Daily Living Record

Dear Diary. Write a diary entry or a letter from your character’s point of view.

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Set Up

For my diary entry, I chose Lily from Dumpster Fire, which is the 2nd book in What If Wasn’t, my Young Adult series. The events of the book just culminated and she’s trying to pull herself together after seeing her best friend die in her boyfriend’s arms.

Dear Diary,

Alyse is dead. I still can’t believe I’m writing that. I needed to see the ink on the page to begin to believe it’s true. Alyse is dead. Alyse is dead. Alyse is dead.

Yeah, it’s not like a magic incantation where if you write it enough, it becomes true. If I wrote “Alyse is not dead” three times, it would also not come true. They laid her in a grave today. Her life ended and ours keep going forward.

Wow, I wrote that two hours ago. I’ve cried a bucket since and slept. My head hurts. And Alyse is still dead. Peter’s not. As far as I can tell, he didn’t have a mark on him. On his exterior, anyway. His eyes — there was nothing behind them as they led him off the boat. I should care. He was my boyfriend. I don’t and that’s all on him. He aimed the boat at us — at Ben and me — and Alyse died. And Trevor — critical condition. Peter and his date walked away without a scratch. Well, she got wet and Peter — his sister died in his arms and it was all his fault. His scars will be on the inside where nobody can see them.

Maybe that’s right. He won’t be able to get sympathy for scars nobody can see. All anyone will know of him is that he’s a killer – charged with manslaughter. He slaughtered a girl, but they don’t take off points for that. They just don’t have a term for it. Manslaughter will follow him the rest of his life, carrying that dead body around with him.

Could Ben and I have stopped him? Not by the time we saw the boat, but Ben said Peter called him and asked for help and Ben was busy. That’s not an excuse. He didn’t have to drink and drive. Dad says it’s still vehicular homicide if it’s a boat. He learned nothing. He learned nothing. He learned nothing. He said he did, but

Was he lying? I knew Alyse lied all the time. Seems like my friendship with her was as much illusion as fact. But Peter always seemed to tell the truth until the night at Trevor’s party. I’ve spent the summer surrounded by liars. Ben’s been the only one honest and now he doesn’t want to see me. We’ll forever remind each other of Alyse dying in Peter’s arms. Dad says I’m being melodramatic, but he wasn’t there. They don’t know what it was like to watch Alyse die right before my eyes. and to know it was my fault — that Ben and I could have stopped it. And, yet the one person who would understand is the last person I want to see.