The Invitation

Fifteen years ago

I picked up a brown leather book and brought it to my nose for a sniff. God, I love that smell. It reminded me of Spencer Knox. He carried a football everywhere he went and always tossed it into the air and caught it while talking. Every time the calfskin smacked against his palms, the faint smell of leather wafted and made me smile.

The lady running the garage sale was older and had an orange fanny pack around her midriff. Her frizzy gray hair stuck out in all different directions, making me think she might’ve recently stuck her finger into a socket, instead of the plug of the lamp she was positioning on a folding table.

I walked over to her. “Excuse me. How much is this?”

She glanced down at my hands. “It’s fifty cents. But I paid ten dollars for it fifteen years ago at someone else’s garage sale. That’s what happens when you buy crap you don’t really need. You end up getting rid of it like the person before you did. You write in a diary?”

I hadn’t actually noticed the word Diary embossed on the front cover until she pointed it out. I shook my head. “I’ve never had one before.”

A thin woman wearing a sweater set with her hair slicked back into a neat ponytail walked up the driveway carrying a boxed coffee maker. “I’ll give you five dollars for this.”

The old lady pursed her lips. “Can you not read? The sticker says it’s twenty.”

“I’m only willing to pay five.”

“Well, then you can walk your skinny little ass right back over to the table you got it from and put it back.”

The sweater set woman gasped. “How rude.”

The old lady grumbled something about the woman going back to her country club and returned her attention to me. “So, do you want that diary or not? I need to pay attention to the browsers. Some people don’t think the prices at a garage sale are low enough, so they help themselves to a five-finger discount.”

I’d been thinking I should offer twenty-five cents since she’d started out at fifty. My mom always said we should haggle at these sales. But this woman didn’t seem like the negotiating type. Besides, I had the fifty cents, she’d paid ten dollars, and I was a little afraid of her. So I dug into my pocket and pulled out two quarters. “I’ll take it.”

A few days later, I went to my room after dinner and locked the door before digging out the diary. I didn’t want my sister bursting in and finding out I was writing down the things on my mind. She’d most definitely try to read it when I wasn’t home—especially if she knew the type of stuff on my mind lately.

Two days ago, Spencer had asked me to be his girlfriend. I’d had the biggest crush on him since fifth grade. Of course I’d said yes, even though my parents had told my sister she couldn’t date until high school when she’d asked, and I was only in seventh grade. Before Spencer became my boyfriend, I’d never been nervous around boys. But now I was freaking out whenever he and I so much as talked. I knew the reason—he’d gone out with Kelly Reed before me, and they’d made out. I’d never kissed a boy before, and now I worried I might do it wrong when the time came. So I thought it might be a good first entry in my new diary. Maybe it would help me work out how I was going to handle things by putting my fears down on paper.

Lying on my stomach on my bed, I swung my feet in the air behind me as I chewed on the top of my pencil and decided how to start. Do I just write Dear Diary or is that geek city?

“Stella?” My father’s voice and the sound of him attempting to turn my door handle startled me.

I jumped up, and the diary bounced off the bed, landing pages down on the floor. “Uh, who is it?”

“It’s your father. What other man knocks on your bedroom door, and why is it locked?”

“Ummm…because I’m getting changed for bed.”

“Oh. Alright. I was just popping in to say goodnight.”

“’Night, Dad!”

“Goodnight, pipsqueak.”

I listened for his footsteps to fade into the distance before I scooped the diary off the floor. Some of the pages in the middle had wrinkled, so I went to smooth them out. But when I turned the book over, I found words written on the pages. Lots of them. Confused, I read a few lines and then flipped a few pages back. My eyes widened as I read the top of one of the pages.

Dear Diary,

Oh my God!

I flipped back more pages. Two or three were filled with words, but then there was the same start.

Dear Diary,

Pages and pages were filled. How could I have not noticed? I could’ve sworn I’d opened it at the garage sale. But as I flipped to the beginning, I realized why I hadn’t spotted all the blue ink. The first five or six pages of the diary were completely blank.

But whose diary was it? The woman said she’d bought it at a garage sale years ago. So had she not noticed either?

Maybe I should go back and return it.

Or give it to my mom and see what she thought I should do?

Though…

Maybe I could read a little first and see if it gave me any idea who the book belonged to.

I didn’t have to read the entire thing.

Just one little entry.

That would be it.

I flipped through from the first page to make sure I was at the very beginning, and then scanned the two simple words on the first line.

Dear Diary…

Just one little entry.

It couldn’t do any harm.

I had no idea then just how much those words would come back to haunt me.