why would you even bother telling someone your secrets before killing them

[self_composed]

By the end of Bio, the halls are full of people eager to inform Bella and everyone else within earshot that her friend is a murderer. They have entirely the wrong attitude to have formed the impression because he just now murdered someone, and also her father hasn't come looking for her yet, so this is probably nonsense.

Bella goes to gym.

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

"I was gonna say, can I read some, but I'm pretty sure the answer's no."

[self_composed]

"I don't put anything sensitive in the ones I bring to school. They've been swiped before," Bella says, handing over her current notebook. "Plenty of it's written in a weak makeshift code of sorts anyway. You can ask if you don't understand something that sounds interesting - in general it's not specifically aimed to keep you out."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Okay," he says, grinning, and starts flipping through this one from the most recent page backward. "So I'm a pinball wizard now, huh? Awesome."

[self_composed]

"It amuses me, and thus it is so," Bella says placidly. "Makes a decent code too, although frankly so would 'Alice'."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Probably, yeah. Is this felony assault one about me, too, or are there fights going on at this school that I'm not in?"

[self_composed]

"That's also you, yes. I didn't get around to looking up whether provocation's an extenuating circumstance - and have decided not to ask Charlie, for the time being."

[edgeofyourseat]

Flip, flip.

"Who'd you cut off in traffic?"

[self_composed]

"A Jeep," says Bella.

What? That's all she knows about the other vehicle. If it had been someone she knew she would probably not have cut him off.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Guess I won't ask why you did it," he says, indicating the I HAVE NO EXCUSE written next to the note.

[self_composed]

"No excuse doesn't mean no reason. I was in a hurry. That's just not actually a good cause for cutting somebody off. Probably saved me less than thirty seconds if anything, and I could have gotten into an accident."

[edgeofyourseat]

He snorts and looks back down at the book.

"If I had one'a these, would you wanna read it?" he asks, not quite as nonchalantly as he meant to.

[self_composed]

"Probably," Bella says.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Well, I don't. But who knows, maybe I'll start."

[self_composed]

"Heh. I've never gotten anyone to start serious notetaking before," chuckles Bella.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Have you tried?" he wonders.

[self_composed]

"No, not really. I don't think most people care about the same things I care about anyway. Renée doesn't even write down grocery lists when she does the shopping. She wanders through the store and grabs what looks good and wonders why she doesn't have a red onion when she wants one the following Thursday. Charlie's pretty diligent about getting stuff he learns in investigations written down, for documentation if there's some kind of dispute later, but he doesn't extend it to any other sphere of life."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Well, I don't care about pinning my thoughts down where I can see 'em," says Alice. "But I might care about pinning them down where you can see 'em."

[self_composed]

Bella smiles at him. "Why?" she asks.

[edgeofyourseat]

He thinks about it for a moment.

And a moment more, tilting his head from side to side.

And then he laughs.

"I see what you mean about the stuff you think not wanting to stay the way you thought it," he says.

[self_composed]

Bella bursts out laughing.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice grins at her.

Cheerfully: "Maybe I should borrow your notebook."

[self_composed]

"I have a box of them at home. They're pennies apiece in bulk. I can bring you one tomorrow."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You do that," he says. "In the meantime, you still want that why?"

[self_composed]

"Yes please." She hands him a pen; he's still holding her notebook. "You can write it down too, if you like."

[edgeofyourseat]

He flips back to the most recent page, and then to a blank one after it.

A short interval of scribbling later, with much crossing-out and gazing thoughtfully at the page and one instance of nearly nibbling on her pen but stopping himself in time, he passes the notebook back.

His handwriting is pretty terrible, but more or less readable nevertheless. All in all, it only took half the page.

At the very top are the words Because I like you, with 'like' crossed out and 'love' written in next to it. From that sentence, two arrows wiggle down the page.

One points to a scribbled-out 'because', followed by So I want you to hurt me, which is also crossed out; the final version, So I want you to have the chance to hurt me, is written below that.

The other arrow points to So I want you to know what I think, with a (/how) added next to the 'what' as an obvious afterthought.

"Because I like you's what I ended up wanting to say," he explains. "The other stuff's what it actually meant."