There was a discarded spiral notebook in a trash can outside my building. It lay there, looking quite pristine, except that it was near a greasy burger wrapper and some other unrecognizable food trash. Why would someone throw away a perfectly good notebook? is what I thought first. And then, Hey, I could use that notebook.

I hovered over the trash can, considering.

It occurred to me that the notebook might not be empty. It looked unused from the outside, but there was no way to be sure unless I dug in and opened it up. Someone could have confided their deepest secrets in there, written unsent love letters, scrawled a death threat, composed a poem. I wanted it; I wanted to see.

Then some woman crossed the street, dropped a wad of chewed gum in the trash, and walked off. I left the notebook for someone braver than me. Maybe, by now, someone’s got it cracked open, filled with words. Either that or the dumpster got it. I may have reached a hand in if not for the gum.