



___THE___

SECRET

DIARY

___OF___

LAURA

PALMER

As seen by Jennifer Lynch





Based upon characters created by

David Lynch and Mark Frost

for the Television series, 'Twin Peaks'





Download as PDF







Dear Diary, July 22, 1984

My name is Laura Palmer, and as of just three short minutes ago, I officially turned twelve years old! It is July 22, 1984, and I have had such a good day! You were the last gift I opened and I could hardly wait to come upstairs and start to tell you all about myself and my family. You shall be the one I confide in the most. I promise to tell you everything that happens, everything I feel, everything I desire. And, every single thing I think. There are some things I can't tell anyone. I promise to tell these things to you.

Anyway, when I came down for breakfast this morning, I saw that Mom had hung streamers all through the house, and even Dad put on a party hat and tooted away on a kazoo for a while. I didn't think Donna and I would ever stop laughing!

Oh, Donna is my very best friend in the whole world. Her last name is Hayward, and her father, Dr. Hayward, delivered me twelve years ago today! I can't believe I finally made it. Mom cried at the table because she said before I know it I'll be a grown-up woman. Yeah, sure. It's going to take years for me to even get my period, I just know it. She's crazy if she thinks I'll be a grown-up in no time, especially if she keeps giving me stuffed animals for my birthday!

Today was just the way I wanted it to be, with only Donna and Mom and Dad there. And Jupiter, my cat, of course. For breakfast we had apple pancakes, which are my favorite, with lots of maple syrup and sourdough toast.

Donna gave me the blouse I saw in the window at Horne's Department Store, and I know she bought it with her allowances because she was saving all of them for a long time and wouldn't tell me why. It's the most beautiful blouse you've ever seen! It is white and silky and has tiny embroidered roses all over it, but not so many that it looks bad. It's just perfect. On Donna's birthday, I'm going to get her something extra special too.

My cousin Madeline, Maddy for short, is visiting tomorrow for a whole week. She and Donna and I are going to build a fort in the woods and camp out if Mom will let us. I know Dad will. He likes the woods as much as I do. One night I had a dream that Dad moved us to a house deep in the woods and my bedroom had a big tree outside the window with two songbirds nesting there. I'll be back in a minute, Diary, Dad is calling to me from downstairs. He says he has a surprise! I'll tell you everything when I get back!

Love, Laura





Dear Diary, July 22, 1984, later

You will never ever believe what just happened! I went downstairs and Dad told Mom and I to get in the car and not to ask any questions until we got to where we were going. Of course, Mom asked questions the whole way. I didn't mind because I thought maybe something would slip out of Dad's mouth, but it didn't. I just kept quiet so that I wouldn't lose my surprise. When we pulled up to The Broken Circle Stables, I knew! Daddy bought me a pony! Diary, he is so beautiful, much more beautiful than I could ever have dreamed. His colors are cinnamon red and deep brown, and his eyes are big and sweet. Mom couldn't believe it when she saw it and she started asking Dad how he managed to do it without anyone knowing. Dad said it would ruin the surprise if she knew, and he's right.

Mom nearly had a heart attack when she saw me underneath the pony's legs to find out if it was a boy or a girl. I barely had to look to find out that it was a boy. Like I've never seen one of those before. Mom doesn't know her little girl the way she thinks she does, hmmm?

Back to my pony. I decided his name should be Troy, like the pony in Mrs. Larkin's photo book. Zippy, who works at the stables, said he would make a nameplate for me that says TROY in big letters, and he'll hang it right in front so that everyone will know his name when they see him. Troy is still too young to ride, but in two months I'll be able to get on and just race through the fields! Today I walked him and fed him carrots (Dad brought them with us in the trunk) and a cube of sugar that Zippy gave me. Troy loved ail of it. Before I left him, I whispered in his warm, soft ear that I would see him tomorrow and that I would write all about him, here, in my diary. I can't wait to show him to Donna! I almost forgot, Maddy will see him too!

On the way home from the stables Dad said that Troy and I have the same birthday, because when a pony is given as a gift to someone who will love him, they share everything. So happy birthday to Troy too!

I'm glad I don't know where he came from, because this way, it is almost as if Heaven sent him down just for me.

Anyway, Diary, tomorrow is a big day and tonight I will sleep very well, dreaming of Troy and all of the time we shall spend together. I am the luckiest girl in the world.

Love, Laura

P.S. I hope BOB doesn't come tonight.





Dear Diary, July 23, 1984

It is very late at night and I can't sleep. I have had nightmare after nightmare and have finally chosen to avoid sleeping altogether. I figure Maddy will be tired from her ride out here and will want to take a nap tomorrow anyway, so I can sleep then. Maybe if the sky is light when I sleep, my dreams won't be so dark.

One of them was just awful. I woke up crying, and I was afraid Mom would come in if she heard me, and I just want to be alone right now, and she wouldn't understand that. She always comes in and sings "Waltzing Matilda" to me when I can't sleep, or like tonight when I have bad dreams. It's not that I don't want her to sing to me, it is just that there was this strange man in my dream singing just that song in Mom's voice, and it frightened me so much I could hardly move.

In the dream I was walking through the woods out by the Pearl Lakes, and there was this very strong wind, but only around me. It was hot. The wind. And about twenty feet away from me there was this man with long hair and very large, callused hands. They were very rough and he held them out to me as he sang. His beard didn't blow in the wind because the wind was only around me. The tips of his thumbs were black like coal and he wiggled them around in circles as his hands got closer to me. I kept walking toward him, even though I didn't want to at all because he frightened me so much.

He said, "I have your cat," and Jupiter ran behind him and off into the woods like a little white speck on a piece of black paper. He just kept singing and I tried to tell him I wanted to go home and I wanted Jupiter to come with me, but I couldn't talk. Then he lifted his hands up in the air very, very high, like he was growing bigger and taller every minute, and as his hands went up, I felt the wind around me stop and everything went silent. I thought that he was letting me go because he could read my mind, at least it felt that way. And so when he stopped the wind with his hands like that, I thought he was letting me free, letting me go home.

Then I had to look down because there was this heat between my legs, not nice warm, but hot. It burned me and so I had to spread my legs open so they would cool. So that they would stop burning, so so hot. And they started spreading by themselves like they were going to snap off of my body, and I thought, I'm going to die this way, and how will anyone understand that I tried to keep my legs closed, but they burned and I couldn't. And then the man looked at me and smiled this awful smile, and in Mom's voice he sang, "You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me. . ." And I tried to talk again but I couldn't, and I tried to move but I couldn't do that either, and he said, "Laura, you are home." And I woke up.

Sometimes when I'm dreaming I feel trapped there and so frightened. But now when I look at what I just wrote, it doesn't seem so scary. Maybe I'll write down all of my dreams from now on so that I won't have to be afraid of them.

One night last year I had such an awful dream that the whole next day in school, I couldn't work. Donna thought I was going nuts because every time she said my name or touched my shoulder in class to pass a note, I jumped. I wasn't going nuts, like Nadine Hurley or anything, but I was still feeling like I was in a dream. I don't really remember it, but all I know was in the dream I was in a lot of trouble because I hadn't passed this weird test where you have to help a certain number of people across this river in a boat, and I couldn't do it, because I just wanted to swim or something, and so they sent someone after me, to touch me in bad, mean ways. I don't remember any more, and I guess it's no loss.

I'm so tired of waiting to grow up. Someday it will happen and I'll be the only person who can make me feel bad or good about anything I do.

I'll talk to you tomorrow. I'm getting pretty tired.

Laura





Dear Diary, July 23, 1984

Cousin Maddy will be here any minute. Dad went to pick her up at the station by himself because Mom wouldn't let him wake me. I slept until just fifteen minutes ago. No dreams at all, except Mom says she heard me calling out to her and then I hooted like an owl! I'm so embarrassed. She said she came into my room and I was half asleep but I . . . hooted again, and then she says I giggled and rolled over and went back to sleep. I hope she doesn't tell anyone about this. She always tells people things like that when we have dinner parties with the Haywards or something. It always starts. with, "Laura did the sweetest, most odd thing . . ." And I know it's coming.

Like one night she said, right in front of everyone, that I had sleptwalked into the kitchen one night just before she was going to bed. I took off all my clothes, stuffed them in the stove, and went back to bed. Now every time I go to the stove at the Haywards' when Donna and I help with dinner, Mrs. Hayward makes a joke about whether or not I realize that the stove is a stove and not a washing machine.

Mom had been drinking the night she told that, so I forgave her. But if she tells anyone I hooted, I'll just die. I don't suppose there is ever a time that parents stop being a source of constant embarrassment to their children. Mine are no exception.

Maybe if I could stop doing stupid things in my sleep, she wouldn't have anything to tell people.

More later.

Laura (hoot, hoot)





Dear Diary, July 27, 1984

I have so much to tell you. These words come to you from the inside of a fort that Donna and Maddy and I built. Dad and Mom said it was okay as long as we stayed just out back. We used wood that Ed Hurley gave us, and Dad hammered everything together. Donna says that if a storm came up, it would all be over for us, but I have a feeling it would stand, no matter what happened.

Maddy is so pretty now. She's sixteen years old and I'm so jealous of her life! I wish I were sixteen! She has a boyfriend at home that she already misses, and he called her at the house earlier just to make sure she got here all right. Dad teased her about how cutesy she was on the phone, but Maddy didn't mind. Donna thinks that when she has a steady boyfriend, she'll probably be forty years old and going deaf. I told her she was crazy because boys already like both of us, we're just too smart to go out with them. I wonder what it will be like when someone besides my parents loves me, and if he will call when I travel to make sure that I'm all right.

Anyway, earlier we all went to see Troy at the stables and brushed and fed him. Both Donna and Maddy said they'd never seen such a beautiful pony in their lives. I wonder what I did to deserve him. Donna has been wishing for a pony for years too, and her father never bought her one. I wonder how long Troy will live and if I will cry forever when he dies.

