The town's library smelled of dust and the quiet courage that people left between the bookcases. Ala sat down at the last table, pulled a navy blue notebook and pen from her backpack. The cover was rough, with a sticker from Aunt Hania: "Feelings Notebook - use daily, without mercy". She was nineteen and preferred to write here, as home had sounded too loudly silent lately. She promised herself that today she would not pretend, even if her hands trembled and her voice grew damp. She started with a simple word, which is how her favourite psychologist advised: first the name, then the breath. She wrote it down slowly: "anxiety" and watched the letters dry up, as if they were delaying coming to a voice. A knot coiled in her stomach, thoughts of leaving for university mixed with the waves outside the window. Someone jiggled a chair, the clock on the wall dropped a minute, and the room grew quiet again. She wasn't asking for a miracle, she was just getting her head in order, like a neat catalogue. She tried another name, one she rarely spoke: she wrote down the short 'anger', with a slightly firmer hand. She didn't want to shout, so she shouted in ink, quietly, evenly, keeping to the school lines. The fluorescent lights hummed quietly, the ventilation switched to night, and an old phone purred in her pocket. Alla put down her pen; then, under her word, a thin line darkened and twisted to the left. It looked as if the ink had changed its mind and a stranger had appeared underneath: 'I see'. Her heart did a flip, but reason immediately suggested an explanation: maybe the paper was damp, maybe she was delusional. There was a small orchestra in her belly, tuning up nervously, as if before a premiere. She leaned the notebook under the lamp, ran her finger over it, turned the page, found nothing. To be sure, she noted: "Who are you?" and added a nervous smile in the corner of the page. Ink hesitated, curled into a figure eight, and then folded the answer, crookedly and without a full stop: "I hear." Behind the counter, Mrs Wanda readjusted her jumper and called out that they were closing in ten minutes. Behind the glass of the courtyard hung the sickle of the moon, thin as a comma in a sentence. Ala swallowed her saliva, took a calm breath and wrote carefully, "What do you want from me?". The letters appeared unhurriedly, as if someone very old was dictating: "Don't pretend to be brave. Go out into the courtyard, now." A splotch of ink spilled in the margin, resembling a plan of the library with the back exit marked. The door to the corridor creaked open of its own accord, though no one pressed the handle, and the light blinked twice. Alla stood up, slipped her notebook under her jacket and moved towards the marked passage, counting her steps. As she touched the cold metal, another word was written on the paper under her fingernails: "Run". In the courtyard, something answered with a quick, invisible movement of the air, as if someone had just started chasing her.