Imagine you’re a girl in junior high school. You were born in a small town, to a family of farmers and loggers, in which the only other person who likes to read is your father’s Aunt Edna, who rarely takes her nose out of an indistinguishable series of those little romance novels from the RiteAid. But you, from as soon as you could read—and even before, when they were picture books—you’ve liked fantasy stories. Especially the ones with sorceresses and fire-raging dragons.
When school is in session you sometimes ask to go to the bathroom so you can sneak into the library and ask if there are any new books by your favorite authors. But there aren’t very many of these, only three or four a year, and everything else you’ve read multiple times. And anyhow you don’t really like being in the school library, because the loud kids invariably stroll through and make lame jokes about bookworms—sometimes to you, sometimes about you—as if you can’t hear them. Which, in a way, is true, since you’re nearly a non-person in the school, too shy to open your mouth except when teachers get to hankering after you. The loud kids know they can say anything they want and you won’t say a word. You’ll only hunker down lower and try not to attract anyone’s notice. There’s nowhere safe inside the school except during classes, when the teacher is in charge.
And home isn’t much better. Everyone else is loud and always seems so sure of themselves. Your parents work hard and come home to cold beers and car racing on TV. Your two older brothers are the same, pretty much, dreaming of having their own race cars and forever tinkering with broken-down heaps in the yard. They tease you about always having your nose in a book just like Aunt Edna, telling you you’ll be having your hair set and dyed blue any time now. Start spilling food down the front of your sweater and not even noticing.
Like that would ever happen.
Except last week it did, when you reached the best part of DragonSpell for the umpteenth time and managed to tip a spoonful of cereal down your chin and onto your chest. Even then it was hard to put down the book long enough to go change your t-shirt before one of your brothers could spot you.
There’s only one place safe in the whole town. One place where no one makes fun of readers, because Mrs. Edmonton won’t let them. The Free Library next to the post office, where it’s always mostly quiet and there are other people reading. Often Mrs. Edmonton herself, who’s as likely to get caught up in a book she can’t put down as is any of the kids who come in. She’ll just glance up and smile when you come in, and then put her nose back in the book. But if you go and ask her a question, she’s much better than you about putting down the book without grumbling about it.
And you can ask her any kind of question. Mostly they’re about books, of course. Does she know when the newest book in the DragonSpell series will be in? Has she heard of any new books like those? But it turns out you can ask her any other kind of question as well. Would it be OK to sit outside and use the wireless when the library isn’t open? How old are the kids in the Dungeons & Dragons club? Are any of them girls? Can you join even in the summer? Will the library be open a little longer in the summer?
And sometimes, actually, lots of times, Mrs. Edmonton answers questions you didn’t even ask. She’ll say, Missy I have something to show you, and then she’ll pull up a screen on her computer and say, The library just got a subscription to this cool new site and now you can use it for free. Sometimes it’s a place for getting electronic books, but sometimes it’s something for school—like a site that gives examples of math problems using wizards and elves.
You go to the library every day after school and do your homework, so she knows you like those math sites that show a different way to understand things. It’s a way to learn stuff since you hate having to ask questions in class more than just about anything.
Often she’ll hand you a new book and tell you to try it out. Usually it’s something different, like a story set in some other country or back in time to the Revolution. When she asks you what you think of it, you almost always say, “Needs more dragons,” and this always makes her smile a little. But she smiles wider when you say you liked it, that you finished it.
If she sees you a reading a book she’ll sometimes ask, Missy is your homework done? And nine times out of ten, she’s right that you were reading when you still had homework to do. It’s like she can smell it. You’ll give her your sheepish grin—the kind they always say boys have in books—and get your homework out.
Bookworms have their own sense of smell, it seems. At least you and Mrs. Edmonton do. Hard to say why you’re so different from pretty much everyone else in your town, but it helps to know you’re the same sort as Mrs. Edmonton. She seems normal and happy and makes you figure you’ll find a way to be that too. Even if you do like books better than cars and boys.
