What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“If a Book Is Locked There’s Probably a Good Reason for That Don’t You Think” is told from the second-person point of view of an unnamed narrator. “You” work in an office in the UK that hires a new employee from America named Eva. She doesn’t participate in the usual office niceties, so everyone in the office is intrigued by her. You feel a kinship with Eva and try to befriend her, but Eva rejects this outreach as well. Your job is to figure out which employees at companies are adequately meeting their goals and which should be made redundant (fired). This task is unpleasant and isn’t something you want to continue doing, especially because it’s based purely on numbers and does not take into account who the people are.

All your coworkers become increasingly interested in Eva until one day a crying woman comes into the office with her young son and accuses Eva of seeing her husband. Eva drops her bag, and you help her clean up her things after the woman is escorted out. As you do, you notice a leather-bound journal with a brass lock on it. Your curiosity about Eva grows.

People in the office become “Anti-Eva,” and she grows even more isolated, now in a much less pleasant way. You and Eva have lunch together, and you ask about her diary, which she writes because of an interest in Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. A coworker named Susie begins bullying Eva in an attempt to get her to quit—knocking over her lunch, filling her locker with condoms, etc. Then someone steals Eva’s diary. Eva stands up at her desk and asks for it back, offering anything in return. Later, she finds a note waiting for her on top of the documents she’d printed: “RESIGN & GET THE DIARY BACK” (320). She does, and the next day a coworker named George “finds” the diary.

You offer to take the diary back to Eva, but you have no idea where she lives. You ask your grandmother to pick the lock because you think there might be an address inside. Once the diary is open, you can’t help but to read what’s written inside. You see the words “Why I don’t like to talk anymore” written in purple ink (322), and then you turn to the back cover page and see an address. You take down the address, and your black ink turns purple, as well. The diary unfolds itself and words start to fill the air as the diary also absorbs what is around it. Negative voices, mostly men’s, swirl out of the diary, criticizing Eva for speaking too much or not enough or too loudly or too softly. Eventually, you manage to shut the diary, sitting on it to keep it closed. You cover it in masking tape and travel to the address you found. When you arrive, the man who answers the door claims not to know an “Eva” but directs you to the roof. Eva is on a swing set on the neighboring rooftop, and she notices you with her diary. You assure her that you never read her diary. She responds, “So you still think that’s why I locked it?” (325).