September 20

May has come up with a terrible plan, but given that Dad is literally inching towards ripping the tape off completely (only a couple of layers left), it might be our only plan.

But why do I have to be the one to execute it?

I'm basically going to have to burn the bottom of the axe, so that the name will be charred off completely. No half-solutions, no kicking the problem down the road, just finding a permanent solution so that Mom and Dad wouldn't find out about the lie that gave them the axe.

May wants me to do it during my late fire watch shift when everyone is asleep, and she wants it done tomorrow because Mom and Dad will be so exhausted from their second wood gathering shift of the week that they'll just fall asleep right away and won't notice our plan. All I need to do is just to push the axe handle into the flames for a minute or so until it is blackened and then soak the bottom in a bucket of water, so that our whole house won't catch on fire. After that, when Mom and Dad find out, I'll just make up some excuse, like I wasn't paying attention to the axe and accidentally knocked it into the fire. They'll probably be a bit annoyed, but it's going to be fine. It has to be fine.

"What about the tape?" I asked May. "Wouldn't burning it produce toxic fumes?"

"Then rip it off," she said. "Pretty common sense."

"What about Mira?"

"Use your eyes," she said, probably annoyed by all my questions. "It's not that hard to see whether someone is sleeping or not?"

"What if she's faking it?"

"What if the world explodes tomorrow?" May replied sarcastically. "No one fake sleeps for fun, and as long as you stop being weird about this, she won't think anything's wrong and won't think about fake sleeping."

I sighed. "Why can't you just do it?"

"Because it'll be too suspicious if I'm awake since if Mom and Dad wake up, they'll catch me up when I'm not supposed to be. You have fire watching duty then, so you're the only one with an excuse to be awake."

"I can just get sick tomorrow," I replied. "So that you can replace me."

"The only day that Neal is sick is the day that the axe mysteriously gets burned. Totally, not suspicious."

"What if we lose the axe?" I asked.

"Wood doesn't spontaneously catch on fire like leaves or paper," May said. "Stop panicking. Do you really want Mom and Dad to find out?"

I didn't respond, and she nodded. "Good. You know what to do. It's not that hard."

But the thing is that it is hard. She just doesn't understand the risk that I'm taking. What if the axe actually catches on fire? Or if Mom and Dad wake up and catch me conveniently not paying attention to the fire when the axe handle is in there? On top of this, tomorrow is Thursday, the unlucky day of the week. I should just tell Mira about this to see what she would do, but with how weird I've been acting around her, it'd be too awkward to confess this to her.

I've just got to not panic and stop focusing on everything that could go wrong. There's a lot running on this plan, not just for my family but also for Charles' family, and I need to remember them and just muster up the courage to execute the plan. I need to be confident and prepared, like all the protagonists in the stories that I've read.

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But my knees are rattling, and my palms are sweaty writing this, and I don't think that my fake confidence is working. I just hope that I have the courage to execute the plan tomorrow.

September 21

I can't do it. I just can't.

I'm sitting here, writing in my journal right now, staring at the axe, lying next to the fireplace, its handle not sitting in the flames. May said that she'd stay up to support me, but after a long day of doing laundry, she's fast asleep. Because her bed is in the middle of the giant bed pile, I'm worried that if I try to wake her up to ask for advice, I'd wake everyone up. God, what a disaster today has been!

On top of all of this, I can't tell if Mom and Dad are asleep. Dad isn't snoring like he usually does, and Mom is a super light sleeper, so there's a chance that at least one of them is awake and consumed by insomnia. And what if I drop the axe into the fire or what if the fire makes a loud crackle and it wakes up Mom and Dad? They'd kill me since who knows what they'd be thinking when they see their son putting their only axe into the fire.

None of these even account for the Mira and grandparents factor. I'm not super worried about the latter. I don't think Grandma or Grandpa would rat me out to Mom and Dad if they woke up, though I highly doubt they'd even wake up since both of them went to bed super early. I got into a mini-fight with Mira today over nothing, and while I know that she wouldn't tell Mom and Dad, it might just unnecessarily complicate things, as if they weren't complicated enough right now.

I just need to take in deep breaths to calm myself down. But they don't seem to be working, probably since I've used this strategy so many times while I've been stressed that deep breaths just remind me of stressful situations.

But back to the focus: the axe. All I need to do is put it in the fireplace and walk away. Maybe my story will be that I needed to grab some wood from the garage, and I had accidentally dropped the axe into the fireplace before I left, which is why I didn't notice. I think I'll use this story since it's decent. All I need to do is stand up and push the axe into the fireplace.

Shoot, Dad just moved around, rolling from one side of the bed to the other. I have no idea if this means that he is awake or if this is one of people's sleep movements. And I just checked the time, and there's just ten more minutes until I have to wake Mom up. Also, I completely forgot that I needed to rip the tape off before dumping the axe into the fire unless we want to all breathe in toxic fumes.

There's just not enough time to burn the axe handle off, and if I wake Mom up late to a burnt axe, she'd be extremely suspicious of my story. I shouldn't have procrastinated this, and I should've just gotten it done, if not for our well-being, then for Charles and his family.

I'll do it tomorrow then, but I'm worried that they'll peel off the last vestiges of the tape and reveal the name on the axe handle or that I'll keep putting it off until the former happens.

There is one option left though. I can tell the truth to Mom and Dad.

Everyone's telling me to lie, even I am, but maybe telling the truth is what needs to happen to solve this whole mess. There will be no more deception or worries about being caught. Mom and Dad have to understand why we did what we did and took the axe, and maybe we can even convince them that May and I were right in stealing the axe from the Hunters' and lying.

But I'm so terrified of telling the truth because of the consequences afterwards, the way that Mom and Dad will look at me differently or how people's perception of me changes, not just naturally, but because I made this change happen. And that's what terrified me about the change that I was facing with colleges and internships and jobs and the future because I'm the one that's helming these changes.

It's my choices that determine what comes after, and it's my regrets that remain here if I make the wrong choices.

I'm sick of all this fear of regret, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe it's time for a change. Just even thinking about it terrifies me, and I want to take it back right now. But it's too late because with the time tickling down, I've committed myself to this path, and it's time that I take a leap of faith. With summer ending today and the fall equinox tomorrow, it's a good opportunity to embrace the spirit of change that comes with the changing seasons. That sounded like a horrible cliche, but maybe the universe will be kind to me because autumn is the season of transformation.

I'm going to come clean with them. I'm going to be a better person. I'm going to be like the hero of a story and tell the truth, even when it conflicts with my beliefs because the truth is good. It has to be because there's no way that it can feel worse than the paranoia and anxiety that I'm feeling right now, as the clock ticks down until Mom's shift.

There's only two more minutes left before I have to wake Mom up to tend the fire. Maybe if I write down that I'm telling the truth tomorrow enough times, I'll actually do it.

I'm going to tell the truth tomorrow.

I'm going to tell the truth tomorrow.

I'm going to tell the truth tomorrow.

I have to.