58. ivies and roses

                                    

                                              
I was aware of the weight of my backpack as it rested against my shin bones from the passenger seat of my mother's minivan for the entire drive back to the apartment, maybe only a few ounces heavier than it was when I left that morning but I felt each of them as if those emblazoned words were scalding hot iron reaching through the pockets and brushing against my knee-high socks while I smiled politely to an anecdote my mother was telling me over the lowered volume of her favorite nineties rock station about some sort of recipe mishap Roger Mayfield told her about at work that morning, which apparently involved a fire extinguisher and a very concerned next neighbor unraveling their garden hose to spray it through an open window in the kitchen. 
Her cheeks had a roselike sheen as she laughed, an almost wistful shake of her head loosening a strand of her dark hair from behind her ear at a stoplight, "I think he was trying a recipe from the Indian cookbook he bought last week. Today, he bought one all about SPAM. I just think it's so funny that he uses cookbooks instead of the internet, but it's kind of sweet. I loved reading all of my grandma's recipe cards and seeing which ones were her favorites without her even telling me. They were always the dirtiest ones in the box." 
"Right," I distractedly murmured, much like I had when earlier she asked me how school had been when I first got in the car, and I offered her a vague, nondescript answer that might have been something like fine or okay, and did not involve the spontaneous depositing of Bridgette's apparent journal in my backpack or it's discovery just a few minutes ago. 
I had just stared at it then, at the weathered spine with creases stretched across the black leather, at the pages tinged the creamlike shade of old paper, the bends in the centerfold separating them as if it were something that had been opened a hundred or even a thousand times. Once a minute of blank gaping had passed, thoughts slowly began to trickle back into my head and I came to the conclusion it must have been some kind of joke, because there wasn't any other explanation that made sense, just like whenever the students at my last private school in Pennsylvania slid things into my locker, maybe nothing as sophisticated as an inscribed leatherbound journal but still. 
It must have been related to the picture from the homecoming game, with satirical entries about their torrid affair, or maybe it was Jenna Brookes who resorted to leaving me a fake diary about how I murdered Bridgette because Thea Foster said so and I didn't have a car for her to key. 
I pulled it from my backpack, almost certain I would find only a few pages filled with hastily scribbled mockery and perhaps another polaroid photo of my dad used as bookmark for an added punch, but then as I skimmed over the pages, quickly fanning through them with my thumb, each one was densely compacted with neat, careful handwriting that might have almost looked familiar, dated as back far as last year's summer and spanning all the way to this summer, to just weeks before she disappeared. 
So, maybe it's a very convincing forgery, I thought to myself, since it wasn't like I knew what Bridgette's handwriting looked like, not for sure, anyway, and while it would've taken someone hours if not days to fill a journal like this, there was a part of me that thought Jenna might have been unhinged enough to do it. I couldn't think of anyone else who would do it, or even a reason that was anything but some sort of prank, or who would've had Bridgette's journal in the first place to leave it in my procession. 
Before I could deliberate on it any further, I decided to shove it back into the recesses of my backpack and hurriedly zipped the pocket before anyone noticed that I was reading something that appeared to be the diary of the late Bridgette Rosenbloom. With the rumors floating around school that maybe I was the one who killed Bridgette that night, the last thing I wanted was for someone to see me with what could've been considered stolen property or evidence—