Hadley Leary

I wake up at nine, having slept pretty badly. I’ve had a bad week, and so has everyone else I know. The good thing is that I have time to do my morning routine, which I actually did every day in the fall but rarely do anymore because my schedule changed. My morning routine involves drinking a coffee and reading a book while I listen to a record. Before I make my coffee, though, I spend a while scrubbing my nails; I got them done on Tuesday and stained them last night eating Ethiopian food with lots of turmeric. (The food was worth it, and my nails are almost back to normal now.)

I make a coffee and grab a Kind protein bar and a banana and head to my living room. My boyfriend’s stuff is scattered on the floor; he travels for work and came in last night while I was sleeping. I’m not sure what I want to listen to today, so I put on one of his records, “Heroes” by Commodores. Then I sit in the chair in my bay window to read The Savage Detectives, which I’m rereading for the first time since high school. I notice that some of my plants look sad, but nestled between pages 120 and 121 I find a small green feather, which delights me. 

I get to page 143 and stop when the record stops. Then I spend ten minutes looking at the first few pages of my MFA thesis, which is due on Tuesday. In the middle of my doing so I feel what I can only describe as a very small earthquake in my living room. Today, I guess, is going to be a weird one. 

At 10:30 I put on workout clothes and head to a yoga studio near my house where I take a combination barre and boxing class. I am obsessed with this class and obsessed with throwing really good punches, which is not a sentence I ever believed I would write, but here we are. On my way there a friend in New York texts me about the earthquake and says it was like a fever dream. Then, as “There She Goes” comes up on shuffle, a woman whizzes by me on a motorized scooter, and I feel like today is gonna be really good. 

Class kicks my ass—it’s more barre than boxing today—but I feel great afterward. I come out to multiple texts about the earthquake. Everyone at the studio is talking about it too. Then I remember that before I left home, I made a joke to my boyfriend about “The Earthquake in Chile,” but he’d never heard of it. Does anybody know what I’m talking about? (I must have Chile on the brain because of Bolaño.) Perhaps today is going to be an emotional roller coaster! 

My glasses have a sweat smudge on them, but my endorphins are too high to clean them yet. I think some more about The Savage Detectives and how the fact that the first 143 pages are written in a diary style is probably influencing how I write this entry. It’s funny how everything comes together. Maybe life is narrative. 

I stop for coffees at the coffee truck that sometimes parks near my house. It’s early dismissal day at the school down the block so there are screaming kids everywhere. The sign that lists the fun latte flavors is missing, which scares me for a minute, since I’m there for fun lattes, but the woman whose truck it is tells me that it shattered when she drove over a pothole and she still has the flavors.

I get a turnover, a Samoa latte, and a chestnut praline latte and head home. For some reason, neither my upstairs nor my downstairs neighbors’ trash was picked up this week, and now a bunch of trash bags are sitting by my stoop. The birds that live in the tree outside have gotten into them, and when I mount the stairs they freak out and fly away and scare me in the process. I feel better once I get inside and eat my half of the turnover, thankfully. 

I respond to the earthquake texts and shower while listening to a podcast about the querying process, which is unfortunately on my mind. If you don’t know what the querying process is, spare yourself; you almost certainly do not need to know. After my shower I make myself a wrap for lunch and gossip with my boyfriend, then sit down to work on my thesis again. I’m not sure how much I can really accomplish by Tuesday, but I cut some stuff from the first eight pages and feel good enough about it to step away. Since it’s still early and nice out, I decide to put a little makeup on and take a walk to the library. I get two books out, and the very nice security guard at the library wishes me a good weekend. I stop at Whole Foods to grab some beers, and on my way home I see both a cardinal flying and two pudgy cats staring at me through a window. (An omen of some kind, perhaps? I don’t know!)

I feel weirdly exhausted when I get back home, so I sit on the couch and watch The Summer I Turned Pretty. I cannot really recommend this show to anyone, but if you like wish fulfillment and the freedom to pay as little attention to the screen as possible, who knows—it might be your jam. After the episode is over, there’s another tiny earthquake. (I don’t feel it, but I hear some stuff rattling.) After that, I still feel kind of weird, so I watch a bunch of stupid YouTube videos. Then, more thesis.

Here’s the thing about my thesis: I keep reading the first eight pages and losing my mind. But, by 8:30, I’ve made it to page 15, and I’ve cut a couple hundred more words. My boyfriend and I order pizza, and I keep working while I wait for the text that the food’s ready. I feel okay about the pages; it’s just very weird to read them now that I understand where they’re going.

When I was at the library, the first floor of the fiction section ended with authors whose last names begin with “Lea.” This felt like a weird sign of something, because that is me—an author whose last name begins with “Lea.” It was weird to walk all the way to the end of the section and imagine my books on the shelf. It was also weird to look at the shelves and realize how many authors and books exist that I have never heard of.

At 9:15, I get tired of working on my thesis. I’m on page 23, but I’ve added some words. I mark my place and go into the kitchen and pour a beer into a glass, to feel fancy. Then I practice Portuguese on Duolingo so I don’t lose my streak. My boyfriend goes to get the food, and when he returns, we eat pizza and watch a couple episodes of The Sopranos. Afterward, we look at pictures of beavers, pigs, and hyraxes on Instagram. Then, it’s bedtime.

Hadley Leary is a fiction writer living in Philadelphia and an MFA candidate in fiction at Temple University. Born in Rochester, New York, she has lived in Western Massachusetts, Paris, and New York City. She is at work on a novel about many things, including not knowing how to drive.