When 10-year-old Nancy discovers a diary in her parents' attic, she sets out to find answers that might bring peace to their constant fights...
Nancy can walk the length of the attic in eight-and-a-half steps. That would include carefully dodging the old storage boxes or the jutting-out chair legs and keeping her neck bent as she reached the edges where the roof had slanted. To add to the difficulty of her walk, only one yellow bulb lit up the space, casting disfigured shadows on the walls and the ceiling while leaving the edges and corners in a creamy darkness.
Nancy had discovered this attic when she was seven. That was three years ago when she could still jump in here without the fear of cracking her head. It was a moment of silent elation as she had just unveiled a new world inside her home, but the shadows would still scare her and she would occasionally bump into stuff and scrape her knees and elbows. Explaining that to her parents used to be even scarier.
Itâs different now. For one, she can walk blindfolded in this claustrophobic space without fear. Two, her parents donât bother questioning her over a few cuts and bruises. They are barely home these days, and when they are, they are busy arguing and yelling at each other. And when Nancyâs room gets too loud for her liking, she climbs into this quieter world instead.
Today as she steps inside and turns on the dim yellow light, itâs a sunny summer day outside. The day she was supposed to go to Yellowstone on a road trip with Ma and Dad, which was canceled only a night ago.
As she closes the door behind her, the noise from downstairs fades away, and she slips into her world quietly. She crouches over to an archaic wooden cupboard and opens the door to get what she came for.
An old diary. Brown cover, aged and worn, with intricate flower and star inscriptions in golden color. The sort sheâd seen in movies that contain clues to hidden treasures. Only this diary belonged to Ma and no sea explorer. Yet, the heavily creased and dense pages feel coarse against her fingers. And heavy.
As she flips open the cover, she sees the two curious sentences again. Written using two different pens and most likely by two different persons.
âPersonal Diary!!â
âOpen only if you know the code.â
The second sentence makes Nancy giggle every time because the drawstring that was supposed to tie the pages together is now gone. Only its trace remains on the cover. And there is no other secret mechanism built into this traditional diary to prevent unwanted readers from prying into it. So she goes on.
The first entry was from 1987, when, if her maths is correct, Ma would be only one year older than she is now. Nancy often wonders what Ma looked like then. Did she have long hair? Did she tie them into braids?
Nancy will never be able to fill the void in her imagination with an exact figure, but she goes on. After that first entry, which was only about Maâs sheer joy at owning this diary, the entries never became daily or even monthly. Sometimes, there would be consecutive entries on the same page as if Ma was worried about running out of paper. Then there would be months of no new entries, but whenever something major, whether good or bad, happened, sheâd come back to write about it.
Like when she won the interschool chess championship in eighth grade or when she burned her favorite lab coat in high school. She had an entry for her prom night, for the day she got accepted into CalArts, and for all of her first dates that never went well. Nancy would skip some entries because it felt wrong at times but there was also an excitement in knowing things she would never be allowed to.
Sometimes, she just wondered about those young boys who didnât make it beyond those first dates. Are they all married? Do they fight like Ma and Dad too?
These fights worry Nancy more now. Josh, a red-haired freckled boy in her maths class, says that if parents start fighting over small things too often, it means they donât like each other. And they want to leave. This thought makes Nancy shudder. Leave? Where? What about me?
Often, she has no clue what they are fighting over, only that they do it every day now, and it makes her sad. She doesnât disbelieve Josh either. His parents had separated last year, and thatâs how he says he knows.
She also wonders how people who love each other can fight so much. She remembers Maâs entry when she first met Dad in college. âTall, a tad too muscular, kinda stupid, but when he looked over at me and smiled during lunch, it felt like someone finally saw me.â
In the pages of that brown diary, Nancy saw her mother grow up. Leave home for college, move to a different city for her first job, and to a new city for the second. She cried at the entry when Ma wrote, âWhere are my roots if notâŚâ and never finished that sentence. Is this what growing up looks like? Losing your roots and leaving sentences unfinished?
Josh also says he has grown up a lot this year. Not only has he gained two inches but he is also strong enough to carry groceries on his own. He also says that if parents are fighting, you can try to interrupt them by crying or yelling about the first thing that comes to mind. Nancy has tried that a few times, and last week she got yelled at and sent back to her room instead.
Carrying groceries or doing homework on your own is easier than convincing parents, Nancy has decided will be her first entry when she buys a diary someday.
For now, she will have to be content with reading Maâs, which suddenly wasnât hers alone. The day she got married, there was a new entry in the same ink but by a different person. âI will always love you, Anna.â That was the first entry by Dad. Beyond that, the âpersonal diaryâ belonged to two persons, and it was only later that Nancy realized that the handwriting on the first page that wrote âOpen only if you know the codeâ was Dadâs. Yet, there has never been any other mention of their secret code.
As Nancy flips through the remaining pages, she realizes that only two pages of new entries are left to be read. She lets out a silent gasp. A sense of heaviness sprouts in her heart, something she feels every year when the summer vacations come to an end.
The final entries were about building their life and home after marriage, the places they traveled together, and the souvenirs they brought back. Then there was the final entry. By Dad.
âNancy. Our favorite word. Our secret code.â
The entry has the same date as she was born, and Nancy felt her heart sink. She is the code. She is the answer. This makes so much sense, and it doesnât.
How did things change in the last ten years? Why am I not the answer anymore?
She shakes her head in despair. Can I still be the answer? Can I change the future?
But Josh also says kids can only do so much.
Nancy looks once more at the last entry and gets up. Opens the attic door, and to her surprise, the only sound that welcomes her is her own breathing. She steps out cautiously and walks down the stairs, making her best efforts to mask any footstep noise. She peeks into the living room. It is empty. So is the kitchen.
Finally, she stands outside her parentsâ bedroom. The door is open. Sunlight from the window is spilling all over the expensive carpets and even escaping the threshold of the room.
But Josh says kids can only do so much.
She stomps across the room to the small study table with drawers, and when she leaves, the flimsy window curtain wavers in the summer breeze, and in the bright shaft of intruding light, a new sentence glistens on the yellowed first page of the personal diary:
âI know the code now. I can tell you if you have forgotten.â