Leo pushed aside his winter coat and reached into the back of the closet. Something small and square was waiting there — a wooden box he had never seen before.
He carried the box to his desk and lifted the lid. Inside, resting on a bed of faded tissue paper, sat a leather journal. His name was written on the front in thick black marker — his own handwriting, but older, messier. He didn't remember writing it.
Leo picked up his pencil and pressed it to the page. The first words came slow and clumsy, like learning a new language: "Today I went to the park and saw a squirrel wearing what looked like a tiny acorn hat." He giggled and kept writing.
He wrote about sidewalk chalk maps that led to dinosaur bones, about his dog's suspicious stare at the mail carrier, and about why Tuesday was definitely the best day of the week. By bedtime, three-quarters of the journal was full.
The next morning, Leo turned to a fresh page — and stopped. There, in the middle of the page he had written the night before, was a new drawing. It was done in his own wobbly crayon style. It was the neighbor's cat.
Below the crayon cat was a real photograph, taped neatly to the page. The cat in the photo was the neighbor's cat — orange tabby, white sock on one paw, blue collar with a brass bell. Its expression was pure indignation. Leo looked out the kitchen window. The cat was sitting on the fence, watching him back.
Leo's mom found the journal on the couch after breakfast. She picked it up, flipped through a few pages, and then started reading out loud. "Tuesday is the best day because Wednesday is just Tuesday's less exciting cousin." She snorted.
Then his dad came in, saw the journal, and sat down on the other end of the couch. He found the page about the squirrel's acorn hat and read it to himself, then read it out loud. Then he was laughing too.
Soon they had moved to the floor, pages spread out like a map between them. They read the sock-hat entry. They read the Tuesday entry. They read the moon entry — the one about the moon looking like a cookie someone had taken a bite out of. They kept reading.
Leo stood in the doorway. He watched his mom turn a page and his dad wipe his eyes. He thought about telling them he had found the journal in his closet. He thought about showing them the cat's photograph. He twisted the hem of his shirt and said nothing.
Leo walked into the living room and dropped into the armchair beside them. He nudged the journal toward his dad with his foot. "You missed the part about the moon," he said. His mom reached over and ruffled his hair. The journal sat open on the coffee table, a new blank page waiting.
The blank page glowed in the warm light. Leo's yellow pencil rolled from the table and came to rest against the journal's edge, point toward the empty page. Tomorrow's entry was already waiting.