It’s staring at me again, the foul little temptress. It sits on the desk, cheap, smirking as if to say, “Yeah, your man spends more time with me, and he complains about you all day. What you gonna do about it?”

It thinks it’s so much better than me. Of course, it doesn’t know what I’ve been planning. It doesn’t know I’ve been practicing the skills to conquer it. All I have to do is bide my time and wait for the perfect moment.

I study its ugliness. It’s a repulsive shade of blue, as if powder blue drank a gallon of iced tea and puked … no, even that’s too good. It has my boyfriend’s name tattooed across its cover. I want to walk over and rip it off. Maybe then I could see beneath its exterior and into its abysmal soul.

“Hey, honey, I think I’m going to write for a bit,” my boyfriend says. He must sense the conflict between me and the blue demon. I would like to scream in protest, but I have no rational excuse for an objection. The trollop looks over at me, smug, because, once again, my sweet, wonderful Scott is choosing it in favor of playing with my hair while we watch a James Bond movie.

Yes, I’m filled with all kinds of doubts and insecurities and my arch nemesis is my boyfriend’s stupid blue notebook. But it’s really not as pathetic as it sounds.

You see, I’m dyslexic. I can hardly read Dr. Seuss. I could have gotten help and learned to read earlier like most dyslexic people, but my parents refused to believe there was a problem. Scott’s supportive and all that junk. He even convinced me to go to some special class for a little while, but I deemed it a lost cause and stopped going. I mean, I’m 16; if I was meant to read, I would be able to by now.

I had no regrets about this decision until last week, when Scott brought that thing home. Now, he spends all his time just scribbling away in his notebook. He doesn’t even say what he’s writing about. I can’t tell if it’s a diary or a poetry book. He could be a drug dealer, keeping records of his clients … or worse, he could be complaining about me.

There’s a possibility I’m just paranoid. He could just be releasing his inner writer. But he’s never even expressed an interest in anything like that before. Scott has always been a math and science kind of guy. That’s why my curiosity has grown to the point of near insanity.

“I’m going to go make a sandwich. You want anything, babe?” Scott asks, standing up.

“No, thank you,” I answer quickly. I wait patiently until the door closes behind him and then I spring to my feet. Finally, the moment has arrived to set my plan in action. I’m going to overcome this little monster once and for all. I’ve been practicing some exercises I learned in my old class and I’m absolutely determined to read this blue devil. I lift the notebook off its pedestal and smirk at it. It won’t be keeping secrets from me anymore. I turn the cover and read the first page.

At first, I’m absolutely dumbfounded. I have to wonder for a moment if these sentences are real, or if my dyslexia is messing them up. “The yellow bunny curiously roams the forest” is written over and over again on the first page.

Other peculiar phrases are written throughout: “Brian eats the marshmallows next to the campfire,” and “Lions sleep peacefully in the grass.”

I’m at a complete loss for words until I reach the last page. There’s a simple note scribbled in Scott’s handwriting.

“Hello, my love. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. Good job practicing, I’m proud of you.”

Oh, that little blue trickster ….