Donna just saw what I wrote about Troy's dying, and she says I think too many sad thoughts, and that if I keep it up, who knows what will happen. Donna doesn't know everything I know. I can't help but think sad thoughts sometimes. Sometimes they are the closest things to my mind.

Mom packed us sandwiches and two thermoses. One filled with milk, ice-cold. The other with hot chocolate. Maddy won't drink more than one cup of the hot chocolate 'cause she says it gives her zits. I don't see a zit on her face anywhere. She started her period three years ago and says it's just a nightmare. It gives you acne and cramps and you're tired and angry all the time you have it. Great. Something else to look forward to. Mom got her period when she was my age, and I only hope that doesn't mean I'll get mine this year too. Now that Maddy has described it to me, I'm not at all interested.

All of us are eating sandwiches and drinking milk, and writing in our diaries. Maddy's is so big and full! Donna's is more full than mine, but I'm going to make you bigger than Maddy's is. I like the idea of keeping my thoughts all in one place, like a brain you can look into. We hung a flashlight from the top of the fort so that the light comes down and we can all see. A little bit of light came from the house windows, but we covered it up because we all agreed that it ruined the feeling of being out in the woods alone. All of the blankets and food already make us feel like we're exactly where we are. In the backyard! Maddy says she brought a pack of cigarettes with her and that later, after Mom and Dad are asleep, if we want to, we can try one. She says they're stale because she's had them for months but hasn't touched them because she's afraid her parents will find out. Maybe I'll try one. Donna says she doesn't want to, and Maddy and I said we wouldn't pressure her because real friends don't do that. But I'll bet you I can make Donna smoke one just by giving her the right look. I just bet you.

More later.

I'm back.

We've been laughing so hard all of our stomachs ache from it. Maddy was describing how she kisses her boyfriend with her tongue, and it made Donna and me crazy. Donna made a face and said she didn't like the idea of tongue-kissing, and I pretended to think the same . . . but honestly, Diary, when I heard how you do it, I got a very strange funny feeling in my stomach. Different from . . . never mind. I got the feeling that I might like tongue-kissing and I'm going to try it with a boy I like as soon as I can. Maddy said she was afraid at first, but she's been doing it for a year now and she loves it. I told both of them about last month when I had a fever and went into my parents' bedroom and saw them naked with Dad on top. I just left the room and Mom came to see me a few minutes later with some aspirin and 7-Up. She never said a word about it. Donna says they were definitely having sex, and I already knew that, but they didn't seem to like it. They just seemed to be moving very slowly and not even really looking at each other.

Maddy thinks it was probably "just a quickie." Ugghh. My parents having sex. What a gross thing. I know that's where I came from but I don't care if I never see that again. I'm promising right now that if and when I ever have sex, it will be a lot more fun than that.

Well, Mom and Dad just came to say good-night to us, and to tell Donna that her parents called and said she didn't have to go to church tomorrow so that she can sleep in with us. We were all glad to hear that.

Dad made us all close our eyes and open our hands, and he stuck a candy bar in each of them and told us not to tell Mom. Then Mom came in and handed me a little bag and said don't tell your father. There were three more candy bars in the bag! Maddy just looked at her candy and sighed. "Zits," was all she could say. But she tore both of them open and we all forced both candy bars into our mouths and tried to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" while our mouths were full. Donna said the chewed candy looked like something Troy would leave for us, and we all had to spit it out.

Maddy told a pretty good story, a scary one, about a family that goes away for the night and comes home to find people hiding in their house waiting to kill them all. There was more to it than that, but I'm not so sure how much I want to remember about it later on. I don't want to feed my dreams. Donna got out of the fort to pee, and Maddy told me that she had been having some bad dreams too. She said she didn't want to talk about them in front of Donna because maybe she wouldn't understand. She says she's been having dreams of me in the woods. Donna came back and Maddy wouldn't say any more. I wonder if Maddy has seen the long-haired man? Or the wind? Maddy writes poems in her diary because she says that they are sometimes more fun to write than just the old boring stuff, and just in case anyone ever saw your diary, they might not understand everything if it was in poems. I'll try that tomorrow.

More later.

Aha! I told you I could get Donna to try a cigarette. Maddy brought them out and lit one of them, then she passed it to me to try. I like blowing smoke out of my mouth. Sort of like a spirit coming out of me, a dancing, flowing, wispy spirit. Like I was a grown-up woman with people all around me, just staring like they wanted to be me. Even Donna said I looked like a mature person when I smoked. I didn't even inhale so I wonder what it would be like if I did.

Donna was next, and before she could say no, I just said, "I'm glad I tried it, and I don't ever have to do it again if I don't want to." So she took it and made a few puffs of smoke in the fort. She looked good smoking too, but she got kind of scared and sucked some smoke in and started coughing really loud, so we put out the cigarette and aired out the fort real quick in case Mom and Dad woke up. I think I'll buy a pack of cigarettes someday and just keep them like Maddy does. I'm not going to get hooked or anything. I'm too careful.

Well, we're going to bed now and all of us are signing off to our diaries. Good night to you. I think you and I shall be wonderful companions.

Love, Laura





Dear Diary, July 29, 1984

Here is a poem.

From the light in my window he can see into me

But I cannot see him until he is close

Breathing, with a smile at my window

He comes to take me

Turn me round and round

Come out and play Come play

Lie still Lie still Lie still.



Little rhymes and little songs

Pieces of the forest in my hair and clothes

Sometimes I see him near me

when I know he can't be there

Sometimes I feel him near me

and I know it is something just to bear.



When I call out

No one can hear me

When I whisper, he thinks the message

Is for him only.

My little voice inside my throat

I always think there must be something

That I've done

Or something I can do

But no one no one comes to help,

He says,

A little girl like you.





Dear Diary, July 30, 1984

Maddy brought a bunch of clothes with her, and she had me try all of them on in front of the mirror. She could tell I was feeling depressed about something . . . I guess. Some of her clothes are very beautiful. I liked the way they made me feel. Especially the short skirt and the high heels with this little fluffy white sweater.

Maddy said I looked like Audrey Horne. She's the daughter of the man, Benjamin Horne, that my father works for. Benjamin is very very very rich. Audrey is a pretty girl but she's quiet and sometimes mean. Her father doesn't pay much attention to her, and that's probably why she acts that way. He has been very attentive to me, however, all of my life. Each time there is a party or a get-together at the Great Northern, Benjamin puts me on his lap or knee and sings to me softly in my ear. Sometimes I feel very bad for Audrey, because when she sees him singing to me, it must make her sad because she often runs from the room and doesn't come back until her mother makes her. Other times I kind of feel good when she runs off. Like I am the center of attention, and that I am more special to him than his own daughter. I know that isn't nice to say, but I'm just being honest.

To be very honest, I think I like the way I looked in Maddy's clothes too. Something stirred inside me like a bubble. The way you feel on a carousel when you're not used to the up and down of it yet. I'll bet if I dressed this way all the time, things would be very different.

Maddy and I took a walk later on, but of course, in our jeans and T-shirts. Twin Peaks doesn't see many high heels and short skirts without banners all around announcing a dance or festival. We walked to Easter Park and sat in the gazebo for a while. Maddy said that her life at home is fine, "except for the sometimes unbelievable nosiness of my parents." I made sure to quote her exactly there because I thought it was so well put. She said that there are a lot of things in life, she thinks, that don't seem right at first, and then you settle into them.

Maybe that's how I should start thinking. Maybe I should be a better person and not think so much all the time about what is happening to me. I hope someday soon I'll be good enough at this to rid myself of all the things that trouble me so. Things I still cannot even describe other than in bits and pieces. If I am a better person, and if I try harder every day, perhaps all of this will work out.

Love, Laura





Someday Growing Up Will Come Easier July 30, 1984, later

Deep inside are woman's hills about to come up

To see the sky

To see the sun and moon

And the tiny stars in the black of a man's hand



Sometimes in the morning

I'll look across myself

See hills and valleys forming

Think of rivers underground.



Outside me

I am blooming

Inside I am dry



If only I could understand

The reason for my crying

If only I could stop this fear

Of dreaming that I'm dying.





Dear Diary, August , 1984

I haven't written for a long time, and for that I am truly sorry. Maddy left three days ago, and I feel very frightened. inside about something I do not understand.

One good thing happened. In the middle of the night last night, I had the most wonderful sensation inside me. Like something warm in my chest, and warm between my legs. My whole body went inside out, it seemed, and I felt like I could just float away. I think I had one of those orgasms in my sleep. It's so awful and so embarrassing to write, but kind of nice at the same time.

Right after it, I had this fantasy that a boy came into my room and put his hand across my nightgown and touched me softly. He whispered nice, gentle things, and then said I had to lie very still or he would leave. Then he pulled me to the end of the bed by my feet, and when my knees were bent over the end of my mattress, he made me close my eyes and I felt him open me up, bigger and bigger, and I had to look to see what was happening, and when I did, he was gone. But I looked at my stomach and I was pregnant. He was inside me, but small like a baby. I wish it hadn't ended like that. I don't know why my brain did that. I liked it better when he was pulling me down gently and taking soft control.

Laura





Dear Diary, August 7, 1984

I spent the afternoon with Troy today, cleaning him, and brushing and feeding him. I was fascinated by how much he seems to understand how I'm feeling. He nuzzled up against me for a long time while I brushed his mane and head, and when I sat down in the comer of his stall, he lowered his head, and I let him breathe all across my neck and face. I wonder if people fall deeply in love with horses the way I love mine, or if I am wrong to be thinking or feeling any of these things.

I wish Donna were here. I really wish Maddy were here. I'm going to call Donna and see if she can come over for a sleepover or something. Maybe I could go there. That might even be better. Sometimes my bedroom is the best place in the world, and other times it is like a place that closes in and suffocates me.

