"Discovery"

 

I sat next to an old woman at the bus stop. She had a book in her lap but was holding it there with the back cover facing up and the spine turned toward the street, so I couldn't see what she was reading. A bookmark was keeping its vigil about two-thirds of the way through.

"Must be a good book," I said to her, pointing. "Looks like you're almost done with it."

The woman smiled and said, "Oh, it's unbelievable. Very informative. Some books just, I don't know, wake you up, make you realize how much more you have to learn about the world, you know?" She turned her book over and showed me a dictionary's front cover. When the bus finally came, I let her board first.

"He Tried to Keep Them Safe"

Vintage paperbacks, wrapped in poly bags, on the shelf at the used bookstore.

He knew it was inevitable that they would get older, so he tried to keep them safe. It was a thin kind of protection, the love he had for them, one that inevitably would fail against the harshness of the years; yet he wrapped them up tightly, and for the most part, it was enough. Of course, a moment arrived when he realized that he had loved them a long time, but he sat with them less and less each day. Then, he knew. He understood that he would never stop loving them, even after he let them go.

"Oh, the Places You Won't Go"

Got a bag almost ready for C2E2! An 'Infamous' bag, no less!

Alex knew what she risked by running in the store, and she saw the look the old man in the "World History" section gave her, but she couldn't afford to be late. She turned so quickly down the hallway where the bathrooms were that she was running with her body at an angle. Only when she came to the spot between the door marked "Women" and the door marked "Men" did she stop. She stood in front of a third door, which appeared only once every month, tapped a precise and musical rhythm on its surface, and entered when it opened. Inside, next to a swirling, pulsing purple vortex, the gate agent sat behind his table.

Alex approached the table and emptied the contents of her backpack. Dried flowers, a picture of her house, a letter opener, a set of keys that worked with no lock that she could find, and one of her little brother's baby teeth came out of the main pouch. A towel, a bottle of water, a pair of socks, and a change of underwear came from the front. The gate agent almost looked amused, though it was difficult for Alex to tell for certain, as he appeared to be have been carved from onyx.

"I brought everything I need," Alex said to him. "Please let me through before it closes."

Was the gate agent still amused, Alex wondered, or had he turned sad? "I'm sorry," he told her, "but this isn't what I need to see. I can't admit you at this time. Please collect your belongings and move to the side."

Alex couldn't speak, even though her mouth was open. The gate agent tipped his head toward the stuff cluttering his table, and Alex, bewildered, swept it back into her bag with a huff. As she stepped away, she saw the old man from "World History" enter the room, an enormous hardcover in his hands.

He saw her, of course, but in the light of the portal his raised eyebrow looked to Alex no longer dismissive, but mischievous. "Had to go shopping before I came here," he said. "I mean, whoever heard of traveling without a book?"

The old man winked at her and faced the gate agent, spreading his book open in his hands, leaving her to run, run, faster than a whisper, back into the store with the hope that, this time, she could go somewhere.

"One Big, Fat, Juicy Apple, Part Two"

 

[I wish I could do justice writing about the large events rippling through the world right now. Until then, I go with the little moments that I know. Hope you're all well.]

Nailah's mother knew things that Nailah herself did not. Nailah understood this fact perfectly and hated it. Something about apples in particular made her mother suspicious, and not even all the books in the library could distract Nailah from trying to find out what it was when they made their afternoon visit.

"Mommy," Nailah said as they entered the children's room hand in hand, "I like apples."

Her mother laughed. "I figured as much, since you made a song about it."

They made their way to a pair of beanbag chairs. "They're really juicy," said Nailah.

"So I've heard."

Her mother handed her a cardboard picture book, which she accepted but kept closed as she pondered what else to say. "I like how they're big," she finally offered. "When I hold them in my hand? They're big."

"That they are," said her mother.

"And hard."

Her mother glanced up from her novel.

"And..." Nailah rummaged through her thoughts for all the words that belonged to apples. "Crunchy?" she said.

Nailah's mother leaned forward. She took Nailah's picture book, opened it to the first page, and handed it back.

"Try reading this for a while," she said. "You know, if you had gone with something like 'smooth,' I probably would have had to ground you." She leaned back in her beanbag and returned to reading her novel, while Nailah, completely dissatisfied with the simple illustrations in her picture book, peered over the top of it at the pages her mother was reading, trying to divide those chunks of words into slivers, desperate to digest that tempting fruit, knowledge.