The Experience of Being Alive

Chapter Twenty

"Thank you Binny." Michel said, as they stood outside the door to the Secret Garden.

"For what?"

"For your poem. For hope."

Binny sighed. "What hope? I wrote that when I still thought it was possible to have a life in this place." Binny felt tired and spent.

"Maybe it is?"

"How exactly? Finding new and increasingly interesting ways to kill myself?" Binny joked darkly.

"Or, maybe you could find new and increasingly interesting ways to kick everyone's dessert across a room." Michel said. "Seriously though. Don't give up. OK? You may write that new chapter yet."

"Binny nodded, but she only agreed because Michel looked so eager for her to feel better. In her heart, she knew there was nothing to be done."

Binny took a half-step into the Secret Garden when a thought struck her. She looked back over her shoulder, but Michel had already blended into the crowd. Binny made her way across the library and walked the hallway until an arched entrance to the library made an appearance.

Binny walked through the maze of the library, not sure exactly where to go, but knowing she would know it when she saw it. And then it was there. A small alcove, tucked away, and private, with a comfy chair. Books rose on either side of the chair in dark wood bookcases.

Binny sat in the chair, closed her eyes briefly, and then started scanning the bookshelves. In seconds the teal spine revealed itself. Binny placed the book in her lap.

Maybe Michel was right. Well, maybe she had been right. There was another chapter to write. But she wouldn't be able to write it. The person who wrote her chapters was her author. And Binny had a sense that maybe knowing more about him would give her the clue she needed on how to get some control, any control of her life in the Stacks. Binny examined the book in her hands – The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past. Her book.

Arya had said she saw a picture of her author on the back flap. But Binny's book had no flaps. It was a paperback. The back cover was empty except for a bar code and the other half of the painting that graced the cover. Binny had only seen her book every morning in this form. The other girls had had paperbacks and hardcovers. Was Binny's not available in hardcover?

Binny scanned the book. Still the same story that she experienced every day when she would do her job. Some days it was early chapters, some days later. Binny knew it well now. But, the story ended on page 327. The book went all the way to page 336. There were nine more pages to examine that Binny had never looked at closely.

There was a section on what music the author thought the reader should listen to while reading the book. Who does that? Binny thought to herself. Binny kept flipping pages. There as a long acknowledgement section where the author thanked a lot of people she'd never heard of.

Though Binny did notice that he thanked his children. The author seemed to have three children of the same age as Binny, Cassie, and her brother Zach. Are me and my siblings based on his actual children? Is there some version of me out there in the real world? Something about that struck Binny as wholly unoriginal and kind of unsettling.

Binny turned the page. There was an entreaty to tell people about the book so they would read it. That was something. At least the author was trying to get people to read the book. Maybe Binny would last in the Stacks longer than she had feared. But was that really the preferred outcome? Binny pushed the thought out of her mind and turned the page.