Sonj

Dear Diary,

I know, I know.  I haven't been writing enough.  I keep meaning to but there's so much going on and I just keep making excuses to ignore you.  But I'm here now and I have so much to tell you!  Where do I even start?

Ok, first, Brad asked me to go to prom with him!  Actually, he didn't ask, he gave me a note asking me.  So cute!  If he'd asked me in person I would have had to say yes.  He's super nice and all.  Kinda cute..

The thing is, because he wrote a note I have some time to decide and that's where it gets interesting.  You see, Tanya told me that Darek asked about me.  She implied that he might ask me to prom as well!

I absolutely HAVE to say yes to Darek!!  He's so popular and so hansom!  I figure I can avoid Brad for 1, maybe 2 days and then I have to accept.  What if Darek takes too long to ask?  What if he doesn't ask at all?  I'm so nervous, I don't know what to do with myself!

Ok, gotta go!  So much to do today and I need to go shopping for a dress either way!  Wish me luck!

Kisses... Sonja

Her mind swooning with the wonder of young love and opportunity, Sonj squeezed her eyes shut in a wish and clapped her diary closed.  With care she slipped a rubber band over it and wrapped it in a towel.  This sacred book of dreams she gently slid under the mattress and sat down next to the slight lump it left on her bed.  Tears streaked lines down her flush cheeks and her hands trembled almost uncontrollably.  She wrung them together in an effort to make them stop.

When she finally opened her eyes a shudder overtook her body and a sob that had begun in her belly emerged from her lips as an unconvincing and exasperated laugh.  She felt so silly sitting on this plush bed surrounded by stuffed animals and posters and hand-made collages.  This room.  These childish possessions.  These ridiculous crushes.   Sonj knew that she must outgrow them.  She knew that the world does not bow and bend to the whims of a girl.  Not this world, anyway.  This was a world of men... and worse.

Sonj stood and looked into the round vanity mirror, with its stickers, and saw her face.  With resignation she wiped the embarrassment of tears from her cheeks, grabbed her thick leather jacket and her backpack.  She took one last breath as a little girl, grasped the knob to the pink door and opened it.

  All was broken outside her room.  Chairs were toppled and windows boarded.  Very small pinpoints of light pierced tiny gaps in her fortress, casting flares of light on Sonj's now hard and resolute face.  Not the face of a child anymore.  Nor the face of a woman, but the face of an equal but opposite force intending to inflict cruel balance upon the demons of a moved-on-world which lay just outside her front door.

From the only upright table she grasped a long machete and her driver's license.  If the machete failed her, Sonj knew the license would be needed to identify her body.

Sonj unlocked and opened the door and stepped a million miles and a million years from the diary, wrapped with care and hidden in a young girl's room.

She stepped outside...

...outside into the world...

...The world of men...

...and worse...