Paige grew up surrounded by the scent of old paper and the quiet rustle of dust jackets. At sixteen, she could recommend a perfect book for any ailment: Jane Eyre for a broken heart, The Hobbit for a lost sense of adventure, Gatsby for disillusionment with the rich kids at school. But Paige herself had a problem she couldn’t solve. She was, as she put it, “tectonically shy.” She lived between pages, not among people.
Tears blurred Paige’s vision. For the first time in two weeks, a sob broke loose. It was ugly and loud. She cried until the words on the page smeared, and when she looked again, the paragraph had changed. paige turner nau
The first page was a table of contents, but the chapters weren’t numbers. They were dates. Her dates. Page 1: The Day You Were Born, 3:47 AM. Page 14: The First Time You Lied (to Mrs. Crandall about the missing brownie). Page 32: The Day You Almost Kissed Leo Feng. She flipped to Page 32. The page was blank except for a single line of text that seemed to be writing itself as she watched: She hesitated. The moment passed. Leo went on to study in Prague and marry a violinist. Paige grew up surrounded by the scent of
The glacier cracked. The sea rose. And Paige realized that the opposite of drowning was not staying dry—it was learning to swim. She was, as she put it, “tectonically shy