Page 60 of Left on Read

He rolls up to a stoplight, and he looks over at me with one eyebrow raised. “You don’t like change, and I’m supposed to believe that you just want to become a whole new person?”

He’s right; I do hate change. I despise it. But I hatefailuremore. I’d rather be a whole new person than a failed prodigy who is in trouble with the administration of a collegeanda high school.

We continue in silence, the car moving us forward but our conversation stalling. There’s really nothing else to say.

He’ll get used to the new me! As soon as I do, I suppose! Maybe I can get really into rollerblading!

After we park and meander into the mall, he holds the bookstore door open for me. I certainlydon’trelish the smell of new books. It’s inconsequential. And the sight of those fancy, leatherbound classics absolutelydoesn’tsoften my heart at all. Not even a little. The fact that a new edition of Poe’s poetry is standing face out, like it’s staring at me, doesn’t stop me in my tracks in the doorway. No sir!

I walk toward it, despite telling myself rather aggressively not to. My fingers run over the rich leather spine, then run over eachletter of the title impressed on the cover. I admit that rouses something in my soul. It pinches a very specific part of my chest, some part Hayes probably knows the anatomical name for.

If I don’t try anymore, I won’t fail anymore. And if that means giving up the way those pages feel under my fingers, then so be it.

I dash away.

I end up in front of an endcap that’s all detective fiction. I wouldn’t have any reaction to that at all, except I happen to remember Edgar Allan Poe basically originated the detective story with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” I stomp away.

Rounding another corner, I arrive at the children’s section. The colors are all bright and fun, and the bookshelves are half my height. There’s a tiny armchair in the corner that’s made for a tiny person, but I sit in it anyway. My knees have no place to go but propped up right below my face, and I rest my chin there.

“The internet makes a lot of jokes about losing people like you in bookstores, but I actually did.” Hayes appears and leans against a half-height bookshelf.

“People like me?” I question.

“People that belong here.” He sits down on the floor next to me, on a carpet that looks like a rainbow.

“I very clearly do not belong here.” I gesture to myself, stuffed in a way-too-small chair made for a child that’s probably not old enough to read by themselves.

“What did she say to you, Novella?” He sits with his legs crossed underneath him, and he leans forward with his hands folded in his lap. I have his utmost attention like this, and I feel the weight of that.

“She told me I don’t belong.” I look at the yellow stripe in the carpet he’s sitting on. I don’t know why I focus on that instead of the others. I don’t really even like yellow. “There were a bunch of other things, but she said this is her world, and I’m just … an outsider. Socially inept. Poor parents. Weird. ‘Fragile.’ She actually said ‘fragile.’ And … other stuff.”

Those words feel like acid in my throat. There’s a baking soda volcano in my chest, and it’s trying to erupt out of my mouth.

“You have to know that’s all bullshit.” He stares at me like we’re discussing statements of fact and I’m misunderstanding. Like I just said the sun doesn’t rise in the east and theTitanicnever sank.

“Is it?” I shrug. We’re not discussing facts. We’re talking about how theTitanic’ssinking could’ve been prevented by never sailing in the first place.

“Nova.” He moves closer, close enough that I’m almost forced to look him in the eyes. When I do, I relax just the slightest bit. He’s not furious. He’s determined. “It can’t be the first time someone’s gotten pissed off by how smart you are.”

He chuckles, and I feel the rush of air on my chin. That was a joke, and I get it, but it’s not funny, because it isn’t the first time.This is always happening. Maybe not quite to such an extreme, but I’m always doing too much or saying too much or feeling too much or being too much. People don’t handle me well. So I should change.

It’s not the first time, but it’ll be the last.

Esha:do you want me to fight her for you

Esha:I am not above that

Nova:you are absolutely above that

Nova:and if one of us is getting kicked out of school, it should be me

Esha:no it shouldn’t.

Ihave to psych myself up to walk into the building.

I sat in my car until the last possible moment, and when I finally got up and headed inside, I pretended I was going anywhere else. The crumbling, oversized welcome mat under my feet was sand between my toes. The whoosh of the automatic doors was the sound of an elevator taking me to the top of a New York City skyscraper. The overfilled garbage can that should’ve been emptied last week was … well. It was still a garbage can. My imagination isn’t powerful enough to will away that smell.

I make it into the building, and I’m still looking at my feet. Counting the speckles in the linoleum. Most of them are black, but every tenth one or so is a fun purple.