It was lunch time and I was busy nibbling alternately on a sandwich and the tip of my eraser. Some other girls around me were chatting and their voices blended in with the general noise of the cafeteria, which was sharp as jangling coins. I had my notebook open to a mostly blank page in front of me. Tightly furled scribbles darkened the curled-up corners but I hadn't written in it yet. I brushed at a curl of dark hair in the edges of my vision, thin and twisted like the pen strokes of my handwriting, and tucked it behind my ear.
The noise around me intensified as more girls settled at our table like a flock of landing geese. One knocked her elbow into my pile of books and said sorry without looking to see who she was saying it to. Wordlessly, I shifted away from them, closer to my group of friends.
I touched the point of my pencil to the page but didn't write. The essence of what I wanted to write was slowing condensing, but I couldn't think of the right word to start. Something which meant thick, but not heavy. Solid, but not smothering. The tip of the pencil broke as I pressed it harder on the page. This was why I liked pens, why I hated pencils (besides the smell of graphite and the raspy way they slid over paper).
Another girl knocked my books over, scattering two small, compact hard-covers to the floor. "Sorry. Can you move over?"
I raised my head to look at her, though she wasn't looking at me. She had dirty-blond hair and a nose with a small bump that gave her a haughty look, and very long eyelashes brittle with mascara. Not waiting for me to move, she stuffed herself onto the bench, one of her feet kicking my books away. A little bubble of anger burst on the tip of my tongue, but I didn't say anything. Those books were from the school library but I considered them mine. If anybody else ever took them out I would have been insulted. I had discovered them, the four books old and solidly square and alone, thickly-inked words old-fashioned and large. The excitement I'd felt to hold them, to smell their pages and breath in their story, could never be understood by a girl in yellow jeans and an uneven coat of concealer.
I slid off the bench to kneel on the floor and collect them. Their covers were shiny and comforting and worn at the edges.
