It was not a terrible day. Just a day where stress was waiting to creep in and some open time and a loss on how to fill it. She drove to a familiar building. One from her childhood. Her feet took her down that same sidewalk she walked so many times with her mother and her brother. There were changes to note once inside. Fresh paint, a new desk, the absence of an old hallway. The smell, though. The smell was the same. The smell of books. Do you know it?
She reads to escape. To make herself feel better. To learn. For wishing and dreaming. For blocking everything else out.
She has laughed out loud on the train before. Sobbed, blinking tears out of the way so she could see the words. Clutched a book close to her heart after the turn of the last page. A good book means a too-late night, a crick in the neck, the yellow light from a bedside lamp. A voracious appetite for the next page. Only true readers know these things. Do you know them?
When she left the library she was smiling. A stack of worn, plastic-covered, hardback books heavy in her arms.
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