I STOLE MY BEST FRIEND’S DIARY FROM HER LOCKER ON THE DAY OF HER PROM
I’m standing in the empty hallway, diary clutched in my sweaty hand, as I hear my name being called. “Sarah, what are you doing?” Emily asks, her voice trembling as she rounds the corner, her prom dress fluttering behind her. I feel a rush of guilt mixed with the scent of fresh paint and the faint smell of last night’s garbage wafting from the overflowing trash cans. The fluorescent lights above flicker, casting an eerie glow on the scene. As I flip through the pages, I see the words “Sarah is a fake” scribbled in red ink, and my heart sinks. The sound of the school’s intercom crackles to life, a jarring contrast to the heavy silence between us. Emily’s eyes well up with tears as she demands, “Give it back, now.” I hesitate, my fingers tracing the worn leather cover, feeling the weight of my betrayal.
**The words on the next page make my blood run cold.**
👇 Full story continued in the comments…I stumbled back, the worn leather cover slipping slightly in my damp hand. The words swam before my eyes, scrawled in the same hurried script as the accusation on the previous page. It wasn’t just “Sarah is a fake.” This entry detailed an incident from weeks ago, a seemingly minor joke I’d made about her prom dress choice when we were online shopping, something I’d completely forgotten about, or perhaps never even meant maliciously. But here, Emily had written about how it had crushed her, how it confirmed her deepest fear that I secretly judged her, that I thought I was better than her.
“That smile… I know that smile,” she’d written. “She thinks she’s so much better. She doesn’t get it. She pretends to be my friend but she just wants to feel superior. She’s a fake.” The red ink jumped out, a visual representation of her pain. But the line that followed, the one that made my blood run cold, was this: *”After what she did with Mark… I can’t. I just can’t face her tonight pretending everything is fine. I wish I hadn’t sent that message to Mark. It was stupid, but I was so angry. Maybe she’ll finally see how her actions affect people.”*
My breath hitched. Mark. My prom date. What message? What had Emily sent him? My mind raced, putting together jagged pieces of recent weirdness – Mark being slightly distant, a cryptic comment he’d made yesterday. Emily thought my joke about her dress, or maybe something else I’d done regarding Mark that I was oblivious to, was a calculated move. And she’d *acted* on that misguided belief.
Emily stood frozen, watching my face twist from guilt to shock to a cold dread. The color drained from her own face as she saw I was reading *that* page, the one she probably regretted writing the moment the ink dried. Her tears flowed freely now, silent rivers carving paths through her carefully applied prom makeup.
“You… you went through my things,” she whispered, the initial anger in her voice replaced by a devastating hurt. “You stole my diary.”
I couldn’t speak. The weight of my own actions combined with the revelation of hers was suffocating. I looked at the page again. The depth of her insecurity, her pain, was laid bare. But so was her misplaced anger and the potentially harmful thing she’d done because of it. “I… I saw ‘Sarah is a fake’,” I finally managed, my voice raspy. “I didn’t understand. I…”
“So you thought it was okay to just… take it?” she cried, stepping forward, her hand outstretched. “To read my private thoughts?”
“What message did you send Mark?” I blurted out, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. The dread was overriding the guilt, a different kind of betrayal swirling in the air.
Emily flinched as if struck. She wrapped her arms around herself, her prom dress rustling. “That doesn’t matter!”
“It *does* matter!” I retorted, louder now, the silence of the hallway amplifying our voices. “You think I’m a fake because of… because of a dress comment? Or Mark? And you decided to hurt me back?”
She buried her face in her hands, sobbing. “I was hurt, Sarah! You don’t even realize half the things you do that make me feel small, or stupid, or like you’re just pretending to like me! That day… with the dress… and then you were talking to Mark that way… I just… I felt like everything was a lie! Like *you* were a lie!”
The diary felt heavy, a weapon I hadn’t meant to wield but now held all her secrets. I saw her, crumpled and heartbroken in the harsh fluorescent light, and the anger about Mark warred with a sudden, sharp pain for my friend. The girl who thought I was fake because of her own deep insecurities, because she interpreted my careless actions through the lens of her fear of not being good enough. And I, in my own moment of insecurity and fear (“Sarah is a fake”!), had violated her trust completely.
I lowered the diary, my grip loosening. “Emily,” I said, my voice trembling again, “I shouldn’t have taken this. It was wrong. I’m so sorry.”
I extended the diary towards her. She hesitated, her tear-streaked eyes fixed on my face, then on the worn book. Slowly, she reached out and took it, clutching it tightly to her chest.
“And I…” she started, her voice thick with tears, “I shouldn’t have written those things. Or… or sent the message.”
“What did you send him?” I asked again, softer this time.
She bit her lip. “It doesn’t… it just made things awkward. I told him… I told him you were only going with him because…” She trailed off, unable to voice the hurtful lie she’d clearly invented in her anger.
My heart ached. For her pain, for the mess we were in, for the prom we were missing. “Emily,” I said, stepping closer, ignoring the forgotten diary in her arms, ignoring the awkwardness of our prom attire in the empty hallway. “We need to talk. About everything. Not here, not like this.”
She nodded, tears still falling. “But… prom…”
I looked towards the gym doors, where muffled music now drifted. The magical night we had both looked forward to felt irrelevant now. “Prom can wait,” I said, reaching out and gently taking her hand. Her fingers were cold. “Our friendship… that can’t.”
We stood there for a moment, hands clasped, the stolen diary a silent weight between us. The intercom crackled again, a final announcement about the dance, but neither of us moved. The fancy dresses, the perfect hair, the expectations of the night faded away. There was just us, standing in the empty hallway, the hard, messy truth of our friendship finally laid bare, waiting to be rebuilt.