CHAPTER 2: The Morning After

It was all a bad dream.

I woke up with a hammer pounding my skull and blinding lights seeping into my bedroom window. But it's all good, because it was all just a bad dream.

Or at least, that's what I kept telling myself.

I sat up, cupping my face. My eyes immediately went to my bedside table where I remember plopping the diary last night after taking it home.

I smuggled the green notebook along with my drunken ass last night, careful enough not to wake up my dad or my sister. But as I searched the countertop of the table, I saw no diary. It was gone!

Damn, I must have imagined all of that shit last night.

"I'm never drinking again," I murmured to myself, even though I knew it was just bullshit.

A sigh of relief escaped my lips as I realized something. It wasn't real. It was just a bad dream. Now, I've woken up and everything's normal again. I didn't get anybody knocked up. Life is good again!

"Morning, bro!" the familiarly irritating voice of my little sister, Lally, rang from behind me.

"What are you doing in my room?" I groaned, turning towards her.

My eyes widened at the sight. My little sister was sitting on top of my study table, criss cross applesauce – her butt squishing the crumpled stacks of paper on it. And she was reading something. Something green. Something leather-bound. Oh, God, it's the bad dream again!

"Just readin'," the 8-year-old answered, not even sparing me a look as she flipped over the page of the diary.

Despite my current state of being hungover, I scrambled out of bed and leaped at her. I snatched the diary from her grubby, little hands and threw the thing into my garbage can.

"Lally!" I chided. "I told you not to go through my stuff!"

"Am I gonna be an aunt soon?" she asked, ignoring what I just said.

"No!" I exclaimed, but then did a double-take. "You read the diary?!"

"Doy," she said mockingly.

I froze. "Please don't tell dad," I pleaded.

Lally didn't reply, but only wore a smug smirk on her face and crossed her arms.

"Lally, I'm serious!" I said. "Don't tell dad."

She rolled her green eyes – which are nearly identical to mine – and jumped off my table. "Don't sweat it, bro," she said, patting my arm as she made her way towards the door. "I won't tell."

I breathed. This was certainly not the wakeup call I was hoping for. I collapsed back in bed and buried my head under a pillow.

"Oh, and Trev?" Lally called.

I peeped out of the pillow and saw her standing by the doorway. "Yeah?"

"You should really check up on that girl," she said. "I feel bad for her."

I thought about it for a while. Then, I nodded.

Lally waddled out of my room completely and I was left with my thoughts. I rolled over the bed to reach the trash can. I scooped the diary out of it.

"Who are you?" I asked the thing, recalling the girls I've slept with for the past two months. I opened it up again to see the penmanship. It wasn't familiar. I tried to recall the girl from the alleyway. Hell, I couldn't even remember what the alley looked like.

I was feeling hopeless but I had to find out who she is. And maybe apologize. But the main reason is to find out whether she got pregnant or not.

I know, I know. I'm so dense.

I wonder why she didn't tell me. Am I that big of an asshole? Am I that unreliable?

I couldn't take it anymore. I reached for my phone and dialed the number registered under the name Lou-ser. I christened my best friend with that contact name after he named me Trev-turd on his phone.

I don't think you could call somebody your best friend if you don't have blatantly insulting nicknames for each other.

The Lou-ser picked up on the third ring. "'Sup, man?"

"Hey, Louie," I greeted my best friend, tracing the outline of the diary. "I have a problem."

×××××

"You fucked up!" was the first remark that came out of Louie's mouth after reading the September 22 page.

I was looking for something a little more comforting but Louie can be far from comforting at times.

I glared at him. "I know that, Louie!"

"No, I mean you really fucked up this time. You knocked a girl up," he added. Yeah, as if that would help. Louie can be more annoying than my sister.

"Would you just help me figure out who she is?" I asked. "I have a list of the girls who could've written that diary here. Every girl that I slept with in the time period when the owner wrote that."

I handed the list to him. And he took it.

"Melissa Greer, Patricia Angeles, Jasmine Litt..." He scanned the rest of the paper. "There's like, more than ten women in here!"

I shrugged. "I have needs."

He gawked at me with a disgusted look.

"Look, I know it won't be easy but you have to help me, please," I pleaded, when he didn't say anything after my chauvinistic reply.

"Alright," he gave in with a sigh. "Why'd you have to be a fuckboy? You could've been a nerd or something; why'd you have to be a fuckboy?!"

I groaned. "Dude, would you mind? This is not the time for rhetorical questions. I'm kinda freaking out here. I might end up being a father! My life is gonna be finished if that happens."

"Yeah, and you deserve it," he answered. "This is the universe punishing you for being a man whore!" he chuckled.

