She found her son’s notebook in his school locker—her son whom she had buried three months ago—and couldn’t understand who was writing in his handwriting. The page was half-filled with familiar, uneven letters: “Mom, you need to eat. And stop crying at night. I can hear you.”
Lina stood alone in the empty school hallway, clutching her 11-year-old Nick’s old backpack to her chest. They’d called her to pick up his remaining belongings: a couple of textbooks, a crumpled pencil case, the locker key. She thought she would just mechanically pack everything into a bag and leave. But beneath the textbooks lay a notebook with a blue cover—one she was certain hadn’t been there the day of the accident. She knew every single one of his notebooks like the back of her hand.
Her hands trembled as she flipped through the pages. The first entries were familiar—math problems, scribbles, a funny little doodle in the corner. Then came pages dated after that day when the ambulance could no longer turn back. And amidst the school formulas, like a punch to the chest: “Mom, I don’t want you to sell the bike. Let it stay. I remember how you laughed when I first rode without hands.”
Lina’s breath caught. She closed the notebook and leaned against the cold metal locker. The school was quiet, only the distant thump of a ball echoing from the gym. The world kept living as if nothing had happened. As if the wet asphalt, the sirens, the white sheet on the stretcher were just a fading nightmare.
“Who wrote this?” The words slipped out in a whisper, even though there was no one around.
The principal, a tall man named Daniel, was waiting for her at the entrance. Seeing her pale face as she came out, he became concerned:
“Lina, are you feeling unwell? Sit down, we have water…”
She handed him the notebook like a piece of evidence.
“This… this was continued after…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Daniel carefully flipped through the pages, frowning.
“The handwriting does look similar. But are you sure you hadn’t seen this notebook before?”
“I’m sure. We packed his backpack together that day. I remember every line on his notebook covers. This one wasn’t there.”
They exchanged a silent look. Easy explanations came to mind: some bad prank, coincidence, someone else’s notebook. But Lina recognized familiar mistakes in the letters—the malformed “я,” the funny “м,” almost made of three sticks.
At home, she laid Nick’s things on the table like a small museum: a worn-out ball, a toy car missing a wheel, his favorite sweatshirt. The notebook lay separately. Lina didn’t dare touch it until evening, until the sun had slipped behind the neighboring building.
At night, when the house fell into silence, she lit a desk lamp and opened the notebook to the last entry. At the bottom of the page, a few lines were empty. A pen lay beside it. Lina caught herself on an absurd thought: “If I turn away, new words will appear there.”
She barely slept until dawn. Early in the morning, a call came through. The screen showed an unknown number.
“Is this you… Nick’s mom?” A timid girl’s voice trembled. “I found your number in his diary. My name is Mia.”
Lina tightened her grip on the phone.
“Yes…”
“May I come over? I need to give you something. And explain about the notebook.”
An hour later, a slender girl with dark ponytail and an enormous backpack stood at the door. She held another blue notebook in her hands.
“Come in,” Lina said softly.
In the kitchen, Mia sat on the edge of a chair as if afraid to break something. Her eyes gleamed.
“I… I sat at the same desk as Nick,” she began. “That day… he forgot his notebook at my place. We kept a ‘secret diary’ in it. We wrote to each other when we felt scared or sad. He said you got tired at home and shouldn’t see it all.”
Lina wrapped the edges of her sweater tighter.
“After…” Mia swallowed hard. “When we were told he was gone, I took a second, identical notebook. And I started writing… like it was him. I knew how he talked. He often told me about you. About the bike, about how you don’t eat when you worry. The teacher said you come to the entrance and leave without going inside. I thought… if you ever opened the locker and saw it—it might make you feel better. That you’d think: he would’ve wanted you to live on.”
Lina was silent. Every word from the girl fell heavy like a stone in water. There was no relief. Only rage, wild and almost physical.
“Do you understand what you’ve done?” Her voice cracked. “I spent three months learning to breathe without him. And now… now I look at these pages and wait for him to walk through the door.”
Mia hastily pulled out the second notebook.
“I wanted to give this to you. So you know it was me, not him. I didn’t want to hurt you. I miss him too. I hear his laughter in the hallway when it’s empty. I thought if I wrote for him, it would be like… he stayed.”
Lina closed her eyes. Nick appeared before her: how he once brought home a crying girl and said, “Mom, Mia’s rabbit died. Can she stay with us until she stops crying?” Then they baked cookies together and built a fort from blankets.
“You’re a child too,” Lina breathed out. “And you lost someone too.”
Mia nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Please forgive me. I won’t do it anymore. I just… miss him so much.”
Lina stood, approached the locker, and pulled out Nick’s old baseball cap.
“You know, he always said you were the bravest in class. But a very foolish kind of brave—to write as if you could bring the dead back,” she placed the cap before the girl. “But maybe it was the only kind of bravery you had.”
They sat silently for a long time. The clock on the wall ticked seconds like a heartbeat.
“I can’t accept your ‘letter from him,’” Lina finally said, touching the blue notebook. “But I can read yours. If you write as Mia. About who he was. Not as a ghost, but as the boy who loved chocolate and was afraid of the dark.”
Mia looked at her in surprise.
“You… you want that?”
“I want to remember him alive. Not turn him into a miracle that never happened,” Lina said, feeling a slight ease in her chest for the first time in weeks. “Come visit sometimes. Tell me about him at school. And if you want… write. But from yourself.”
As she left, Mia gently touched Nick’s notebook.
“He would be very upset if he saw that you’re not eating,” she said softly. “He always worried about you.”
When the door closed behind Mia, Lina was alone again. But the silence was different now. It held not only the echo of loss, but also the quiet rustle of pages yet to be filled—not with someone else’s counterfeit miracles, but with living memories.
She placed a bowl of soup on the table, as if following an order from those uneven lines. And, for the first time, she ate it all without crying. Then she opened a blank notebook and wrote in her own handwriting: “Nick, today Mia came to see us. We’re both still learning to live without you. But I think you’d be proud of us.”
