over to cruel impulses, allowing my words to cut as deeply as my thoughts did when transcribed. There was no purpose other than a vague hope of the book losing its popularity. It no longer mattered to me whether I was liked or despised: I only wanted to be forgotten. Free.
My morning meditations centered on the people I hated. Nights were allotted to revisiting interactions and mentally punishing the undeserving. Mercy was a concept abandoned in the briars as a featherless bird fallen from its nest: feeble at best, irretrievable in most cases.
I grew deranged and frightened myself with thoughts I knew were not my own. I no longer tried to maintain an appearance of humanity, let alone sanity, and isolated myself from the world I hated with a deep, frigid rage. I lost myself and cared for nothing but myself. I found bliss in all the shocking horrors I was writing down every night, and smiled as I encountered people, hoping they would read them.
On a day I felt relatively calm – as the surface of a pond is smooth above the slithery creatures twisting about below –, I happened upon an old English teacher of mine. She’d wanted to present me to her students to study in fifth grade. Her eyes squinted quite stupidly at me in hesitation before she approached and asked how I’d been doing of late.
“Why, Ms. Traulon,” I replied with a sardonic smile, “haven’t you been keeping up?”
She looked flustered at first, but not frightened. I glared down at her through strands of greasy hair, waiting for her to recollect the brilliant things I’d mentally written.
Instead, she tried to take my hand in hers and said, “Oh, dear Evelynn, I thought you had died when you stopped writing.”
It took my brain a moment to process, but when it did, I was split between disappointment that my descent was not recorded, and crazed relief at The Book having ended.
“It doesn’t … update anymore?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. I hated her. “It’s been saying ‘To be continued …’ for about two months now.”
I’d been sinking for five at the very least. It had not all been in vain.
My own laughter chased me home. I felt truly unfettered for the first time in thirteen years. I collapsed on my kitchen floor and called my family so they could jubilate, too.
My sister broke the news to me. In the last fifteen minutes, seven chapters had appeared: abridged versions of the past two months, including my conversation with Ms. Traulon.
I sat in the apartment for hours in silence.
I had the impression of waiting for something. A phone call, perhaps, requesting a post-hiatus interview on some national platform. An apocalyptic ending to my existence. A mental breakdown that would end with my body in a ravine.
I waited.
Then, from my emotional depletion arose a strange calm. The demonic me was gone. I showered for the first time in weeks. I refocused on ‘just living’ – like the bus girl from a dozen years ago.
Every hard edge of mine had been struck and shorn until I emerged softer, more delicate; yet I was stronger than when I’d been powered by hatred. Humanity had burned me, and I had tried to ignite it in return, so my petty need for vengeance was assuaged.
I ended up in a hilly countryside populated with more animals than people. The latter were elderly and treated me like a long-lost daughter. With time and patience, I leaned into Life until I was full and found myself pouring it into others.
My mentors left; some willingly, others still fighting. I went home to my family. Like Ms. Traulon, they hardly recognized me, but for entirely different reasons: I was contented and light. The heavy clouds I’d been living under let their frozen tears fall, running themselves dry.
As the snow fell, The Book grew less faithful to reality. Previous entries changed until my story was mine no longer. Its popularity faded then swelled when it was republished under a new title: Pages Torn. I happened to pick it up in a bookstore nearly thirty years after its original publishing, drawn in by the authorless cover. The dedication caught my attention.
To Evelynn.
Category: Featured, Short Story, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU Student