Blame It On Paperbacks

Page 1

It’s 3AM and I’m still wide awake. I have just thrown a book against this wall for upsetting me way too much by how it ended. If it’s not worth 3 consecutive days of starving myself while staring at students digging in their plates at the cafeteria, I would have torn it in pieces. So, I just left it laid on the floor.

I’m Scarlet and I’ve been working on to knowing why my parents named a girl 18 years ago with a color that I may say I could live without. I waltzed my fingers across my phone’s screen, thinking that perhaps, Hazel Grace and Gus would’ve had a wonderful story together if only John Green were not sadist enough. Sometimes I hate getting stuck to lives of people I find in books, but on the other hand, I know that I can never run to anything better. Books are the best. They always will be.

The knob suddenly snapped and the door revealed my Mom’s slightly irritated face.

“Why are you still up?”

“I can’t sleep, Mom.” That line sounds like a stupid excuse to think of. But then, I can do nothing about it so I hoped that I would earn her sympathy and just leave me alone.

“I bet it must be the coffee. You’re no longer allowed to drink it if that’s how it affects your life. Go to sleep unless you made up your mind that you're not going to school tomorrow. Yet thinking otherwise will get you somewhere aside from this house." Her litany. She didn’t wait for my response and gently shut the door. My oh-so-sweet mother.

Oh, no. Goodbye coffee? No. Maybe I just have to try harder pressing off my mind at night and sleep as early as I can.

I lit my phone to check if someone texted or called. I found one message from my not-so-close friend slash classmate Haley:

​S, can I borrow your Every Day by David L.? Pls? Tnx. xx

Gee. Of couse, you’ll ask me. Everyone does. So I rolled my sight at the books piled in my shelf, finding the right book so it won’t take time for me to search for it by morning. Indeed, this morning. I’m talking about morning as if I’m referring to a morning the next day. But what I meant by morning is the morning including the 3hrs passed when I’m supposedly sleeping. I will only have 2hrs of sleep and I hope that there were some instances in your life where you were in the same situation.

***

“It’s because sometimes your happiness doesn’t matter,” Red muttered while she’s cramming her unfinished homework for the next subject. Sometimes I don’t understand why she talks as if Earth is about to arrive to its final revolution around the sun. But if ever you need someone to slap you with words or get you to long pauses of realization or just simply make you feel that there were still people who can make sense in this treacherous life, you must actually go after her.

"Why are you telling this? That makes me feel more insane than I have last night. I mean this morning," I complained. "It's just a story, S. Just a story. I don't even know why you're so engrossed of books when you'll never be in the same situation wherever your characters are." She again released words that brought twitching on my insides.

"You don't understand. Books are better transportations..." "...because they travel you to places the world can never afford to have  without having to pay for an expensive fare," she finished my sentence as she briefly looked up to scan me and went back to her work.

I sighed. I don't know how in the world she could be so radical but could appear so ruthless at the same time. "Why doesn't my happiness matter, by the way?" I asked.

"Because some people's happiness do. You have to understand that some stories aren't meant to have their happy endings. It might not be happy for you but as far as I'm concern, it did make John Green exceptionally happy because that's how he wants his story to end." Just right after the last word from her, our Chemistry teacher entered the room.