Alicia Atkins

I'd used first a kitchen knife, and then a baby crowbar from Dad's basement workshop to pry it up.

I'm not even sure I know why I wanted to, just that the compulsion to do so was strong.

I noticed that this board, apparently alone of all its neighbors, had no nails holding it in place, just the tension of the other boards around it.

Later, I'd learn that there was a way to step on it at just the right place to pop it up without any tools, but that was years later, when I owned the house myself.

Under the board, in the space between the floor joist, was the diary.

It seemed wrong to take it anywhere.

To my room, to the den, to the back lot by the creek where I went to get away from everyone else.

So I sat against the wall and read.

The script was a lot like my own.

A midpoint between cursive and printing.

No one does cursive anymore, but I'd learned it in the last days before its obsolescence.

Someone younger than I might not have been able to read the bloody thing.

The way that analog clocks are an unreadable mystery to kids who grew up on digital time.

The diary began, You knew who you were by the time you could spell mendacious.

You were a killer.

I was hooked.

It took me weeks to digest the whole thing.

I'd made a ritual out of turning its pages.

A series of rules to extend and fetishize the experience.

One.