I whacked his head with the diary. "Focus!"

He stopped laughing and said, "Alright. So there are twelve girls in here."

I nodded.

"And the writer said that she lost her virginity to you so I doubt that it was Heather, Patricia, Clarisse, Britney, Gwen or Jasmine because come on, let's be real. They probably lost their virginities way before they met you," he continued, chuckling a little.

"Yeah, that's right. So we only have six girls left," I agreed, going over the list again.

"You're the one who had sex with all of them, can't you tell which one of them was the one you deflowered?" he questioned.

I scratched the back of my neck. "Yeah, you know how I tend to get drunk before jumping in the sex sack?"

Louie nodded, albeit reluctantly.

"Yeah, well, I was pretty smashed when I smashed them," I said sheepishly. "I can't recall much of anything."

"God, you have issues," he sighed before going back to analyzing the paper. "Oh, okay!" he exclaimed, pointing at one name on the list. "I know Chloe Daley didn't lose her virginity to you."

"How would you know that?" I queried.

He grinned and said, "Because she lost it to me."

"Dude..." I said, pounding his fist. Man, even at a serious time like this we can't stop being... boys.

"Alright. Five girls left," he said.

"Emma Grange, Leslie Altman, Cassidy Sijin-Franck, Kaye Montgomery and Melissa Greer." I enumerated.

"I don't know much about them," he said, shaking his head. "We're just gonna have to wait 'til Monday. We can figure it out then."

I just nodded. I didn't know much about the girls either. "What do we do now?"

"Let's read the diary," he responded right away and took the diary from my hands.

"No! We've already invaded her privacy enough by reading the first date," I contradicted.

"Look at this objectively, Trevor. If we read more, we can find out more about the writer which makes it easier for us to find out who she is," he said.

Yeah, that makes sense. I sighed and told him to open it up.

"September 25, 2016"

The text on the top of the page read.

"I saw him at school today. He just greeted me nonchalantly and went off. So, he doesn't remember. Cool! If he did remember, that would make things more complicated and awkward so it's better off that he doesn't."

"She's a student at Westmont, too," I commented.

"Or she could be the lunch lady," Louie smirked.

I smacked his head again. We continued on reading.

"To let off a little steam from this whole situation, I played a prank in school. Just the classic false alarm that made the smoke detectors go off. Boy, if my schoolmates knew that it was me who did that, they'd be thanking me right now for the day off. Or getting pissed at me for giving them an untimely shower. Yeah, I'm probably never gonna do that again."

I remembered that day. And, hell yeah, I got pissed. I specifically remember that I was inside the janitor's closet with Cassidy. We were... uhm, cleaning.

Whoever this chick is, she cockblocked me without even knowing it. But I gotta admit, what she did was cool.

"This chick is a badass. How can you forget sleeping with her?" Louie asked.

"Well, she didn't pull a fucking fire alarm while we were doing it!" I bit back and flipped to the next page.

"But hold your applause, my dear Diary because that is not the greatest news of today. The pregnancy test came out negative!"

"Oh, thank God!" I exclaimed in relief. It was like that glorious moment for guys in The Maury Show when the host announced how they were not the father.

"You're off the hook!" Louie said, patting my back. But we put off the celebration for a bit. There were still a couple of paragraphs left in the entry.

"What a relief! I can finally breathe again. I won't have to tell Trevor. But, you know, even if that test came out positive, I still probably won't tell him. I mean, it's Trevor Jettison, for Pete's sake. He'll yeet himself across the country!

Whatever. Life is good again! Now, if you'll excuse me. I'll go celebrate my non-pregnancy by playing FIFA and eating pizza while jamming out to Bruno Mars.

I'm out!"

"Wow," Louie and I said in chorus, though we had varying tones. His was a lot more upbeat than mine.

"This chick is awesome! She plays FIFA and rocks out to Bruno Mars," he added.

That was not why I said wow.

"Yeah, but didn't you read what she wrote about me?" I asked, setting the diary aside. Sucks to have that kind of intervention from a piece of paper, huh?

"Oh," Louie said, realizing why I'm a bit down. "Trevor, as your best friend, I have to be honest with you. I can't blame this girl for writing that."

I tightly smiled and said, "Neither can I."

There was a brief lull before he said, "So, I guess you won't be worrying about this anymore."

I shook my head. "I still wanna find her," I stated.

"But why?" Louie asked. "She's not preggers. Case closed."

"I don't know, to apologize?" I deadpanned. "Plus, like you said, this chick is awesome!"

Lally is just a nickname. Can anyone guess what her real name is? ^3^ Also, don't forget to vote and comment! I love reading what you guys think!