Free The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch

pass this test... you'll see. If BOB wants nasty, all I need is a little time.
I can be the bad girl he wants.
    On the way out of the woods, I was nearly killed as an owl swooped down out of nowhere. I could feel the power in his wings as he shot by me. I thought of the Log Lady. Something she has said:
    "Many things are not what they seem."
    This used to seem frightening to me. This place, the slightest thought of touching myself, and teasing myself, frightened me. No more. No, this place I visited is not what it seemed. I see now that it is a place of darkness, but I love it. I welcome it . I will not fight it, even when it slips deep inside and cuts me. I have found light and pleasure inside this horror. I am not done with my plan.
    I'll be back, BOB. I'll be back to open and close around you like you thought I never would. I'll be back.

    Laura

August 3,1986
    Dear Diary,

    Just to fill you in, I did spend the rest of the day with Troy at the stables. Being around him relaxed me, and I went home later that evening feeling very strong, very new inside. I did not entertain any thoughts of being bad, or wrong, by doing this. I was going to stop being hurt and taunted by this man. A man I know only by his first name. I do not know where he lives, or where he comes from. But I will get him back. There's no fun in a game of torture if the victim is screaming for more.
    That was almost two weeks ago... no, maybe a week. I am very deep in concentration lately. Seeing Bobby Briggs is fun. He is anywhere I want him to be, with anything I want him to bring. Just yesterday, I decided he had waited too long to be with me the way he wanted. I, too, was tired of the process of petting and going home feeling like a cork had been stuck inside me, that it had trapped everything I so wished to let go. But I had to let him think I was the fourteen-year-old I appear to be...
    Mom and Dad left for the entire afternoon, and I told them I'd be out for almost as long as they would be, but that I wanted to help with supper that night, so I would be home no later than six-thirty. Mom's face shined at the sound of such words. I have to keep my parents happy. I have to keep loving them, like their little girl should. I have to support what I have not chosen, but have, quite simply, been given. Two lives.
Two very different lives.
    The naughtier Laura had a date with Bobby Briggs in Low Town. He said he knew of an abandoned barn out where no one would find us. I liked the idea that I would have him alone someplace where I could go kinda crazy on him. I was nervous, for a bit, because I suddenly realized that this was not the BOB I hated, but the young Bobby who swaggered up to smiling Laura Palmer and asked if she would be his. No matter, I'd play him like he needed me to. I knew he was aware that I had never made love with a boy before... I knew it would be different with someone who took care... I knew it might pull me back to thirteen years old, when I learned to love a man's hands in a stream late at night and cried because he was gone so soon afterward. I couldn't let that come up. I knew I had to be strong. I could have BOB watching me right now... at any moment. I couldn't fall in love... certainly not out loud.
    Bobby was charming and I could tell he was nervous because he couldn't get his words out very well, and the blanket he brought on the back of his bike wasn't opening as he tried, diligently, to spread it.
    This made him very nervous, because I was balancing a bottle of vodka, a small one for two, and a marijuana cigarette (some smoke) in between my fingers, and I didn't have as good a grasp as I would have liked, and I had to fall to my knees to avoid breaking anything.
    He felt very bad, but I turned it around so that he had been more of a hero than a dunce. He was neither, but I allowed him to lift me to my feet and steady me with his arms. I could think only of how I just wanted to take a drink and do some smoke so I could relax.