I sat at my desk, looking blankly at the words on the page.
"She looked up at him, and they smiled."

I cried.
Those were the last words she ever wrote.

***

I guess she and I weren't serious writers to start off with. She was an energetic Year 11 with a passion for art, and I was a senior with a love for photography. We talked a little at school, but we never let seriousness get in the way of our idle chit-chat. I noticed how, a month or two ago, she had left for a matter of two weeks, but she was the same person again afterwards.

It was a warm summer afternoon, and I was late for the buses. Only the West Ryde service was waiting. From the corner of my eye I could see her. But instead of the familiar sight of her gazing out the window, I saw her writing into a black spiral-bound notebook, her eyes glued intently at the pages. I moved behind her, peered over her shoulder.

It was a story about a girl and her brother living in a dream-like world. Reading a few lines of it, I thought it was pretty decent. The bus jolted to a stop at an intersection.

"You write?" I asked.
She jumped a little at the sudden voice behind her, turned around, and smiled.
"Yeah." She grinned proudly. "Don't you?"
I shook my head.

I don't remember how, but by the end of the bus trip I had a white, spiral-bound notebook in my hands, with my name printed in neat blue-biro letters on the inside cover.

***

A few weeks later, I ended up on the West Ryde service again. She was near the back of the bus, the sun shining off her jet-black hair, her face close to the pages. I sidled up behind her and read her blue-biro writing.

The bus jolted to a stop at the intersection.

"Why do you write?" I asked, a careless question.

Turning, her eyes met mine. Expressionless. I saw her face, but her familiar smile had faded and gone.
"When I leave for a better place," she said blankly, "this is the world I want to live in."

Then it came. A brief explanation about how her younger brother had died two months ago. A rare genetic disease.
About how she wouldn't last for long either.

Briefly, her smile came back.

She told me how one night, she made a simple prayer. A simple wish to an unknown being, and how she wanted it to come true, and what that being had promised her.

Every word she wrote would create his world.

***

Another afternoon with her on the West Ryde bus.
The bus jolted to a stop at an intersection.

"Have you started writing yet?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Nope. Will you start it off for me?"

She nodded. I fished out my white spiral-bound notebook, long forgotten, from the bottom of my bag, still intact. She quickly wrote up a paragraph, handed it back to me, beaming. "Write," she said simply, as she got off the bus. I waved back at her.

I arrived home, read the first paragraph she wrote for me. I smiled.
I picked up my pen and began to write.

Every word I wrote would create our world.

***

I flipped through the last few pages of writing in the black notebook. Her neat, blue-biro handwriting intertwined with my black scrawls in blunt felt-tip. I remember how, when we finally became lovers, our stories fused together- or rather, mine merged into hers. The senior years were busy, and most of the days we spent together were on the afternoon bus, writing the simple storyline about the girl and her brother.

I can still remember the last day I was with her. She was unusually happy, but I noticed there was something wrong. She wasn't writing.

She had run out of pages.

We were approaching her stop. Instead of packing her notebook into her bag, she pressed it into my hands.
And fell into my arms.

I could still remember her sweet girlish scent, her small body sobbing, and the wet of her tears on my shoulder as we had our last embrace. She got off at her stop, waved back at me.

Still smiling.

I arrived home, and read her last entry.
"She looked up at him, and they smiled."

She had finally brought me into her world.

***

It was as if she knew of her impending departure from this world into the next. She was hospitalised the next day, and I wasn't able to spend her last moments in this world with her.

I looked at the two notebooks on my desk, black and white. One filled with her own stories, and fragments of mine. One barely started.

Then I decided.

I would continue her story. I would do this in her memory. I picked up my pen, opened my white notebook, and began to write.

Because every word I wrote would create her world.