I wonder if it's like that when you die . . . suffocating. Or if it's like they say it is when you're in church. That you float up and up until Jesus sees you and takes your hand. I'm not sure I want to be near Jesus when I die. I might make a mistake, even just a small one, and upset him. I don't know enough about him to know what might make him mad. Sure, the Bible says he's forgiving and has died for my sins and loves everyone no matter their faults . . . but people say I am the perfect daughter, the happiest girl in the world, and one without any troubles. And that is not true at all. So how will I know if Jesus is really like me? Scared and bad sometimes even though most people might not know how and when? I'll probably be a gift to Satan if I am not careful. Sometimes when I have to see Bob, I think I am with Satan anyway, and that I'll never make it out of the woods in time to be Laura, good and true and pure, ever again.

Sometimes I think that life would be so much easier if we didn't have to think about being boys or girls or men or women or old or young, fat or thin . . . if we could all just be certain we were the same. We might be bored, but the danger of life and of living would be gone. . . .

I'll be back after I call Donna.

Donna said she wishes we could do something together tonight, but her family is having "family night" tonight. I guess it's just me and you, Diary. Maybe we can go out to the woods soon and smoke one of the cigarettes Maddy left for me. There are four of them, and I hid them carefully in the bedpost. That's where I hide notes from school I don't want Mom to find when she's in here cleaning/snooping - you know, mom stuff. I love her, but she doesn't always understand what I try to tell her. She'd probably have a heart attack if she knew all of the things that go on in my head. Anyway, the knob comes off and there is a hole there. Dad would call it a "cavity." It is about four inches deep and it is the perfect hiding place. You can't even tell the knob comes off as long as there is a purse strap or sweater over the post.

So maybe we can go out, just you and 1, with a flashlight and a cigarette and just talk to each other. I know you, more than even Donna, can keep a secret. I could never tell Mom about the sexy stuff I think about. I'm afraid that if I let it come out of my mouth that God will hear, or that someone will know how bad I am, and they'll say . . . Nobody else ever thinks things like that!

I'll bet they don't. I'll bet I'll never get the man I want, because anytime we try to kiss or fool around, he'll think I'm a crazy person who is sick and weird. I hope I'm not. I would be so awfully sad if that were true. How could I stop thinking the way that I do? I can't stop my mind from wanting to think things like that. The thoughts that make my body warm, and my chest go up and down, filling with air and letting go, the way they do in books and movies, but still different, because they never talk about the fantasies I have.

I'm going to go downstairs for dinner now. I wish I could fit you in the bedpost too. For now I will tape you to the wall behind my bulletin board. I hope you won't fall!

More later, Laura





Well, Diary, August 11, 1984

Here we are. About a mile from home, just before dark. The summer months seem to make the woods less dangerous until later at night. It is warm out, and you and I are sitting together leaning at the base of a great tree. A Douglas fir. Donna's and my favorite. When I look up, it is like the tree is cradling me.

I think I'll smoke that cigarette. I brought a soda just so I could put the ashes and the butt in the can so as not to set the whole town of T.P. on fire. We call Twin Peaks T.P. in school sometimes. The world wipes its butt with T.P. Bobby Briggs says that the most. Then he pulls all the girls' hair and makes burping noises in our faces. He likes us all, of course. I was in the Double R. one day after school and he came in just after me and tugged on my hair super hard.

Norma winked at me and asked if we had set the date for the wedding yet. She's off her rocker if she thinks I go near him. Any boy I go near won't be pulling on my hair like that. . . . I think he'd pull on my hair the way they do in my fantasies. With their whole hand, slowly making a fist at the back of my head, and pulling me close for a tongue kiss.

I wonder if all penises look the way Dad's does. I can still see Mom trying to cover it with the sheet that night. It sort of reminded me of something raw. Something that might be okay in a while, or was okay a while ago, before someone pulled all of the skin off it and got it looking all pink and weird. Maybe I'll see a nicer one someday. God, I hope I do. I won't lie there like Mom did. Just like a fish on the dock, trying to learn how to breathe out of water. Little tiny huffs and puffs, but nothing else. If I can find the right man, maybe I'll be comfortable enough to act just the way I think girls should when they are with someone. Half in control and half . . . I don't know the word. Maybe I'm getting too nasty. I would just die if anyone saw what I've written.

The owls have started hooting. One of them is just above me in the tree. . . . Something about him is strange. I know it is a boy owl, and I feel like he's watching me. Each time I look up at him his head moves like he is quickly turning away from me. I wonder if he knows what I've been writing. God, I had better start being a very good girl. Right away. Perhaps he is a bird like in that story I read. This big bird could swoop down and rest on someone's shoulder, acting very sweet, but would then read the person's mind. If the person was thinking bad thoughts, the bird would peck away at the person's eyes and ears so that there would only be questions of sound and sight in the person's head, instead of bad and nasty thoughts.

I dream of flying sometimes. I wonder if birds dream of going to school or to work sometimes. Having suits and dresses instead of the feathers we dream of. I would fly right over Twin Peaks and out over the land beyond it. I'd never come back if I didn't have to.

I'll write a poem, then head back home.

Inside me there is something

No one knows about

Like a secret

Sometimes it takes over

And I drift back

Deep into darkness.

This secret tells me

I will never grow older

Never laugh with friends

Never be who I should if I ever reveal

Its name.



I cannot tell if it is real

Or if I dream of it

For when it touches me

I drift off

No tears come

No screams

I am wrapped up

In a nightmare of hands

And of fingers

And of small tiny voices in the woods.

So wrong

So beautiful

So bad

So Laura.



I have to go home. Now. It is too dark. This is not a nice place to me right now.

Laura





Dear Diary, August 16, 1984

Never before in my life have I been so confused. It is five-thirty exactly in the morning, and I can barely hold this pen I am shaking so much. I have been in the woods again. Lost. But have been led. I think I am a very bad person. Tomorrow I will start a new way of living. I will not think any more bad thoughts. I will not think any more about sex. Maybe he will stop coming if I try harder to be good. Maybe I could be like Donna. She is a good person. I am bad.

Laura

P.S. I promise, I promise, I promise to be good!





Dear Diary, August 31, 1984

I have not written to you for ages because I have been trying so hard to be happy and good and around people all the time so that I am never alone to think about the wrong things. Today I must write to You, though, to tell you of the news.

I got my period. It is not at all what I thought it would be. School starts next week and now this. I was getting out of bed this morning and saw the blood. I called for Mom, and she of course made this enormous deal out of the whole thing. She called Dad when I had told her not to tell anyone. And now everyone probably knows up at the Great Northern. All I wanted was some damn pads or something, and she has to go into all of this stuff about how I am now a woman and everything. Okay. Okay. So it is kind of special. But this can only make things worse if I am not careful. I'm in bed now with cramps.

Mom moved the television into my room, which was nice, and I have a heating pad on my belly and tons of aspirin on my nightstand. Television doesn't interest me much, so I am left once again with strange thoughts of life and of . . . other things. I guess what is coming from me was to be the life source of some other being. I am glad there is no one inside me right now. At least not a child.

Sometimes I think there is someone inside me, but it is another, stranger part of me. Sometimes I see her in the mirror. I don't know that I ever want to have children of my own. Something happens to parents, or people who become parents. I think they forget they were ever children themselves and that things might embarrass or upset their kids sometimes, but they have just forgotten or decided to ignore that. Too many bad things happen to me sometimes late at night, so I probably would not be such a good mother. This makes me sad inside.

I am glad of one thing. Jupiter is beside me in bed, and he is purring away softly. Like you, he would never criticize me.

Laura





Dear Diary, September 1, 1984

My breasts ache, which is almost silly because they're so tiny. I'll admit they are bigger than they were last week, and certainly nicer looking. Always hard at the little pink tips. But God they hurt.

Mom came in earlier and we actually had a nice talk. I told her I wished she hadn't told Dad about my period, and she apologized but said she only did it because she knew how proud he would be of his little girl's becoming a woman. She changed the water in my heating pad and rubbed my stomach for a long time. We didn't need to say anything to each other for a long while, and still I felt like we were talking.

She crawled into bed with me for about an hour after that and let me fall asleep on her shoulder. We shared a soda when I woke up, and for the first time in a long while, I felt like we were really close.

I hope I can sleep through the night tonight.

Love, Laura





Dear Diary, September 9, 1984

I have discovered something about myself. Do you remember the night I told you I woke up with that wonderful feeling? Well! There is a special place on my body that lets me feel that as often as I like. A warm, wonderful place where everything else melts away and I am free to just feel good. My little secret red button. This is all mine. Finally something that will take me away along with my fantasies. I can do it in my bed, very softly with my fingertip, which is so sweet. I can do it in the bathtub with the water as it pours out of the faucet. (I never knew a bath could be so enjoyable!) Or in the shower, with a small stream of water coming from above. I move and jump and sometimes have to grab a pillow and put it over my head so that it is dark and no one can hear me making little noises. It is, after all, a secret, and whether this is right or wrong, I feel very good when it happens and no one need ever know, except you, dear Diary.

It has been quite a week with my period coming and all, and now this sweet-as-honey discovery. Now I am beginning to feel like a woman, and someday very soon, perhaps I will share this with someone special.

Good night! Good night! Good night!

Laura

P.S. I hope in my heart that I am not doing something that is wrong by touching myself. I hope this is something all girls do, and that I won't be punished for it later.





To the person invading my privacy: September 15, 1984

I cannot believe the distrust I feel in my family and friends. I know for a fact that my diary was taken and read by someone, maybe several someones. I will not be writing any more in this diary for a long time, if ever. You have ruined my trust and my feeling of security. I hate you for that, whoever you are!

On these pages I have written things sometimes too scary or too embarrassing even to read again myself. . . . I trust that these pages are turned only by me, only when I wish. Many things are hurting and confusing me. I need my private pages, in order to see my mind outside me, push it away.

Please stay away from this diary.

I mean it.

Laura





Dear Diary, October 3, 1985

I have decided, over twelve months later, to begin speaking to you again. I have found a hiding place I will not speak of, in case you are found outside it and someone nosy wishes to know of its whereabouts.

I know it was not your fault someone found you and decided to pry, but it has taken me a long time to feel safe enough to write in your pages again. Many, many things have happened since you last heard from me, and many of these things have proven that my thoughts on the world's being mostly a cruel and sad place are true and have been confirmed as such.

