I had been reading my sister's diary for two weeks when, finally, something interesting happened: she developed a crush. Not just on anyone, but on Lee Lebovitz, who aced every math test and snorted when he laughed, but who also rode a motorcycle that was always in the senior parking lot despite him being a junior. In her diary, my sister smothered one of the white pages with lipstick-stained kisses. "Lee Lebovitz," she wrote, in small, tidy handwriting, "you are really missing out."
In the mornings, when she was in the shower, I continued to sneak into her bedroom and carefully remove the diary from the back of her desk drawer. Before, she had never written more than a page, but now she sometimes filled two or three pages with a detailed account of every interaction she had with Lee.
"Best day ever," she wrote. "Was partnered up with Lee in Biology!"
And the next day, "Accidentally bumped hands twice during class. A sign?!?"
But then, out of nowhere, Lee started walking around campus holdings hands with a girl who had a "stupid-looking haircut, and no personality," according to my sister, who just as quickly became moody and quiet. At dinner, she pushed the food around on her plate until our mother demanded that she either eat or leave the table. She started to go to bed early every night, and sulked around the house on the weekends instead of going out like she'd always done. When I snuck into her room to peek at her diary, she hadn't written anything new for an entire week.
I thought it would pass. Isn't that what crushes were supposed to do? She'd get over him, find someone new to fantasize about, return to writing her long, zealous entries. But a whole month went by, and the pages remained blank.
I was bored. I was restless. I came up with the only plan I could think of: I took a piece of our mother's pink stationery, wrote what I needed to, folded it into quarters, and slipped it into Lee Lebovitz's locker after third period, making sure no one saw me do it.
When the diary entry finally appeared, my sister wrote it in a fresh loopy handwriting, as if it was an entirely new version of herself. Lee Lebovitz, she announced, was now single again. Not only that, but he had smiled at her in the hallway, the type of smile that made her feel a little bit light-headed and very much hopeful.
"It must be fate," she wrote, "because there's just no other explanation."
