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Clara turned the pages faster. The margins were a conversation across decades. On page one hundred and two, a newer, shakier handwriting—a different shade of purple, maybe a different decade—said: “Still pretending. But it’s okay.”
Not just into her own childhood—though there it was, the secret code of being eleven: the whispers about bras, the terror of the first period, the desperate prayers to a god she wasn't sure she believed in. No, this book held more .
S. Kline. Sarah Kline.
“Gave this to my daughter Clara today. She’s eleven. She doesn’t know I read it first. Or that her grandmother did. Forever, Judy. — S.K.”
“That’s a dollar twenty-five,” said a tired-looking woman in a folding chair. “Or just take it. My mom probably paid for it forty years ago.” forever judy blume book
Clara paid the dollar twenty-five.
The next morning, Clara bought a new journal. She opened Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to the first blank page. Below her mother’s signature, she wrote in her neatest hand: Clara turned the pages faster
There was a name on the inside cover. Written in loopy, purple pen: .
“Clara’s copy. 2024. Still pretending. Still hoping. Forever, Judy.” But it’s okay
And then, on page forty-two, next to the line “I want to grow up and be me and not have to pretend,” a scribble: Me too, S.K.