I trust no one, and only rarely myself. I struggle most mornings, afternoons, and evenings with what is right and what is wrong. I do not understand if I am being punished for something I have done wrong, something I don't remember, or if this happens to everyone, and I am just too stupid to understand it.

First of all, I found out that Dad did not give Troy to me. Benjamin Horne did. The details are not important, but let's just say I overheard Audrey arguing with her dad about it, when I was up at the Great Northern visiting Johnny. Johnny is Audrey's brother, Benjamin's other child. Johnny is slow. He is older than I am, but has the mentality of a young child. That's what the doctors say at least.

Sometimes I think he's just chosen to keep quiet because it is so much more interesting sometimes to just listen to people instead of talking to them. He never speaks except to say "Yes" or "Indian." He loves Indians. He wears a headdress constantly. One made of beautifully colored feathers and died strips of leather. In his eyes the world is a strange mix of happiness and pain, and I think I understand Johnny more than I do a lot of other people. Perhaps I could find a way to spend more time with him. He is so often left alone.

I am glad that Troy is my pony, and I love riding him, walking with him, and just watching him graze. But now I feel awkward about Dad. Like he is less of an honest man for claiming that Troy was a gift from him. Maybe Benjamin wanted it that way, I don't know. But no matter what, I am somehow more intrigued by Benjamin now and feel like I owe him more than Dad. Sometimes I think that I would rather not have gotten a pony of my own at all, because that way I wouldn't have lost any respect for Dad, and Benjamin would just have been Benjamin. Even worse, Audrey and I will probably never ever get along now. I am a little sick inside that I am the one who caused this. Also it gives me a feeling of power. Why do these things happen to me?



You know, I think out of all of the men I know in the world, Dr. Hayward has been the most loving to me. He is unselfish, kind, and always shows me a gentle smile of inspiration or forgiveness - or anything that somehow always perfectly fills the gap I feel inside me. Thirteen years ago, he brought me into the world and held tight to my small body, for just a moment. In daydreams, I imagine that moment to be one of the warmest there ever was in my life. I love him for holding me, that frightened young child fresh to the air and light, and for making me believe, without even a word, that he would hold me again if I ever needed him to.

He reminds me of someone I wouldn't mind seeing every day of my life. A grandfather sweetness, inside a father's helping hand.



I'll be back after dinner. There is plenty of more news.

Love, Laura





Dear Diary, October 3, 1985, later

Dinner was good tonight. One of my favorite meals, potato pancakes with creamed-corn topping and vegetables on the side. I'll have to start changing the way I eat soon, or run the risk of blowing up like a balloon. Mom made it special for me tonight because she knows I'm still upset about Jupiter. She and Dad ate chicken instead.

Jupiter is the other news. Usually he'll go out back and play in the yard area. It isn't fenced in, but he never wandered. I guess he was too smart to leave a home that loved him so much and fed him so well. Even though I didn't write to you often of him, he was one of the most special things in the world to me, always sweet and gentle. Always loved me no matter what I looked like or what I had done wrong or right for the day.

Often, on nights that I could not sleep, the two of us would play downstairs with a ball of string, to only the light of the tiny wall lamp. We would enjoy ice cream in the kitchen afterward. He was a true vanilla fan. It would be dark in the house, and the two of us prowled together until sleep found us, hours after we had given up on getting any at all. I still have a photo Dad took of Jupiter and me on the living room couch after one of these nights. We hadn't made it back upstairs to sleep and had fallen asleep on the couch instead.

I gave the photo of Jupiter to Sheriff Truman so that he could post it in the station. I hope they find whoever hit Jupiter. I know it was probably an accident, because a few minutes before it happened, he had found a small mouse or something. . . . I hadn't paid much attention, but he raced off with it and was hit out on the road. Mom heard the noise and called for me to stay where I was until she knew what had happened. But sometimes Mom and I think the same thoughts, have the same dreams, and she knows better than to think I'd stay in my room when I knew. So I didn't listen and went out to see him, still breathing for a few moments afterward, and bleeding from his eyes and tummy.

I can't believe someone could hit a cat like that, right in the middle of the day, and not tell someone. Not think to stop and come to the closest house and report what had happened. Mom heard the car screech, and Dad says he wishes he had been home because he might have been able to tell what kind of car it was that hit him, just by the sound. I doubt it, but it was a nice thought.

He's buried outside now. A good friend gone, when I so cherish the few I have. I wish something else would have died instead of Jupiter.

To be honest with you, as I always am, many people in Twin Peaks like me. Lots know my name, and especially at school I feel quite popular. The only problem is that I don't really know any of these people the way they think they know me. And I think I am safe in saying, they don't know me at all. Donna knows the most.

But still I am afraid to tell her of my fantasies and my nightmares, because sometimes she is good at understanding, and other times she just giggles, and I don't have the nerve to ask why things like that are funny to her. So I feel badly again and shut up about it for a long time. I love Donna very much, but sometimes I worry that she wouldn't be around me at all if she knew what my insides were like. Black and dark, and soaked with dreams of big, big men and different ways they might hold me and take me into their control. A fairy princess who thinks she has been rescued from the tower, but finds that the man who takes her away is not there to save her, but instead to go inside her, deep. To ride her as if she were an animal, to tease her and make her close her eyes, and listen as he tells her all that he does. Step by step. I hope that is not a bad thing to think.

Love, Laura





Dear Diary, October 12, 1985

I tried a marijuana cigarette the other night. Donna and I had a sleepover at her place, but her parents went out for the night with mine to the Great Northern for a party Benjamin was throwing. Donna and I didn't really want to go, and I especially didn't because of Audrey. I talked Donna into riding our bikes up to the Book House to meet some new people. It took me forever to convince her I wouldn't tell anyone, and that we would be back before our parents. Finally she agreed because both of us have been terribly bored with all the same faces around all the time.

We were barely there a half hour before these guys, Josh and Tim, and one other one, but I can't remember his name, came up to us. I was smoking a cigarette that I stole from the reception desk at the Great Northern one day when I brought Johnny an Indian storybook.

They thought we were older because one of us was smoking. So Josh came up with Tim and the other guy. They said they were from Canada, and there was no doubt about that because they couldn't stop saying "ay." "Want a better cigarette, ay?" Tim liked Donna right away, which freaked her out a little because all three of them were like twenty years old. None of them rocked my boat. They all looked like nice guys. I felt pretty safe, but not excited . . . you know what I mean?

Anyway, I said I wanted to try a better cigarette, and Donna and I followed them out to the back of the Book House to do it. Donna made up this elaborate story about how we were just visiting Twin Peaks for the night, and that we had to meet our tour bus in less than an hour. She said we were on a tour called Round About the Woods. I guess they believed her because they hurried up and lit this thing right up. Josh said we might not feel it the first time, but Donna and I proved him wrong. He said we had to "Hold it in, ay?" And we did . . . six times! Diary, it was amazing. Talk about feeling relaxed and warm and a little bit . . . sexy.

I called Donna "Trisha," and she called me "Bernice"! (Just in case they ever came back and asked for us . . . for any reason. We didn't want anyone to know.) So, we were absolutely laughing harder than I ever have before. Every single thing I saw was hysterical. Everything was blurred and kinda wavy, like I was looking at the world through the bottom of an empty water glass. There was a warm, summer wind, and the trees smelled so good.

Tim brought us a cup of coffee with chocolate mixed in, and all five of us sat and talked about all sorts of things, like if maybe our universe was just a tiny little speck of lint that a huge giant hadn't noticed on his sweater, and someday soon, who knows if this great giant would just brush us off, or toss us into a washer and drown us all to death. Donna said maybe our idea of hundreds of years is only a split second to this giant, and soon something would have to happen, because how long can someone keep a sweater on?

We all liked the idea that there might be other little universes or "balls of lint" on this sweater, and we thought we'd someday like to meet a few people from these other places, as long as they were nice to us. We could hear a little bit of music coming out of the Road House, and I just had to get up and dance a little. I felt better than I had in ages, just floating in the night air and feeling warm inside.

Donna even danced with me for a few minutes until she realized we had to go meet . . . OUR TOUR BUS! We had to lie and say we rented the bikes from the lost-and-found at the sheriff's station, but I don't think the guys bought that story at all. They were nice not to say anything to us about it, if they did know. Maybe it added excitement to their night, too. Then again, maybe not, because they're older and have probably had much more exciting nights than that.

When we were riding home, we kept having to stop because we had such giggles. Then I got the most outrageous craving for cookies and milk, like I'd die if I didn't have any, and Donna agreed a hundred percent that we had to have something sweet. She said there was pie at her house, but that didn't seem right. So we emptied our pockets and went into the Cash and Carry for treats. We bought so much junk that we had to walk our bikes back to Donna's house so that we could each hold a bag. All the way home we were paranoid just like the guys said we would be because our eyes were all bloodshot and we wanted to get home before our parents did.

We totally lucked out because just when we got into the house, Dr. Hayward called and said they were going to be a bit longer because Benjamin was showing slides or something. Thank God! We ran upstairs and put eye drops in our eyes, then turned on the stereo and ate and danced and laughed, and we were totally sound asleep when everyone got back.

I know drugs are bad, but I'm beginning to get the feeling I like being that way. Kind of bad.

More tomorrow, Laura





Dear Diary, October 20, 1985

It is a little over one week later and I have more news. Sorry I haven't written, but it has really been kind of crazy around here . . . well, here inside me, at least. Home is just the same. Irritating more than anything else. God, I feel so trapped sometimes, like I have to wear this permanent grin on my face or else everyone freaks out on me.

I wonder if pain, the kind that doesn't just happen when your cat is killed, or when an aunt dies, but the kind that you have to live with . . . can it ever be a friend? Pain as a shadow or companion. I wonder if that's possible. . . .

Anyway, the news is strange. I'm a little nervous about how much I've enjoyed the danger of it all, but I'll tell you everything and get it off my chest. Maybe it will be like my dreams, less difficult to understand if I see it on paper. Here goes.

