The Little Black Book

“Jessa! Can you come down here and help me with a few of these boxes?” Jessa’s mothers voice echoed from below, bouncing off the dusty abandoned walls.

“Be down in a minute!” Jessa hollered in response. She hit send on a text message, then shoved her phone in her back pocket before descending down the creaky wooden stairs. The cellar was dark and a musty stink filled Jessa’s nostrils, she felt the sudden urge to cough.

As she reached the final step she peered around, her eyes adjusting to the darkness until she spotted her mother bent over in the corner. She was surrounded by several large boxes stacked one upon another almost reaching the ceiling.

“Mrs. Brosnan had asked in her will that anything found in these boxes that can still be of use be donated.” Jessa’s mother informed her.

“Sounds good, Mom.” Jessa responded before pulling a box toward her and beginning to sort through its contents.

Two hours passed and Jessa had divided up the contents of all of the boxes with one remaining. When she opened the final unexplored box an object placed on the very top immediately caught her eye. It was a very old, worn, small black notebook. Jessa gingerly picked up the notebook, and blew off the thin layer of dust on the cover before she opened it. It was blank.

How strange, a notebook that appears to be so thoroughly used to be completely blank on the inside.

A blank notebook doesn’t seem to be any use to a shelter. Jessa decides that she is going to keep the strange notebook, bringing it with her back up the stairs and shoving it into her backpack.

“You about finished down there, kiddo?” Her mother inquired.

“Yep!” Jessa adds, swinging her backpack on her shoulder and following her mother out of old Mrs. Brosnan’s front door.

“Mom tells me Mrs. Brosnan had a whole bunch of junk in that old house of hers,” Jessa’s dad prods, pointing his chicken-speared fork in Jessa’s direction. “You find anything good in that dump?” He follows up with a chuckle, before stuffing the chicken into his mouth.

“Nah, not really, just a bunch of old lady clothes and pictures.” Jessa shrugs, pushing her mashed potatoes around her plate.

“That sounds so boring!” Jessa’s little sister Katie wrinkles her nose in disgust.

“It may have been boring, but it was a very nice thing for Jessa to have helped her mother with, thank you sweetie.” Her mom smiles, reaching across the dinner table and giving Jessa’s hand a squeeze.

After dinner Jessa goes to her bedroom to watch some TV before going to bed. It’s a school night, and she is thankful that she didn’t have any homework assigned today because after cleaning Mrs. Brosnan’s house for three hours after school, she is exhausted. She flings herself into her bed and signs into her Netflix account, but she is so tired she drifts off into sleep before she can even decide on what she wants to watch.

“Jessa, honey, wake up.” Jessa’s mother gives her a slight shake.

Jessa groans, rolling over to look at her alarm clock.

8:00 AM it glares.

“Oh!” Jessa jumps out of bed, startled.

“You slept through the alarm honey, you must have been very tired.” Her mom begins to grab Jessa’s uniform out of her dresser, handing it to Jessa.

“I packed a snack for you, so you won’t be late for the bus.” Her mom added. She then tucked both a cereal bar and a juice box into Jessa’s backpack.

“Thanks mom!” Jessa panted, running a brush through her hair while simultaneously trying to pull on her uniform skirt.

“Bye mom!” Jessa yelled minutes later running down the stairs and out the front door, just meeting the school bus in time.

“Whew!” Jessa exhaled, flinging herself down onto the final row of the bus, her friend Emma had been sitting there awaiting Jessa’s arrival.

“Rough morning?” Emma joked, her eyes flashing mischievously.

“Yeah, I don’t know why I’m so tired.” Jessa yawned.

The school day seemed to drag on forever. Jessa dozed off in two of her classes, only catching herself when her head began to slip forward almost landing with a smack on her desk. When lunch period arrived she was relieved, the day was more than halfway over.

Jessa bought a meatball sandwich from the lunch lady, paying with two crumbled up dollars she had found in her uniform skirt. She didn’t have any money left to buy anything to drink. Then she remembered the juice box her mom had tucked into her bag that morning.

She slid into the cafeteria bench across from Emma.

Emma was preoccupied with a large order of French fries sitting in front of her.

Jessa leaned into her backpack reaching for the juice box when her hands landed on the black notebook. Jessa had almost forgotten about it. She pulled it out of her backpack, and watched with shock as money began to fall out from inside of the notebooks pages.

Emma looked up, her jaw dropping, and locked eyes with an equally as shocked Jessa who had been watching the strange occurrence.

After school, the two girls decided to make a detour from their usual walk home, a detour to the local mall. Jessa wasn’t sure how, but money just kept pouring from the pages of the notebook. So far, her backpack was filled with $20,000, in 500 and 100 dollar bills. She treated Emma and herself to a shopping spree: new shoes, hairclips, cute dresses, then the girls grabbed frozen yogurt.

