Bokelskere.no

'How did it start?' he asks. 'The library thing'
I cast my mind back, to before grad school, before undergrad even, all the way to the first moment I remember loving a story. Feeling like I was living it. Being, even as a child, bowled over by how something imaginary could become real, could wring every emotion from me or make me homesick for places I’d never been.
'Narnia,' I tell him.
'Now, that one I’ve heard of,' he says.
'Ever since Mr. Tumnus showed up at that snowy lamppost, this world was never going to quite cut it for me.'
'Who’s Mr. Tumnus?' he asks.
'I thought you’d read it!' I cry.
'No, I’ve heard of it,' he corrects me.

Inside, the fluorescent lights take their sweet time flickering on.
I feel a pang of longing, Nostalgia, I guess, for every library I’ve ever loved, and the little girl who dreamed of this: being the first person in and the last out of a building brimming with books. And feeling like it belonged to me in a way, and I to it.
A home, when nowhere else felt right.
Harvey takes a deep breath. 'Don’t you love the way it smells?'
'So, so much,' I say.
'That right there' he says, 'is why I can’t retire. If could live in this feeling, I would.'