Last Friday night, the day before yesterday, Donna and I went back to the Book House at about four in the afternoon. I guess we went back hoping Josh and Tim and their friend would be there again, and we could get high on another funny cigarette. We got sort of dressed up, not too dressy or crazy because we do know everyone in town practically and we didn't want it to get back to our parents. But we had on skirts that were pretty short and a little tighter than most people would approve of, except boys, of course, and we played with some makeup that Donna's mom, Mrs. Hayward, had given her as an Easter present because Donna wanted to try some and her mom wanted her to have her own.

Anyway, again! We got to the Book House and no one except Big Jake Morrissey was there. He's the guy who runs the place. I guess I should tell you about it so you can imagine where I was. It is a coffee house, mostly for guys - girls are allowed - but it's more like a guys' hangout. There are books everywhere on the tables and shelves, which linked all three walls, all the way to the back. It smells like cigarettes, after-shave, and coffee. There's always coffee brewing. And this time I was inside, I noticed a picture of the man perfect for my fantasies! I didn't say anything, of course, but he's just perfect. Rough and tough, but has puppy-dog eyes and soft skin.

The picture is of him in jeans and a leather jacket, holding a book and sitting on his motorcycle, reading. I am in love! So we were the only ones in the place, and Jake gave us coffee and said that people would be coming in soon, and it might be wise if we left when they started to come in, especially dressed like we were. He was half joking, half serious when he asked us, "Are you girls looking for trouble of a boy nature?"

Donna turned all red, and I just told him what I would tell Mom or Dad if they ever found out. "We're just playing around and pretending. It's just for fun, not for trouble." He understood, or "bought it," rather, and after we finished our coffee we left. On the way out though, I told Jake that about a week ago, three really nice Canadian boys had been there and had helped Donna and I fix our flat tires after we had run over the broken beer-bottle glass that's always out in front of the Road House. I told him that if he saw them - Josh, Tim, and another guy with blond hair - that he should tell them we wanted to thank them with a cup of coffee, or something. Then I told him we'd probably be out back, just talking, if they showed up. Jake said he'd relay the message if they came in.

You guessed it! They showed up. Jake must have told them what I said because they came out laughing and giving us a hard time for lying to them before. Donna was pretty quick and smart to say that "we wanted to make sure that you guys were cool before we told you who we were or anything."

They all said we looked really nice, and I found out the third guy's name was Rick, and all of them are twenty-two! We said our age wasn't important and wouldn't stop any of us from having fun as long as we were home by ten. If it was going to be later, we would have to call. Josh said he had some alcohol, and if there was a place we knew of to build a small fire or something out in the woods, we could all go out there and have a little party. By this time it was about five-thirty or so.

They were in a truck this time instead of on bikes, and so Donna and I got in the open back and told them to cross Lucky Highway 21 and head into the woods behind Low Town. We both figured it would be safer there, and if anything happened, I could just say that I had gotten lost with Donna, that we had taken a walk or something and lost track of where we were. It would be okay, I figured, no matter what. These guys seemed nice enough, so we trusted them a second time.

We got to a place where there was a stream and hardly any needles on the ground, so the fire would be a safe idea. Tim and Rick looked for kindling while Josh opened up this bottle of . . . I guess it was gin that he had. The only alcohol Donna and I had ever had was a glass of champagne - one glass, at Dr. Hayward's birthday party last year. This was brand-new to both of us. Donna seemed excited, but nervous, too. I was just plain excited and was the first to drink a sip of it after Josh. We just passed it around . . . until it was empty.

Donna and I were really messed up almost instantly. Rick kept saying, "They're toasted, man."

Both Donna and I had to pee, so we went away from the fire about thirty feet and crouched down behind a tree. For a moment there, we were both scared. Real scared. We didn't know how to act, and both of us kept thinking we were saying stupid things or sounding too young or something.

When I stood up, my head got light. I thought to myself, "It's too late now, you're already drunk, you better just enjoy it, and don't forget to keep watching the time!" Donna agreed that we had just better go with the flow and stick close together in case we got scared again.

Tim turned on the truck stereo, and I asked if it would be stupid if I danced around for a while, 'cause I liked the song. All three said it was okay, and Donna just sat there staring at the fire for a while. Tim went and sat really close to her and whispered something in her ear. Her eyes got real big and she kinda laughed and then relaxed. I guess he made her feel good or pretty or something. I'll have to remember to ask her what he whispered to her.

So I was dancing, and Josh and Rick couldn't stop watching me . . . and I was feeling pretty comfortable, or confident, or both, but I just went a little bit crazy and got into a sexier dance. One that I practiced alone in my room in front of the mirror. I moved my hips around in circles and let my arms move slow, and sometimes I touched my hips like it felt good to me to touch myself.

Dam! Mom's calling me downstairs to do the dishes. I'll be right back. There's lot's more!

Love, Laura

Diary, I'm back. Sorry I had to stop.

So I was dancing, and Donna saw what I was doing and looked at me like I was crazy. She looked around for a minute and I guess she wanted to be a part of the attention, too, or something because she looked at her watch and said, "Let's go skinny-dipping!"

That right there should tell you how drunk Donna was. Everybody got quiet and just listened to the music for a second, then said, "Yeah, okay."

So Donna and I took off our clothes . . . all of them. We almost left our panties on, but we were afraid they would think we were stupid little girls. They were all in the stream sitting against the rocks when we came back to the fire. The stream is probably three and a half feet deep at its deepest place. So they were sitting there and we set our clothes down and stood by the fire for a minute. When we moved toward the water, Josh said, "Stop. There. Just for a minute."

So we did. And after a minute of us just waiting, he said to Tim and Rick, "Have you ever in your life seen such a beautiful sight as these two girls?" They both made noises like they liked it, too. Donna and I kind of moved a little when we realized they were staring at us like that . . . that close, you know? Tim said, "Look at the way the fire makes shadows on their skin." Donna and I looked at each other, then looked back toward them. They were hard to see because we were so close to the light and they were in the dark in the stream. Rick just said, "Please, please come into the water with us." We did.

It was so amazing. The way they felt when we got close under the water, soft and slippery, was like I was dreaming. I'd never felt anything so nice and so close to what I'd fantasized about. All of them had . . . hard . . . hard . . . I guess I'll call them cocks, because "penis" sounds like a word you only read in Sex Ed books. So they were all hard.

And I said (mainly because I knew Donna was more freaked out than I was by all of this), I said, "Let's make tonight a play night . . . we can all go home with that nice feeling of wishing more had happened . . . ? Donna and I are not going to go all the way with you."

When it came out of my mouth, I couldn't believe it for a second. Who was talking? What was I, Laura Palmer - thirteen years old - doing out here in the woods like this with three naked boys nine years older than I am?

They all said okay, but Josh said, "Can we at least touch you, and maybe get a kiss?" Donna looked at me the same way she did a year ago when Maddy was talking about kissing. I told them I didn't mind, but if Donna did, they couldn't force her. Something tells me now, when I look back, that this was probably the most excited these guys had been, ever. I don't think they would have done anything bad even if we had asked for it, because they were just as scared. It was such a personal and strange night. It was like the woods got us all acting crazy, like the trees and the fact that it had gotten dark made us forget anything else existed. It was eight-thirty and we only had about an hour until we would have to go back home.

I kneeled down in the stream in front of Josh and got my hair wet. Then, I looked at him and I said, "You can touch them if you want to. It's okay." So he was real slow, and he put his hands on my breasts, which have gotten to be a good size, I think, for my age, and he shook for a second, like he was amazed. I felt like I was on top of the world. I was making this twenty-two-year-old boy go crazy inside! He touched them, then touched just my nipples, and I had a hard time not saying how good that felt, so I laughed.

Tim started touching Donna's breasts, and she just watched him silently as he did it. Rick didn't have anyone to be with so I said, "You can touch me, too . . . but remember, we all made a deal . . . right?" He nodded and crawled in the water up to me and put his mouth on my nipple. I had to close my eyes so that they wouldn't come out of my head completely. It felt so incredible! I couldn't help but think of the guy in the photo in the Book House, and even if this sounds weird, I'm going to say it.

I had the sexiest thought that he was nursing on me. Like inside me was all of the warmth and nourishment he would ever need . . . this older boy, needing me. I felt strong and almost like I was making a fantasy for them. Josh put his mouth on my other nipple, and Tim and Donna moved away from us a little in the water and just started talking. Then Donna got out with Tim and got dressed and just sat by the fire . . . talking more. I didn't care, or couldn't care. I wasn't going to stop this until I had to, it felt too good to spoil it.

I whispered to Josh and Rick that I had a wish that one of them would kiss me, real soft and slow . . . and that maybe the other could keep touching me the way they were doing already. Rick said Josh could kiss me, as long as he got one, too, later, or whatever.

So Josh leaned to me and got real close, and just before he was going to kiss me he said, real quiet - "Softly, right?" And I told him yes. And he said, "Soft and slow. . . ." And he opened his mouth, and I opened mine, and our tongues started to move together like we were wanting more and more . . . but it wasn't fast, it was slow . . . so nice and slow. And Rick was sucking on my nipples and making noises like he was hungry and getting fed, or like he was eating an ice cream that was delicious. No matter what he was feeling, believe me, I felt ten times better than he sounded.

I went into a dream for I don't know how long while this was happening, and it was like nothing bad ever happened to me ever. Everything disappeared and I suddenly didn't care if I never saw Donna, Mom, Dad, anyone . . . ever again. This warm feeling of being needed, wanted, and special, like I was a treasure . . . was all I wanted to feel, forever. I had no age, and there was no time or schoolwork or troubles or chores or anything to cloud my mind or bring me back to little Laura. I was ageless, and I was everything these two boys wanted. I was something from their dreams!

Rick began to kiss me next, and he was just as gentle and sweet, but had a different way of kissing. He moved his tongue and lips differently, and he would stop and bite very softly sometimes on my lips, like a tease.

