Beyond The Pages

• Christina Lee, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2021

The wood of the desk was smooth, fine, untouched, as small bits of dust gathered at its corners. Smoothing the palm of my hand against the surface made me feel at ease - the texture providing a sense of stability within. I stood up temporarily to brush away at the corners, not minding the traces of residue that littered the side of my hand as I did so. The window was still open behind me, gentle wind seeping through, touching the fabric of the clothing against my back.

The chair let out a small squeal as I sunk myself back into it, leaning my entire weight on behind. My eyes flickered about the room, inspecting the furniture, every inch of the wall, past the bed, the lamp, the luggage that I had brought with me. My ears took in the comfortable silence that had settled itself around, with only the sound of the breezes that blew by once in a while, with an occasional creak that came from my movement in the chair. There wasn’t one specific smell to take note of - the fresh, yet unfamiliar scent of the changed sheets perhaps, but also the scent of the outdoor world that snaked inside with it, holding onto the hints of green grass that came from across the plains.

I tapped my finger against the desk for a moment, deep in meaningless thought. The rhythmic sound of my nail against the hard surface broke through the quiet, like the popping of a balloon with a needle. There lay the minimal amount of luggage I had brought with me, sitting quite dauntingly in the room from across me. For a moment, the idea to preserve today’s happenings in my journal was abandoned, overwhelmed from the fatigue induced by the travel. But it was soon picked back up, as the need to retain these memories stood victorious against my own weariness.

A gleam rushed through the golden lines that wrapped around my ink pen as I picked it up from my briefcase. Dense thing, as usual. The journal, on the other hand, was quite crass. It lacked professionalism, something cheap from the dollar store nearby, old. Paired up with the pen, the match up was rather jarring to look at. However it had more depth, more value - whilst the pen was dense with weight, the journal was dense with history. I flicked through its pages and a whir of reminiscences echoed in my mind with the passing of each one, filled to the brim with barely comprehensible scrawlings.

It barely mattered, as long as I could read it myself.