Chicklit Prompts || COMPLETED

Sucked In

Prompt #5

We all want it that feeling that feeling of being loved. From anyone, anyone at all. Maybe we don't deserve it maybe we can't stop it, but we crave it. Like a crack addict craves a fix, something to get him through the night.

She never had that feeling. She wanted it bad, everywhere she looked a couple took her eyes. So to keep from heart break she read. Reading books of high flying adventures, magic, true love, and tragedy. Was wanting one person to truly love you a crime? Her "parents" didn't love her, they loved the check that came every month for her.

Everyday a new book everyday a new story, a new adventure. Books were the only thing she had ever known, the only thing that made sense. Books always had an ending, a stopping point. If they didn't then she would read the next book, going on and on down the line until it ended. Breathing each word in and out, as if it was her life force. Harry Potter taught her to expand her imagination to believe in things that you can't actually see. The Box Car Children taught her resilience and quick thinking, Nancy Drew taught her to be observant.

Every page, every word, nouns, pronouns, verbs, oxymorons, and analogys, formed a picture in her mind, a branded picture that couldn't be erased. It was a memory, a cold hard fact. When she read she became lost but you could still find her. Reading, hanging on every last word, like you would if you were about to fall off a building. She loved being the person. The one who finds love. Other times she was off to the sides watching.

Sword fights, Womens rights, tattered lives. She read them all, her library was full over stacked. Piles and piles of books swelled her room into a closet. Like Narnia, a place where she would spend hours trying to forget. To forget that maybe no one was meant to love her, no one was ever going to notice her. The last word was always the worst one, because that meant it was over, that meant she had to return, return to the life she hates. She wanted to be a sought after Princess, or a Dragon Rider, but she couldn't, when that book laid on the bedside table, she was hit with an earth shattering realisation, she would never have it. Who would want a girl where a little more than half her face was taken up by a birth mark. Her belly was swelling with disappointment. Her heart is barley pumping, life could end at this very moment, but it won't she lives in her books, and her books will always live in her.

Late night's spent experiencing a world no one wants to see. She has no friends, no allies, she doesn't need them, she has Benvolio, Ron, Beth, and Gail. Who needs love when you have, Romeo, Jack, Noah, and Cal. She has everything and everybody she will ever need tucked into the pages of the books stacked in the corner. Reading was an escape ticket, and the dodging of a bullet. The bullet of reality.

Although her vocabulary was large the word "Self-esteem" wasn't one of them. She believed in love at first sight, but not that it was ever going to happen to her. It only happens to beautiful girls, because everyone wants to look at them. Maybe this wasn't healthy, to think like this, the way she thought. Books were the only thing that ever made sense to her.

Algebra and Geometry buzzed passed her mind. History was pointless unless in word form. Science was formulas, and chemical equations. In truth everything had letters. Letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraph, paragraphs into pages, and pages into books, novels. History was all written down in words. Math had formulas y= mx + b. Science was little letters paired with big letters, that meant words. Au, H, Fe, and K. Gold, Hydrogen, Iron, and Potassium. She understood the words, but not the math, and science behind them. Life was a swirling tornado of disasters and by her 14th winter in was hurdling straight towards her.

A new family worst then the last. Broken bottles, and fist to drywall. Screaming fights all night long. She read, escaping the anger in this world to the next. Debating whether it was all truly worth it. To keep going, that was a burden in itself. No one still noticed when her first blade, made it's first mark. No heard the silent cries, the ones she had practiced every night. The way she talked to herself in the mirror, bullying, hating, crying. In the end it was books that saved her. She caught herself counting down, instead of counting up. Becoming less instead of more.

She took a pen to paper and wrote her own story. One she could read all the time. Letters became words, words became sentences, sentences paragraphs, paragraphs pages, and pages into a novel. One she could read over and over one with everything she had ever inspired to be. Morals, beauty, and of course a love of her life. A war where every able bodied man fights.

Death wasn't there, she was immortal. Like all the Characters in her books, they would live forever. A hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years. As long as there was pages to be flipped and words to be read, they would live. Into the youth, to the poor and the rich. A common thread running through everyone's lives. Even if they don't like reading they have read one book in their lives. Whether for a school report, for fun, or to your kids. In a way she lived everyone's lives through reading what they read.

Maybe she will die alone with her depression and anxiety. In her mind she will die a princess, a master wizard, a Dragon rider, a star-crossed lover, a fighter, a dreamer, and even you.