I know I'm going on and on, Diary, but I have to tell someone, and Donna, even though she was there, really wasn't there the way I was. She wasn't ready for it or for the way it would make her feel. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but Donna is still more interested in being good . . . all the way through. Me, I think that I am being good, as much as I can, and maybe more than most people, but I've needed to forget things for a long time now and this was an incredible solution.

Nothing more than that happened in the stream, except I did touch both of them between the legs. I was soft to them the way they were with me, and I thought it was wonderful that they were so hard, and that their hardness floated in the water . . . something I could only feel and not see. Just the way I wanted it. I was able to want more, but able to enjoy what I had.

Tim and Donna exchanged phone numbers while I was getting dressed, and the only thing I was at all worried about was that I was really drunk and starting to feel a little sick to my stomach. I guess Donna was, too, because Tim said, "Maybe we should help them throw up or something, so that it doesn't happen when they get home. . . . Donna, here, is worried, you know, about how she would explain it to her parents."

I couldn't believe how cool these guys were being to us. They didn't crack one joke or make us feel like we were nothings next to them. I know we aren't, but it was nice, especially in the state we were in, not to hear anything like that. Rick said there was chewing gum in the truck's glove compartment, and if we wanted some, we could have it. I tried to picture going home the way I was, tipsy and all dazed. Throwing up didn't sound like fun, but Tim suggested it might help sober us up, so Donna and I went off and stuck our fingers down our throats. Up it came. It was awful, but I did feel better, and Donna said it was easier for her to walk after that. I said we should probably get going, and that if they didn't mind, maybe they could drop us like a block from home, either house? I thought the truck ride, and the fresh air, would help, too.

Hang on a second, Diary - Mom wants a kiss good-night.



Okay, I'm back. Thank God she didn't see you.

When the boys dropped us off, we hopped out of the back, and Tim kissed Donna's hand really romantically, and Rick and Josh said they really enjoyed meeting her. I went to the driver's window, where Josh was, and I was about to thank him . . . and I guess just say whatever came out ; . . but he stopped me. (A chill ran down my back.) He put his finger over my lips and said, "I don't think I'll ever forget you, Laura." And he smiled and Rick said, "Thanks for trusting us the way you did." They drove off, and Donna and I almost cried.

We were a block from Donna's house and we each put an extra piece of gum in our mouths and rehearsed our story. We were in the woods, just talking. We were making up stories and talking about dreams we had, and . . . the future.

Donna said she didn't feel like she was lying because that's what she and Tim did do. They kissed a couple of times, and Donna admitted, right before we walked into her house, that she really liked it.

I decided we shouldn't explain anything we did while we were out, unless someone asked. I've seen people overexplain things and it makes it seem like they're lying or hiding something, which we would be.

Donna's parents were asleep on the couch when we walked in, and we snuck past them and up to Donna's room. We brushed our teeth and fixed our hair a little, and before we went downstairs, we hugged each other. We didn't say a word. We just hugged. I think it was our way of saying that it was our secret, and that we were still friends, and that we were okay. We were home, and we were okay.

Donna woke her dad up and said we'd been waiting to wake him because he looked so peaceful, sleeping there leaning his head on Mrs. Hayward's shoulder. He offered to drive me home, so I called Mom, and she said she hadn't even realized the time because she was reading a really good book. She said Dad was already in bed. She said she'd wait up for me.

I don't feel guilty about what happened, but I think that's only because no one was worried, and the boys were so nice. I just can't help but get sad inside when I realize that it's over. That night is gone, and I'm Laura again. Thirteen years old, and the apple of my daddy's eye. Not with anger, but with anticipation, I look forward to being older, and on my own, with no one but me to answer to.

God bless Mom and Dad, Troy, Jupiter - rest his soul - and the boys. Josh, Tim, and Rick. Thank you, God, for giving me those few hours of . . . BLISS.

More soon, L

P.S. I am feeling like each time I think about tonight I change it a little bit. The boys get a little bit more rough with me each time. I get more seductive, and I make them tell me how they feel when they touch me. I make them tell me what it's like for them. I don't know why I changed it . . . I loved it the way it was, but when I make it again in my head, I make them do things a little nastier. I like that feeling, I like that they feel more than I do.





Dear Diary, November 10, 1985

Last night, for the first time in ages, I slept all the way through the night. When I woke up, I couldn't even remember the dreams I had had, or if I even had any. I know they say everyone dreams all the time, but usually I remember them. Anyway, I was brushing Troy at the stables, and all of a sudden I got this image in my head of an address: 1400 River Road, 1400 River Road. I had dreamed it. I suddenly felt like I had to be there. I had to find this place and see what it was. I decided I would call Mom from the stables and tell her I was going for a ride with Troy, and I'd be back soon.

I had a little bit of an idea of where 1400 River Road was, but I just checked it with Zippy to make sure. He said it wasn't that far away, but there wasn't much there. I told him I wanted to ride out with Troy somewhere I hadn't been before. I didn't want to tell him I'd dreamed about this address and had to find out if it even existed. I was afraid he'd look at me funny, and besides, I wasn't even sure why I felt so drawn to it. I guess with all that had been happening, I felt like I should just keep quiet about it. Keep it secret, like so many other things. Zippy said to be sure to make a left when the dirt road forks off, because otherwise I would end up on a paved road, and that would be bad for Troy's hooves and shoes. I promised, and off we went.

All sorts of thoughts went through my head, and I even cried a little because I started to think about Josh and Tim and Rick, and how I would probably never see them again. I thought about how Donna hadn't called me today yet, and I was worried she was thinking I was dirty or bad or something, and I felt a very deep need to talk to her. I hope she doesn't stop liking me.

I don't know what I would do if that happened. So, I kept seeing this address in my head, each time I finished a thought, no matter what it was, and finally I found myself in front of this very old, abandoned gas station. I got off Troy and tied him up at the frame that was still there. The frame that goes around the top of the pumps. The one with the signs telling you which gas is which. Grass was growing there, and I just let him graze so I could look around.

When I walked around Troy, so that I was completely facing the station, I saw the Log Lady standing very quiet with her log, right underneath the piece of wood that said 1400 River Road. She smiled at me, and I realized I had seen her face in my dream. We didn't say anything to each other for a long time. We just stared, smiling. I wasn't uncomfortable, but I was pretty curious about what I was there for, and just as I was thinking this, she spoke to me.

She said, "I know you're feeling curious about this place and about me."

I nodded.

"A dream told me I was supposed to meet you here, so that we could spend some time," she said.

My stomach did a flip and my mouth dropped open.

"I dream like other people sometimes," she said calmly. "It just happens."

I never realized that Margaret, the Log Lady, was so nice. We sat together on the grass out in the front, and she told me she knew a lot of things about me, special things. She said I should not worry so often. If I pay attention to the things around me, these special things will come.

She would often touch her log, be silent as she leaned down close to listen to it. Most times she would smile as if she were amused, pleased. Other times, she would tell the log that she would not hear about that now. This was not the time.

The last time that happened, she turned to me and whispered, "Things are not what they seem."

She looked away, then turned back with a different look on her face, as if she were relieved we were still alone. She said she knew I had been dreaming of being a woman, and that this was good because young girls always do. Then her words got confusing . . . she said many things about the Woods, and I tried to listen very carefully, because I trusted her and thought maybe she knew something that would help me. A lot of it seemed like gibberish. I remember it, so I'll write it down, but I don't know what it means. Maybe I'll understand it later. What I did understand made me feel so good inside, like I wasn't being bad all of this time, maybe, and that I could keep on hoping for things without being afraid that I was acting selfishly.

Here are some of the things she told me. She said that sometimes the woods are a place to learn about things, and to learn about yourself. Other times the woods are a place for other creatures to be, and it is not for us. She said that sometimes people go camping and learn things they shouldn't. Children are prey sometimes . . . I think that's how she said it. What else . . . I tried so hard to remember everything. Oh. She told me that she would be watching, and someday people will find out that she sees things and remembers them.

She said that it is important to remember things you see and feel. Owls are sometimes big. There! That was the one I had forgotten totally. Owls are sometimes big. I hope that doesn't mean my mom talked about that "Owl Dream" I had. I don't think so, but that's the only way it makes any sense to me. I hope I'll understand all of this soon. Either way, we kept sitting together, and I listened to her hum this song that I had never heard before, but I thought it was very nice. It made me feel safe, which I think she was trying to make me feel. I feel sorry for her, that people think she is strange and weird. She isn't at all.

I could see in her eyes that something had hurt her, but I didn't even begin to understand what it was until Mom told me when I got home. She said that Margaret (the Log Lady) had a husband who was a fire fighter. He was killed fighting a fire, and Mom said it was awful because he tripped over a root or something and fell headfirst into hot coals and burned himself to death, face first. They had just been married a little while when he died, and since then Margaret has been very quiet and has kept her pain to herself. Mom also said that she didn't have her log until after her husband died.

I didn't know any of this when I was out there at 1400 River Road with her, but it didn't really matter, I guess. I told her I thought she was a very nice and special person, and that I was glad I had paid attention to my dream, because I wouldn't have wanted to miss talking with her. I told her I hoped she was right about my life having special things in it, that I will look for them, because I want my life to be good.

Then I told her something that I hope she never repeats. I didn't even expect to say it, and to tell you the truth I didn't know where it came from. I told her that sometimes things happen that no one knows about. They happen in the woods when it is very dark. I told her that sometimes I wasn't even sure these things were real, and sometimes I think they are more real than the sun coming up in the morning, and that the thought of that frightened me very much. She looked away from me, I remember, when I finished. I thought I had said something that upset her. She grabbed her log tight, then looked back at me and said that I was a very beautiful girl, and that many people would love me in my life.

I hope many people do love me in my life. Someday someone will love,me the way the boys did, but even more. I wonder where that person is right now, and if he is wondering where I am and what I look like, and when we will finally meet. I wonder if Margaret has ever thought about sex the way that I do.

