Alicia Atkins

If you don't finish it, she will tell someone who you are and what you tried to do.

You can't leave your fate up to her discretion.

If she sees you at all tonight, she must be ended by the time you leave.

I started writing my own diary in second person as well.

The first page began, "'You went to the party in Lisa's dorm room tonight, intending to get laid, no matter who you displaced to get a man into your sheets.

You made sure that you not only looked and smelled amazing, but that you imbibed just enough before heading over to take off the edge of your scruples.'

Not that you weren't committed, but you did want to give yourself every advantage, didn't you?

My diary goaded me on to reckless behaviors.

I see now.

In a competition I created in my mind between me and Bertrand.

We were the same, he and I. Both scornful of the rules of social norms.

Both stimulated by risk.

His diary remained back at the farmhouse where I'd grown up, off-limits thanks to my own rules.

I visited rarely, usually on holidays, and I was never alone in the house and able, consequently, to access the hidden space under the floorboard.

I only had the mental inventory of Bertrand's escalating criminal acts to goad me on.

He began by experiments on animals.

I liked animals, so I experimented on my classmates.

I might have drawn less blood, but I'm sure I did more lasting damage.

And everything, every word, went into my diary.

And it was good.