The Margins of Chapter Four.

I’m a junior in college right now, and if there is one thing you need to know about me, it's that I absolutely refuse to pay full price for required reading. My campus bookstore charges ridiculous amounts for new paperbacks, so I always hunt for my syllabus books at this cramped, dusty used bookstore a few blocks away from my dorm.

Last semester, I was taking this intro to modern literature class. We had to read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I found a super beat-up copy at the used bookstore for like three dollars. The cover was creased, the spine was completely cracked, and the pages were that soft, slightly yellow color that makes old books smell so good.

When I got back to my dorm room and actually opened it to start my reading assignment, I realized the margins were completely covered in handwriting. At first, I was annoyed because I thought it was just boring academic notes from whoever owned it before me. But then I looked closer.

There were two completely different handwritings.

One person wrote in messy, all-caps blue ink. The other person wrote in really neat, tiny cursive with a mechanical pencil. They weren't writing notes about the book; they were talking to each other. It was like they were using the book as a secret messaging system.

I completely ignored my actual homework and just started flipping through the pages, hunting for their conversations. It started off super casual in the first chapter.

Blue Ink: Is it just me, or does Professor Higgins blink way too much? It’s distracting. Pencil: I counted. He blinked 47 times in the last five minutes. Also, you spelled distracting wrong in your last note.

It was so cute. I could totally picture them. They must have been sitting next to each other in class, passing the book back and forth while the professor lectured. As the chapters went on, the notes got deeper. They stopped talking about the class and started talking about their actual lives.

Blue Ink confessed that they were terrified of graduating and had no idea what they wanted to do with their major. Pencil admitted that they only picked their major because their parents forced them to, and they secretly just wanted to drop out, move to a big city, and try baking.

I was completely invested. I was sitting on my dorm room floor, drinking iced coffee, watching this entire secret romance unfold in the margins of a 1960s novel. It was like finding a real-life rom-com that nobody else knew about.

Then, I got to the very last page of the book.

At the bottom of the page, in the blank white space under the final paragraph, Blue Ink had written a long note.

Blue Ink: I don't think I'm going to pass this class, and this is the last lecture of the semester. But I don't really care about the grade. I just looked forward to passing this book to you every Tuesday and Thursday. I'm going to be at the rooftop of the campus parking garage tonight at midnight. The view of the city is really nice. Come up if you want to. If you don't, I get it, but I'll leave this book here on your desk just in case.

I stared at the page, excitedly waiting for a reply in pencil. But the rest of the page was completely blank.

There was no neat cursive. Pencil never wrote back.

I actually felt my heart drop into my stomach. I sat there holding the book, my mind racing with a million different scenarios. Did Pencil show up to the roof? Did they just tell Blue Ink "yes" in person instead of writing it down? Or did they read it, get scared, and just leave the book sitting on the desk?

The craziest part is that the book ended up in a used bookstore. Which means either they got together, had a great time, and eventually just donated their old college stuff years later... or Pencil never went to the roof, and Blue Ink gave the book away because it hurt too much to look at.

I will literally never know how their story ended, and it drives me crazy. But I kept the book. It’s sitting on my desk right now. Sometimes, when I’m stressing out about my own life, I just flip through the pages to read their little jokes. It reminds me that everyone is a little bit lost, and we're all just trying to connect with someone.

Adhoori kahaniyan hamesha buri nahi hoti, Kabhi kabhi unka adhura rehna hi unhe khoobsurat banata hai.

What kind of ending do you personally think Blue Ink and Pencil had?