Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
It’s the lockers in his room. Cold, steel, hard. Vents. Whatever’s in the lockers is telling the story.
He filled my cage with more little secrets, locked the door, and started piling more of us that he wanted to hide in the cage next to mine. I heard screams—rips and tears—and he’d curse, angry. The cage door would slam, he’d hit our box, growling, and then he’d charge out of the room. Where’s the one who looks like him? The one he fought with? I haven’t seen him in so long.
Football games played on his T.V. Friends would laugh and talk with him in his room. They’d howl and clap, a savory scent filling the air and reminding me of the same scent I had on a piece of me once. Pizza. He still doesn’t laugh, but he likes football.
Clap, clap, clap.
It’s cold now. So dark. I smell snow. He comes in late, crashes against my cage, and I’m scared. Is he hurt? Will he hurt me? He breathes hard, whimpers a little. Punches my cage. Slits of his face appear through the vent, and he looks like he’s in pain. He’s so big now. Grown. I missed everything. Why is he so sad? I can help. I’m here. I don’t see blood. He drinks from the bottle like he’s so thirsty.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
I harden my jaw, trying to fight back the tears as I read.
Spring again. He has new friends. Lots of friends. He seems happy, and I smell and listen, because their scent is pretty and they sound soft, and he touches them too. Licks, bites, grabs, and bends. They don’t talk much. They play on his bed, the steady banging of the headboard against the wall.
Bang, bang, bang.
The summer goes on. All the same, all the time. Sometimes our doors open and some of us disappear and we don’t return. Where does he take us? Some of us stay. I lose sight of him, but I hear him drink and crash on his bed, and every once in a while, I hear the banging against the wall.
Gulp, gulp, crash.
Bang, gulp, crash.
Gulp, bang, bang.
Gulp, bang, crash.
He doesn’t love me anymore. I want to be loved. I want to go. Travel. Be in backpacks on a train. On a shelf in a sidewalk bookstore. On a picnic blanket in Central Park. Why doesn’t he release me? I can’t bear to watch him forget how close he is to being happy if he just opens my door.
And then…
He does.
It’s a book, I realize. He keeps books in those lockers.
It’s night, the house is quiet, and the cage swings open. He pushes all of us into a bag, pulls it closed, and carries us downstairs and outside. I smell the fresh-cut grass, hear fireworks in the distance, and feel the sighs of the others in the bag with me. They’re happy to be remembered.
Where is he taking us?
When the bag opens again, he’s reaching in and removing stacks of us, stuffing us into shelves.
Shelves! We’ll see people walking by. They’ll look at us, and even if they don’t ever touch us again, I long to be part of the world. To be seen. Considered.
One of us tears, pages spilling onto the grass. We’re still outside. What kind of shelf is this?
He puts us in, closes the door, and I see him through the glass. I don’t like the way he’s looking at us. Like it hurts for him. Why?
If he loves me, why did he hide me? Why was he ashamed? Is this goodbye?
He disappears, and moments later, someone else comes and picks a book out. They take it and leave one in its place, and I realize this is a place to trade stories.
But my boy didn’t take any of the books that were already here. He didn’t take anything new. Why?
Then, suddenly, he’s there. Again. He opens up the glass door, pulls me back out—just me—and I know I’m not new for him. He’s been rough with me, marked me, and bent me, but he’s remembering how he loved me. How he can’t give me up, and how I taught him so many things.
Like how mind-boggling big space is. Vastly! Hugely!
How dolphins are the second most intelligent species on Earth, second only to mice.
How digital watches are really pretty neat.
How the answer to the meaning of life is forty-two, and how a towel is really the most useful thing any interstellar space traveler will own.
I laugh, meeting Kade’s eyes as he looks at me like I’m crazy.
“Gingko trees are a trip,” he mumbles.
It’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That’s the book that’s talking in the essay. I think our dad would agree that a towel is always useful.
I’m a part of him, and he can’t say goodbye just yet.