On the way home I tried to hum the song she had hummed to me, but I couldn't remember it. I felt very good inside when I left 1400 River Road, and that feeling stayed with me, all through my ride back to the stables, all the way home with Mom in the car, and even now it is just as strong. I hope Margaret isn't feeling lonely right now. I hope she is feeling as happy as I am. I only wish I could have brought her news of how happy her life would be. It's too bad I had nothing for her.

More later, Laura

P.S. Donna still hasn't called me back.





Listening to the Wood November 13, 1985



Inside the trees are souls I think

Souls that grow and change

Inside each leaf, so quiet

A memory of moments no one else has seen

But no man ever listens

Takes the time to think

That trees might see what happens

That in the way they rustle

Is a hint they wish to speak.



They might have tried to whisper

In the palm of someone's hand

their memory of the little girl

How there is a new hole inside her

And a new and smaller mouth

But no one believes or cares

That maybe

The tree would know

Something was very wrong

That it wants to talk about the sadness

It has seen so many nights

I think the world

Should walk deep into the woods

Listen very carefully,

To the voices in the leaves.

See the details, the tiny maps

Of footsteps, and sometimes stains

They should see that the leaves

Are shaped like tears

They should study the design in fallen needles

Maybe there are some markings on the ground

That will lead the world

To the one who made

The hole.

It is late, and he came tonight. I don't know if the Log Lady was talking about the right Laura Palmer.





Dear Diary, November 20, 1985

I had a dream just now that makes me believe I will not be sleeping tonight.

I was in a room. It was very empty, and I was feeling badly that it was empty. I thought it was my fault that nothing was there. I was crouched in one of the comers of the room, and I was staring at this one spot at the other end of the room, because I knew something was going to be there, soon.

After a minute, I started to get very cold. And I thought that I saw something, but it disappeared. Then I looked away because I was trying to find the door that went to another room and out of this one, because I wanted to see if the furniture was in another room. I felt very bad about something and I wanted to fix things, so that I could stop feeling so . . . guilty. I guess that's what I was feeling. Guilt.

I turned back to look across the room and there was an enormous rat sitting there. I knew in the dream that it was coming after me, and that it wanted to bite my foot off. I became so afraid! I saw it come closer and closer to me and I tried to think of a way to stop it, or a place to run away, but there wasn't anywhere to go, or anything I could do!

I know it may sound funny, but it was so frightening. I sat very still and tried to keep my feet tight against my body so that the rat couldn't get to my foot. I couldn't stop thinking of how awful it was going to feel when it closed its jaws around my ankle and bit down. I didn't want to feel that, and I didn't want the rat to come near me. Don't come near me! I just kept thinking of how much pain there would be. . . . And so, in the dream, because I knew all he wanted was my foot, I bit my foot off myself.

When I woke up, I could barely breathe, I was so scared! I can still see the rat, and I think it was after me because something was wrong with the room, or I was being punished for something. But I was more afraid of the rat's teeth and how much it would hurt. . . . So I decided I would do it. I would hurt myself, before he could. Even though I didn't understand why the rat wanted to hurt me, I just knew I had to do it myself, or he would.

I didn't like that dream at all. Please, Diary, I know it sounds silly, but don't judge me the way someone might if they heard me tell them this dream. I hope I never dream like that again. I don't even want to know what it means, or if I'm sure I even want to remember it. I'll decide that tomorrow, when the darkness is gone, and things are easier to see when they come after you.

It makes me mad that I feel like I can't go and tell Mom about this. I'm afraid she'll laugh and then maybe tell it to everyone and embarrass me. I'm so afraid people will laugh at me. I am going to try to be more like Donna. I'll be good and I'll do everything I'm supposed to do. That way, there won't be anything anyone can find out and make fun of me for. There will be nothing they can say I have done wrong.

I bet that what I did with Donna and the boys is causing this. I can't even think straight enough to decide if one feeling was worth the other. Something has to be causing nights like this. I will try to be better. I will stop doing things that older girls should be doing. I will not let anyone hurt me, like in the dream. I'll hurt myself first. I know the places that are the most delicate. I'll do the hurting from now on, as long as all of this stops!!!!

I wish I could talk to my mommy.

Laura





Dear Diary, December 16, 1985

I don't know that I will be writing in you for a while. I have just had another dream. I must have fallen asleep while I was waiting for the sun.

I don't know why, but I kept seeing you appear and disappear on people's laps. On their seats at the diner, when they went to the jukebox. On the hood of their cars when they went to go driving. I tried to take you back, but you kept sliding away. You were going to tell everyone what was inside you.

A few people read what was written there and these people turned into rats. They wanted to take me out the way BOB does. I think that until I understand more, we shouldn't speak. I don't know why I dreamed this . . . but I am too afraid to challenge it.

If this doesn't make the nightmares and the fire and the ropes and the little silver blades go away . . . Maybe I am supposed to give into them. Maybe that is what is meant for me. Maybe I just have to be patient and stop fighting it, and it will go away.

I hate to say good-bye to a listener as good as you. I feel I must, though, until I find out if you are somehow talking to people when I don't know about it.

Am I going crazy? I can't wait until vacation is over and school starts again so that I can have something to keep me busy. I look at other girls that I know, other girls I see, and they all smile, like I do. Inside are they beginning to lose everything they know? Have they stopped trusting themselves and everyone around them too? Please don't let me find out that I am the only one on earth with this pain.

Laura





Dear Diary, April 23, 1986

It has been a long time since I've written. School is fine but I find it almost too easy. There is not enough to keep my mind from wandering to boys, or fantasies. Donna and I have had several fights this year because she says I'm acting strangely to her, and that I'm not being the friend that I was. I hate crying, so why does it come so easily lately? I am only trying to be good, and to keep busy, and not to do too much talking or daydreaming because I thought that bothered people and made bad things happen to me.

Now Donna is mad because I won't tell her what I'm really feeling, because I'm afraid! I can't tell her I'm afraid because she would make me tell her why. I can never ever tell. I haven't even touched myself where I know I can to make myself feel good. I'm afraid, because that is about sex, and I decided I wouldn't think about that anymore . . . which is so hard!!!

I hate myself, and I hate my life! Dad has been busy all the time lately with Benjamin and his work there at the Great Northern, and I am starting to feel the way Audrey must when her father spends more time and attention with me than he does with her. Now it is happening in the reverse, and I am just trying to be good and make it stop, and it is only getting harder for me to sleep or even eat! I don't want to feel this way anymore. If I do, I know something awful will happen.

I dreamed last night that I had dug a hole in the backyard for a well, because I was trying to help us with water, and I thought a well would be a nice thing to build for the family. Mom loved the idea and smiled very big. But when she went outside, later in the dream, I was burying myself in the hole, trying to kill myself. She realized I had lied to her, and this made her very upset. She ran out to stop me, and I screamed that I didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night with leaves all over me anymore. I wanted to be a tree so that I could listen for trouble in the woods. And I was buried all of a sudden. But I was inside something that wasn't a dirt hole.

Mom came to my room right after to ask if I was all right, and I told her I was fine. I was just having nightmares about the woods is all. The look on her face went from sadness to hopefulness. Then, unfortunately, she began something I didn't need to hear at all! She started telling me about the birds and the bees, and about birth control and babies, and all of this ridiculous stuff about how my dreams were just a part of my changing body, and maybe I just needed some questions answered.

The whole time she talked to me, I was thinking of something else.

I had to think of flowers and of smiling faces and anything . . . big trucks filled with lumber, of birds, of Donna Donna Donna . . . good things only. Don't listen, couldn't listen to that voice saying all of the things that were like little keys to the doors and rooms I wasn't supposed to be in! How could this happen? She didn't stop for almost an hour, and I almost had to hold my hand down. . . . I wanted to hit her, smack that smiling, helpful face and scream, "How do you do it! What has happened to that part of me!"

Do you want to know the part that frightens me most? The only thing people think about me right now is that I am going through my adolescence! Everyone still sees the smiling Laura Palmer. The girl with perfect grades and perfect hair and perfect little fingers that want to sometimes, late at night, go into the mirror to strangle the daydreaming troublemaker I see in the reflection!

Today I will go to see Donna and I'll talk to her. I'll talk the best I can. I have no schoolwork left to do, and I've already finished two extra-credit projects. I made the honor roll, and the junior debate team. I pray all of the time, but have never felt worse in my life. I am starting to think that a few moments of good, in the middle of miles and ages of bad, is better than no good at all. I hope Donna still wants to be my friend.

If I can, I will tell you what happens with Donna.

Soon, Laura





Something just came to me . . . April 24, 1986



A memory of skipping

I was small, looking up at him

Before he told me to lie down

Or to say things

Before he told me

That opening my mouth was bad

That we had a secret

Before he began to turn me inside out

With his dirty claws

Before I sat on the tiny hill

We used to skip

Hold hands

Talk about what we saw

He told me what to see

But I didn't see it

I have been blind

I think

Ever since the skipping stopped.

I want to be left alone like other people are. I want to learn about this soft white suit I wear the way everyone else does.

I want to forget the things that suddenly come to me. . . . Something very bad is happening. . . . Why is it happening to me?

I think it is real. I think it is real!

After I see Donna, maybe I can tell you about what I am remembering. I had forgotten so much . . . but I can't tell if I am better off knowing or not really knowing at all.

Please still be my friend, Donna, please!

L





Dear Diary, June 21, 1986

I spent the day with Donna yesterday. For a long time she wouldn't even really say anything to me. When I started crying, I ran out of her house and just kept running. I was so glad when she came after me, and she was crying too. I told her as much as I could. That I was worried about being good because I had been having bad dreams, very bad dreams, and I wasn't just kidding her when I said I wasn't sleeping at all. I told her I wished we could talk about the night with the guys at the stream, but it always seems like she hates me or something, or I'll have an awful dream and think that what happened was bad. I told her I needed to hear what she thought about that night. I needed to know if she thinks we should be punished for it, or if I should, because I did more than she did. . . . I just needed to know!

