Monday smelled of wet tarmac and tram 17 growled like a sluggish cat. Nadia, a fourteen-year-old champion of late write-ups, clutched a strange notebook in her hand. She'd found it the day before in the 'forgotten' bin at Mrs Zaneta's, in the paper shop under the block. On the cover someone had scrawled a tram and the sentence: 'Write only on the road'. It sounded like a joke, so she opened it on her knees and, before the tram driver rang the bell, she scribbled: "Let the rain stop rustling against the windows". The tram moved off, the drops on the windows turned to clear glass, as if someone had muted the sky. At the next stop the rumble returned, the wet streaks ran again. - Can you see it? - Igor slid his backpack under the seat and froze. - Let me try. Nadia handed him a pen, but not a notepad. She scribbled carefully: 'Let the advertisement in front of the viaduct turn into a whale with a hat'. The tram sped up, the billboard blinked and then really waved in the blue. The whale nodded its fin and disappeared as they braked. They both burst out laughing, a little frightened. They set the rules: it only works when we're driving, and it stops at the bell. Things don't get harmful, rather they look different. Like a moment that pretends to be a dream. After school, the city glowed with neon lights and the air had a taste of rust. Nadia opened the notebook on the last page and noticed a pale line, not in her handwriting: "Don't write about people after dark". - Who had added that? - she whispered. Igor shrugged his shoulders but looked anxiously at the fogged-up windows. The tram was ringing, moving, rocking. Nadia, stubbornly feisty, wrote something nameless: "May there be a doom at the next stop that someone needs". The letters lit up with ink as always. Then beneath them, without her hand, a single word appeared: "Already". The door hissed open and a chill poured in like river water. A boy in a silver scarf stood on the empty platform, though he was not cold. He got on unhurriedly, and when he looked out, Nadia could taste the ozone in his mouth. He smiled pale and lifted a notebook identical to hers, outlined with the same tram. - 'Hi, Nadia,' he said, sure he knew her. - 'Are you going to give me my sentence, or should I take it myself? The tram accelerated, the bell sounded, and something they hadn't planned was already waiting at the next stop.