“Cheers!” Jessa giggled holding the frozen yogurt cup up to Emma.

Emma turned to return the cheers, but her smile turned to a gasp as she dropped her yogurt.

“Jess! YOUR HAIR!” she croaked.

“My hair?” Jessa asked, glancing in the camera of her phone.

Jessa’s black hair had turned white.

Jessa texted her mom, asking if she could spend the night at Emma’s, her mom agreed. Emma and Jessa made a decision to stop at the Beauty Supply Store and buy a wig that looked as close to her real hair color, so that Jessa wouldn’t need to explain the unexplainable tomorrow at school.

Later that night at Emma’s house the two girls admired their earlier haul. Jessa poured her backpacks contents onto the floor of Emma’s room. Necklaces, hair clips, bangles, and trinkets came pouring out onto the ground, then the notebook followed, tumbling out, pages open. Only the notebooks pages were no longer empty. Jessa rubbed her eyes, unable to believe what she had seen. Written in the notebook was every item Jessa had bought with the money and the price of each item.

“The notebook is keeping track of whatever we spend the money on.” Jessa insisted to Emma.

“Well there is only one way to really find out,” Emma responded, “We need to go buy some more things, and watch if they show up in the notebook.”

The girls walked down the street to the local jeweler. “You still have a lot of money, buy something expensive, like that bracelet?” Emma questioned, pointing to a silver bangle.

The jeweler walked over curiously and cleared his throat, “Are you er, young ladies interested in anything I could assist you with?” He questioned with a smirk.

“Uhm, yes.” Jessa answered trying to appear confident and mature. “I would like to buy that bracelet.”

“This bracelet?” The jeweler asked, unable to disguise his shock.

“Yes.” Nodded Jessa.

“Perfect. That will be one-thousand dollars.”

The girls left the jeweler, and the minute they reached the sidewalk outside Jessa whipped out the notebook, both of the girls’ eyes went straight to the last written line.

Silver Bangle $1,000

“This is too weird.” Jessa shut the notebook with a slap.

“Jessa…” Emma began to say slowly, her voice full of fright.

“What?” Jessa began to ask, but stopped as Emma held up her compact mirror in front of Jessa’s face, which was freshly covered in wrinkles.

“Jessa! What is happening! You look OLD!” Emma gasped.

“It has to be this notebook, or the money in it!” Jessa cried.

“Well what do we do?! I can’t bring you back to my house like this my mom will freak!” Emma began to hyperventilate.

Jessa racked her brain for a solution.

Anything that can be of use is to be donated. Jessa’s mothers voice echoed in her head.

“I think I need to donate the notebook… or the money in it at least.” Jessa announced.

It was beginning to get dark, Emma’s mom would be calling asking where the girls were soon.

Emma and Jessa jogged back to their school. “Why are we going back to the school?” Emma panted. “Not the school,” Jessa tried to catch her breath, “next door, the church.”

The girls reached the front of the church, and Jessa grabbed the notebook out of her bag, peeking inside she no longer saw the pile of money that had been there previously.

A large cardboard box to the left of the Church’s entrance read “Donations.”

Jessa walked up to the box and tossed the notebook inside, before taking all of the goodies that the girls had gotten at the mall and dumping them into the box as well.

“Did you have to get rid of everything?” Emma whined.

“Afraid so.” Jessa shrugged before pulling the dark wig off of her head and dropping it into the box as well.

The girls slowly began their journey back to Emma’s house. “What are we going to do if you still look like this for school tomorrow?” Asks Emma nervously.

“I don’t know…” Jessa admits.

“I’ll distract my mom, then you sneak in and go straight to my room, ok?” Emma directs Jessa.

“Ok.” Jessa nods.

“Goodnight Emma.” Jessa whispers, tucked into a sleeping bag on Emma’s bedroom floor.

Emma giggles, “It’s so weird because I know it’s you but I feel like I’m having a sleepover with an old lady… Goodnight Jes.”

“Jessa, wake up!”

“Wake up it worked!”

Jessa pries her eyes open, jumping out of the sleeping bag and racing to Emma’s mirror.

The wrinkles are gone, her youthful plump baby face is back, along with her long dark hair.

She breathes a sigh of relief before Emma runs over, the two girls embrace one another.

“Emma! Jessa! The bus is here!” Emma’s mother calls from the kitchen.

The girls climb into the school bus and Jessa leans her head on the window. She looks out at the moving road and lets her mind wander, mystified with thoughts of the black notebook. First, thoughts of amazement from everything the girls encountered the previous day. Then, thoughts of hope, hope that the notebook and its magic has found its way into the hands of someone who needed it, someone who the notebook was intended to help.