Once I realized that the old journal was predicting my future, it was all I could think about. I didn’t mean to read it, really. It was just there one day at my usual table. I collected my scone and latte from the barista and headed for the fire-red table near the window. There, where I usually sat a small stack of my favorite novels, rested the journal.
I looked around for its owner, assuming that someone had claimed my spot for the day. But after a minute nobody returned to the table so I sat down and began sipping my latte. I picked up the journal and ran my fingers over its cover. There was nothing exceptionally interesting about it. Just a journal. The deep red cover didn’t feature a label or any designs. The binding wasn’t damaged and falling apart. It looked like it came from a respectable used bookstore.
I flipped open to the first page, eager for a distraction. I had lost my engagement ring earlier that day and knew Nolan wouldn’t be happy with me when I got home. There was no name or date on the inside of the cover, just a tiny set of symbols. They looked like hieroglyphics or something. A hand, a bird, a cane, a half-circle, one leaf, a river and two leaves—that’s what the pictures looked like anyway.
At that point I thought it was an almost-empty sketchbook. There were no secret confessions or important memories preserved on yellowing paper. After turning through a few blank pages, I found a single drawing. Unlike the hieroglyphics, this drawing took up an entire page. It was of a rabbit in the middle of a rectangular maze. In the middle of the maze was a carrot. An arrow at the bottom prompted me to turn the page.
What I found was a larger drawing of the rabbit, who had managed to find the carrot. Under this drawing was a single sentence: Let the rabbit find the carrot. “Carrot” had been written under something that was scribbled out.
That night, I saw a white rabbit. After dinner, Nolan and I went for a walk around the block. I hadn’t told him about the ring yet. Halfway through our walk, he ran into one of his friends from the office—Ryan was his name, I think. Anyway I kept going. When our house came back into sight, I noticed a small, white rabbit standing at the front of our driveway.
The journal didn’t even enter my mind, honestly. I just thought the rabbit was cute. It reminded me of one I had as a kid. So I walked towards it and, of course, it took off. But so did I. I ran after it. The rabbit hopped down my driveway, turned and headed for the alley to the right of my house. My flip-flops fell away as I ran, but the rabbit was getting faster. I finally gave up as I reached the end of my house. And that’s when I felt it.
Something hard poked my bare foot as I walked past the trashcan. I looked down and gasped. My ring. It was at the base of the trashcan. I dropped down, scooped it up and slid it back onto my mind. That’s when I thought of the journal.
Let the rabbit find the carat.
