meant to be

There was this clever girl at school. She was always with an open book on her hands, it didn’t matter if she was reading them or not. Perhaps she’d forgotten to close them and kept them that way because that was how she did things. But it was OK for me. Yes, of course, sometimes she hits the doors or the walls because she doesn’t see them, but afterwards she laughs. And that makes her smarter… and prettier.

I’ve never actually talked to her. Not because I didn’t want, of course, is just that we have never had the chance. One Thursday, I saw her sitting alone on the hall and took the courage to go and sit next to her. She had a book on her lap, some Dickens, I think, and I made a comment about it. I held my breath waiting for the answer, but she wasn’t listening. I felt terrible and left. Two weeks later I went to the school library and sat on the remaining sit of a table. Everybody was quiet and in complete silence. I hadn’t realized that she was there until she spoke. She just said ‘Can I take this?’ and surprised as I was I could only replied ‘yes, sure’. And that was our first conversation.

I was obsessed with her. But not in the bad way, you know. I just liked her too much. I started joining every literature class I heard about, reading everything each teacher would put in front of me. And luckily, loving all about it. I was hoping to see her every day, and maybe talk or get together for group works. But the truth is that she was always alone, sitting on the back, reading something. I’d imagined her as the soul of the class, as a book fan that would take advantage of every situation to tell the rest something about what she had read.

But she was nothing like that. Well, she actually took advantage of something: she never stopped reading. She would spend the whole class focused on the pages, the teachers wouldn’t talk to her and she would only move when the class was finished. And even though she seemed absent all the time, she was the best student of the school.

Little by little I became a stranger for the people who knew me. My friends wouldn’t hang out with me anymore and my parents would look suspiciously at me when day after day, I arrived home with more books each time. I was aware of the change, and slightly worried. I say slightly, because the more I read, the better I felt; I was really enjoying that.

After a couple of months, I became more reserved. I started spending my afternoons in bookstores or libraries, sitting at the back seats and use every minute to read, walking with my books opened even when I wasn’t reading them. And then, when the teachers wouldn’t talk to me and I would only move when the classes were finished, she came.

I was sitting alone on the hall with a book on my lap, some Poe, I think, and she made a comment about it. Thank god I was listening. We started our second conversation in The Black Cat and finished it in The Martian Chronicles. Since then, we had so many more conversations, that I lost the count. We moved on through the entire world, from J. K. Rowling and Tolkien to Bukowski and Shakespeare. From Britain and France to Russia and Mexico. And also, we stopped sitting alone.