Skye walked up to the front of the library with Diana in front of her. Before going in she tied Diana’s leash to a tree and pat her on the head.

“You know the drill. I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” she said to the dog.

Diana barked in reply and Skye pushed through the library doors and entered the air conditioned building.

She took a deep breath and took in the smell of books. She loved going to the library. There was little more she loved than taking home a library book and curling up on the carpet beside Diana as she read.¹

She walked up to the front desk and greeted the librarian.

“Hello, Ms. Briony!”

The librarian looked up at her with a smile.

“Hello, Skye! How’s my huntress doing?”

“She is doing good.”

“Are you practicing enough for the competition?”²

“Yeah.”

“That’s good. Call me up if you need any help, after all, we can’t be satisfied with 3rd place like last time!”

“Yeah, I was really feeling that last competition. I can’t believe I lost!”

Ms. Briony patted her shoulder. “Hey, that just means you need to get better and since you’re my pupil, I’m going to help you with that. Anyway, what can I get for you? Any book in mind?”

“Nah, I’m going to browse ,but first I need to return these,” replied Skye as she put a few books on the desk.

“Well, we just got a new set of books so have fun,” the librarian replied as she went to work.

“I will,” Skye replied over her shoulder.

Skye walked between the bookshelves until she reached the realistic fiction section.

“Let’s see,” murmured Skye. “I’m feeling for……”

Skye began to scan through the books on the shelf with her finger.  Her finger stopped on a book called Ms. Jock and Mr. Nerd.³ She pulled the book from the shelf and read the back. The story was set in a high school and was about two people from different cliques falling in love. Event hough the genders were reversed, the story still seemed rather cliche.

Nonetheless, Skye glanced around to see if anyone was watching her before putting the book in her bag to bring to the checkout desk. High school romances were a bit of a guilty pleasure for her. Only her dad and the librarians knew.

“I don’t see anything wrong with you liking these kinds of books” he said when she had left one of her books on the table and was reading it. He smiled as he continued. “It’s nice to know my little girl still has a cute side.”

Skye sighed and shook the memory out of her mind. For the most part she had lost interest in “cute” things when her mom died. Her mother wanted her to grow up to be a strong, capable, and independent woman and that’s what she would be. She got good grades, she could cook and clean, had a life outside of a relationship and she could defend herself.⁴

Miss Independent.

Things like love triangles and struggles between high school cliques didn’t factor into that……….but Skye liked those kind of books anyway.

Skye then continued to look for books.

               ********************

Finn strolled towards the entrance of the library.

‘I wonder if they’ve got

1.You know the phrase “write what you know” well back in this period of my life, every single story I wrote featured a bookworm as a prominent character.

2. Relatively recently I’ve helped my friend edit the book she was writing at the time I was writing this story. Rereading this now, I can see a lot of things that I got from her. The climax of her book was an archery competition.

3. If you look it up, on Wattpad especially, you can probably find a novel just like this.

4. I think I wanted Skye to be a sort of girlboss who didn’t need anyone. Or at least someone who tried to be that. I think in her immature state of mind, she may have been the type of person to think herself better than others.