A notebook for the time
Lena woke up when the kettle was already hissing loudly. The block smelled of toast and rain from the cage. Mum was looking for her keys and Lena's backpack lay under the table. A stubborn 7:12 in the green flicked on the kitchen clock. Today she had a difficult test on fractions and she was already stressing. She swallowed a bite, glanced at the calendar and sighed quietly.
Yesterday in the library she had been given a strange, thin notebook without an owner. The librarian said with a smile: "From found things, you might find it useful." The cover was green checkered, quite clean, no sticker. Inside, on the first page, was a small sentence: 'Write down the time and see'. Lena parried with laughter, but the pen was already dancing. She wrote slowly: 7:15, in big, uneven numbers on the edge.
The timer on the oven went back three dashes at a time. The toast popped brighter, as if it had undone all the night's burning. The kettle was silent for a moment, then whispered quietly again. Mum blinked and asked surprised: "Did my clock go off?" Lena feigned calm, though a warmth swirled in her belly. She touched the paper with the tip of her finger, as if checking the temperature. Beneath the writing appeared: "Corrections: 3 per day. Remaining: 2." She tried again and, with a trembling hand, added 7:18 a.m. The couch socks popped into a pair by themselves. The phone stopped vibrating, as if waiting for a signal. A new sentence popped up underneath: "Don't waste."
A bus flashed past the window, as if earlier than usual. The metal frame of the old lift clattered in the corridor. Lena zipped up her jacket, but the notebook suddenly rustled. The ink moved without her hand and began to write: 8:00 a.m. The digits grew inward, as if someone had blown them. "Hey, no!" she hissed and threw herself into her backpack. The wall clock stopped ticking for half a second. The lift stopped abruptly between floors, as if it had fallen asleep. Mum froze in mid-step, with the keys in her hand. And on the page, next to a big zero, appeared a tiny note: "Last one."
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