Donna told me that she was afraid I wasn't talking to her because I was mad that she hadn't gone as far with the guys as I had, and that I didn't like her anymore because of it! I asked her how she could think that when we had such a nice hug when the evening was over, and I still remember that hug as one of the clearest, nicest parts of the whole night! I told her I was just very confused, and I told her I didn't know half the time whether I should be enjoying it as much as I was, or if I should have been feeling bad.

Donna said the only reason she got out of the water was that she wasn't sure what she felt right doing, even though all of the boys were nice. And then she cried and looked at me, very strange, and said something that really made me feel weird. She said that another reason she didn't get more into it was that she was afraid to because I seemed too good at it right away, and she didn't know what she should be doing, or how to do it. She wanted to know if it just came naturally to me, or if I had been seeing a boy and hadn't told her.

I couldn't answer her for a long time. I don't think I knew the answer. What did she mean, good at it? I told her I remembered feeling sexy, and very happy that they liked me and wanted me, but half of that, if not more, was the boys' doing, not mine. Plus we were drunk that night, and it just felt so good to do things I had wondered about for so long. . . . She stopped me there and said that she thought about boys like that too. I asked her how she thought of them, like what they were doing when she dreamed of them, and she said they were taking her dancing, or seeing her at school and letting her ride in their cars. She said she was thinking about being with older boys who treated her like she was a princess, and at night they would come into this big, beautiful bed and lie next to her, and they would talk and kiss, and sometimes they would make love.

She said she didn't really like going that far because it seemed too rough for the rest of the daydream. She thinks about sex, though, she said. But it is the kind of sex that goes really slow like in soap operas. She said she sees it in slow motion and she can hear music playing, and they roll around, she and this boy, very slow, until it fades out of her head. She said she hoped that my fantasies were as sexy as hers are.

Oh, God, Diary, everything was fine until we talked about that! I just had to tell her that my fantasies were exactly the same as hers, and that we should never have argued, and I said I was sorry if I hurt her feelings. I should have been more open with her, and that I was only worried that she had begun to hate me for going so far that night. She said she thought I was very brave, and that if it felt good to me, then I should think of it as a good thing. But what about the fantasies she has! I was about to die when I heard how pure and sweet and gentle they were. Why doesn't she think the things I do! I was so hoping we had the same thoughts. . . . I was depending on it.

I know she was telling the truth because of how she told me, and by how embarrassed she got when she talked about this boy getting into bed with her. She is so pure, I just can't believe it. I think that the times that I have to go into the woods at night have poisoned me.

I would be like Donna, I'll bet, if I were still just skipping through the trees, instead of . . . what happens now. But . . . I would never ever ever wish for what happens now! I wish for things that make me feel sexy and playful, things that don't take me to do all the work, things like someone else trying to please me, instead of me always trying to make everyone else happy.

I wish there was a place you could go where someone would answer all of your questions, and tell you if you were doing the right thing or not. How am I supposed to know when I can't even talk about things really? I just keep saying the same things again and again. I am running in circles, and it is time that I stop.

Donna and I are friends still, and I still love her, but things feel different to me. I can't think the way she does, or even try to anymore. I will think what I feel, and I will try to make people see things the way I do. I wish I had a marijuana cigarette right now. It feels like I haven't laughed for years and years and years.

Thank you for listening.

Laura





Dear Diary, June 22, 1986

I am just going to write and not think too hard about it and maybe I can remember more. I just woke up; it is 4:12 A.M.

I don't remember when it started, but he has always had long hair. He knows everything about me and knows how to frighten me more than any of the dreams I have already told you about.

He first started to play with me. We would chase each other through the woods, and he would always find me . . . but I could never find him. He would come up from behind me and grab my shoulders and ask me my name. I would tell him it was Laura Palmer, and he would let go and turn me around and laugh.

When I think about it, he wasn't playing the way he should have been. He was being very mean to me, and he was scaring me all the time. I think he likes it when I am frightened. He makes me feel that way every time he takes me with him. He likes to embarrass me by pulling down my panties and putting his fingers inside, deep. When he knows it hurts me, he pulls them out and smells his hand. He always tells me I smell like bad things. He screams out loud into the trees that I smell, and that I am dirty, and he doesn't know why he even likes me. He says if I didn't beg him to come all of the time, he would never come back.

I never beg him to come. Never. I wish him far away from here. I swear it.

When I started to get older, he would tell me things about myself that I didn't know. I don't think he was telling the truth. I think he was lying to me and making it up as he went along. He always knew exactly what scared me, and just the things to say to make me cry. Then he would take my neck . . . and squeeze. He squeezed my neck hard until I stopped crying. He would let go just before I would faint . . . I think I was fainting . . . sometimes that still happens. Everything goes tingly and dark, and my head spins inside and I can't see anything, and I have to stop crying or he'll keep squeezing.

Sometimes he says, "What's this down here? . . . What's this down here, Laura Palmer?" He always says my whole name like he won't get close to me like that, but he will every other way. Sometimes I would come home bleeding. I would bleed and I couldn't tell anyone, so I would sit up all night in my bathroom, all alone, and wait for it to stop coming out. Sometimes he would cut me between my legs, and other times he would cut me inside my mouth. Always tiny little cuts, hundreds of tiny little cuts. I had to use a flashlight in the bathroom or else my parents might wake up and see the light, and I'd be in worse trouble then.

Some nights he would make me sticky. Rub himself very fast, and he would say that I had to hold the sticky in my hands, close my eyes, and recite this little poem while I licked my hands clean.

I only remember a little. This hasn't happened for a long time, the sticky. He made me say:



The little bitch

Is awfully sorry

The little bitch

Drinks you up

(I can't remember more, except the last line.)

In this seed is death indeed.

He wants me to like it, when he is with me. He wants me to say that I am dirty and that I have an odor. I should be thrown into the river so that I will be clean.

I am so careful to smell clean, all the time. I always wash between my legs, and I always go to sleep in fresh panties, in case he makes me come with him. I always worry he will come for me, and I won't have clean panties. He says I'm lucky he even stays to spend time around me. He says that he is the only man who will ever want to touch me.

He comes to the window, and I see him. I always see him, and he is always smiling like we are going to have a good time together. I am so close to calling my parents for help, but I am afraid of what would happen. I can't let anyone know about him. If I keep seeing him, he might get tired of me and go away. Maybe if I stopped fighting him, he would not like to visit me anymore. If I weren't afraid. If I could just not feel afraid . . .

I have never thought about him like this ever before.

I hope that if there is a God, he will understand that I am trying to keep clean, and if this is a test that he is giving me, I'll find a way to pass it. I bet it is a test. I bet God wants me to prove that I can take orders, or maybe that I am not afraid to die and come be with him. Maybe BOB knows God, and that is why he always knows what I am feeling inside. God must be telling him what to do to me. God wants me not to be afraid, maybe, of being dirty. If I'm not afraid, he'll take me to heaven.

I hope so.

L





Dear Diary, July 25, 1986

I have been trying very hard not to be afraid.

I am seeing a boy I told you about once before. I didn't like him then, but now I think he is just right for me. He reminds me very much of the boy on the wall of the Book House. He dresses the same way, but he does not have a motorcycle. I am fourteen now. I didn't let anyone celebrate my birthday. I made Mom promise she wouldn't plan anything. I told her at the kitchen table the day before that I had a lot of thinking to do about my life. I just wanted to spend my birthday alone. I wanted to walk alone, and maybe take Troy out for a ride: I made sure she knew I didn't want to hurt her feelings, but I just needed to spend some time alone. She fussed for a while and kept asking me why I couldn't spend the following day by myself. I finally told her that I was feeling confused and I wanted to come home on the night of my birthday with everything sorted out. I wasn't going to go far, I promised her that. I just wanted to go. I promised her that next year and the following year, sweet sixteen, I will have a party of one kind or another.

So I spent my birthday alone. I went out to where I go with BOB. It was light out, and everything seemed like an awful dream, until I saw a piece of rope lying at the back of the base of his favorite tree. I got a chill, but forced it away. I tried to look carefully at the tree, to find something that would explain why he picked this place, this tree. There was nothing. I made sure I was alone before I did what I had planned.

I looked very carefully, and when I knew I was alone, I pulled a marijuana cigarette from my pocket. I made Bobby get one for me. He wanted to share but I told him he couldn't. We could do some together later, maybe. I smoked it very slowly and started thinking about sex. About men, all kinds of them, inside me.

I tried to think of things that BOB would like. I pulled a pair of my panties out of my pocket and rubbed them on the tree. I wore them just before I left to come here, so I knew the smell of me would be strong. . . . I'm not afraid anymore either that I smell bad. I know I don't. I think I smell like a girl should.

When I put my panties to my own nose and breathe in, I imagine a girl in front of me, and how a man would want to touch her. Get up close. BOB calls it pussy. I want to touch, can you hear me, BOB! When I smell it, I am not afraid, I told myself. I said it out loud many times while I was there, smoking and thinking of all sorts of ways I could touch Bobby. . . . Things I would like to make him do. I thought every thought I could that would call BOB to come. I think he was there, but he was hiding.

So I got very stoned, all by myself, and pushed myself onto the dirt, sliding onto the leaves and pine needles on the ground, and I looked up into the great tree. I wanted the tree to watch me, memorize the face of the new little girl who came to lie down. The old one is gone. She had to go off. I only use her voice sometimes; it is so much easier to get what I want when I say it sweetly, and like a little girl. I took off my clothes and began to touch my breasts, lick my fingers, and then rub my nipples with the wetness. I made circles the way the boys do with their tongues. I made noises when it felt good. I cried out when I pinched them hard and made them pink.

The wind began to come up, and I felt it move over my bare chest, and I remember saying, "Ohh, whoever that is, I like that. . . . Yes. . . . I like that very much. . . ." I felt myself get a little wet inside my panties . . . so I undressed completely and I talked to BOB out loud, while I touched my secret button. I said, "BOB . . . Bobby . . . Laura has a sweet muffin here for you. . . . Nice and clean and . . . mmmmmmm . . . I'll bet it tastes good too. . . . Come out, BOB . . . come out and play. . . ." The 