"Yes! There's a thing that is sufficiently secret that I actually want to find somewhere secluded to talk about it."

"He hasn't told us what the secret thing is."

"Do you have a secluded spot in mind or do you want one of mine?"

"I think you're the best of us to, uh, at finding good secluded spots."

"...was that meant as an insult?"

"—no, why would it be?"

"If it's an insult it cashes out to you're drowning in pussy and weed so frankly I'm cool either way."

She leads them to: the auditorium, which is locked. Then she unlocks it and leads them in.

"We can sit in the cheap seats, or if you want serious overkill I can get us into the sound booth."

"...yeah let's go for overkill."

"This is, uh, actually kind of starting to concern me?"

Vivian's eyebrows rise. "Same, but sure. Gimme a sec."

She leads them to the booth, then removes two bobby pins from her too-short-to-need-them hair, bends and denudes them, and pops the lock.

The booth is slightly cramped and overly warm, but they fit.

"...okay so now that we're here and I'm about to tell you guys about the thing it's occurring to me that I may have in fact gone crazy so uh... well I guess you guys are in fact the people I'd want to tell if I were going crazy? So, either something completely bonkers has happened or I am completely bonkers. One of those."

"Concern levels rising."

Yeah it is actually kind of something-adjacent-to-concerning even if he's not going crazy.

He grabs the notebook.

Vivian nods with apparently genuine approval. "Cute."

He smiles to himself and opens the notebook, then...

hey so it's occurred to me that I probably want more eyes on this whole situation than just mine so I want to show you to some other people

and it's also occurred to me that I don't know if you'd be okay with that though I really hope you will because it'll be a lot very good for my peace of mind to confirm that I'm not extensively hallucinating you and everything we've talked about

so i guess the two things i want to ask are 1. could you talk to my friends too? and 2. could you temporarily hide my everything we've talked about so far? some of it isn't really emotional processing that i'm extremely comfortable with other people seeing

i guess if it's impossible to do then i'll make do without but it'd be better if you could

"That was a lot of writing."

"Either you'll see why in a sec or I'll have to do a lot more explaining of how absolutely off-the-deep-end I've gone."

Oh. That makes sense.

I'm a little nervous about other people writing in me, because as long as you don't let them, I know I'm always talking to you, but as soon as someone else is writing in me, I have to try to tell people apart by their handwriting, and what if I make a mistake? But I recognize that this is a little silly of me, and if you want to show me to your friends, that makes sense and I support it! I've shuffled out all the pages with writing on them besides this one. If you let anyone else write in me, please ask them to introduce themselves so I'll know for sure? And I hope they have distinctive handwriting. I am being silly. Your peace of mind is important. Please feel free to show me to your friends.

"...hey what the fuck did the notebook just move of its own accord. Or like shift or—am I the only one who saw that?"

"You are not the only one who saw that," says Felicia, her eyes saucer-round.

Vivian squints.

"Oh, fuck you, Tarleton," she says obscurely.

She probably thinks this is a prank of some kind but hopefully it won't be ahahahahahah anyway.

i can definitely ask that they introduce themselves and always make sure that only one of them is writing at a time and that we are very clear about when we are switching who is talking

my handwriting is, however, for the record, very distinctive, in that it is an illegible scrawl most of the time including right now i am very sure you must be using magic of some sort to be able to understand everything i've written especially the parts where i was particularly emotional

but they're definitely introducing themselves, i'm gonna thwack them with another, non-sentient notebook if they fail to do that

Okay! ♡ In that case, go ahead!

He takes a deep breath.

Then another, deeper breath.

Then another—okay he's really fucking nervous. Anxious? Um. Uhhh.

"Okay before I chicken out of this shit," and he places the notebook on the floor between them all, open to that page. "Vivian, you start. Please introduce yourself to the notebook and then, uh, talk about whatever you want with it I guess just to confirm that I'm not hallucinating that there's a talking notebook here that has been talking to me all morning."

That was all said in a single breath and he's hyperventilating a bit kind of a lot actually.

"...uhhhhhhh." Gabe has an awkward smile kind of slightly frozen on his face. He usually tries to laugh awkward moments like these off but he did see the notebook do something even if he hadn't been paying all that much attention and Peter is probably having a mental breakdown of some kind but...