Condemned

She sauntered (yes, sauntered. Because the word is used too little to be tasty anymore) over to the teen section and began to tap the spines on the books one by one starting with Abbot and moving on down the list of paranormal romances and coming-late-of-maturity-but-yet-comming-of-age stories. One after another she tapped. Then she stopped. Is this it, the book that will devastate her heart for another entire night? No. She scoffs as the cover reveals a young woman in a flowing dress draped either in blood, darkness or a tangle of vines. Tap. Tap. Tap. She stops at a book called Fear, interesting. One word usually denotes a sort of poetic simplicity. Now for the cover. The side of a girl's face with curly lettering over her and the words 'can she blank or will she blank'. The answer is always yes, she can or yes, she does. No, I will not. Tap, tap, tap. Now she is in the letter D. Imagine, the entire alphabet is awaiting her arrival and she just skips over every imagining between A and C. Tap. Tap. Ah…hipster title, cover is black and white, only words. A world record in this shelf's world, she turns to the back cover. 'Boy upset at parents, girl upset at world. Will they find….'. Inner shrieking insues. Yes! They will! TAP. TAP. TAP. Pause. 

      If there was a back cover for her story it would start with 'will she find that devastating book for the night??' and it will be riveting to millions of teens that don't know that for once the answer would not be yes she will, but maybe. Her cover will be blank, because she would never read her self if she had a cover. 

     Tap. Tap. Here. Sandwiched between the romance of an angelic person and a demon (who is obviously not really evil or no self respecting nympho teen girl would read it), and girls being vicious, but other girls rising above it (because weirdness is way cooler than we think). The title is               anti-grammar and the cover is the back of a postcard. The back cover starts with 'Shut up and read me.' and the inside cover is blank. The author doesn't even have a picture of herself on it. She taps the cover lightly and bites the inside of her cheek. She closes her eyes and opens to the first page. 

      I imagine her telling me, 'if I want to turn the page I will read the rest. And so on.' I imagine her talking to me at all, that makes me devastated by being creepy. I watch as she quickly reads three pages and begins to smile. I feel a certain sense of giddy pride. Never again will I pick up a book at random and rip open the contents like that lascivious demon in the romance next to the greatest book on earth. I never considered the teen section the seed of happiness until I met Vervain. I also never tried vervain tea until she dropped her library card and I, a hapless creep confiscated it and waited, taping it lightly against the front desk where I left off my political pins and band tee's because librarians are not allowed to have opinions. Tap. Tap. Tap. I found my devastation.