Funny Story

by Emily Henry

1 WEDNESDAY, MAY 1ST 108 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE Some people are natural storytellers. They know how to set the scene, find the right angle, when to pause for dramatic effect or breeze past inconvenient details. I wouldn’t have become a librarian if I didn’t love stories, but I’ve never been great at telling my own.

“And if the soundtrack to A Star Is Born starts playing, just don’t be alarmed. Because the ghost likes that one too.” “This ghost gets more tragic by the second,” I say. “He’s perfectly fine, thank you,” Miles says. “Thriving?” I ask. “Thriving,” he agrees.

As a devoted fan of control, I never had a big weed phase, but annoyingly the voice in my head reminding me of that isn’t my own; it’s Peter’s. And I don’t want it there. It has no right to keep echoing through my skull.

I’m not sure what parts of me are him and which parts are genuinely my own. And I want to know. I want to know myself, to test my edges and see where I stop and the rest of the world begins.

“It’s a library, Daphne. If you can’t be a human here, where can you?”

It’s funny: As a kid, I had no idea how to interact with other kids. I felt most at home with Mom and her friends. But as an adult, I find kids so much easier to understand.

“My mom and I used to play this game we called Whiny Babies. We’d just take turns complaining about smaller and stupider things until we ran out. Like, the girl I sat next to in English lit chewed her pencil really loudly. Whoever had the smallest complaint got to choose dinner.” The corner of his mouth curls. “Sounds like a blast.” “It was, actually,” I say. “Sometimes complaining about stuff, just having someone to empathize with you, takes the sting out of it.”

“Not a big reader.” “I know that’s a possibility,” I say, “and yet I truly cannot fathom it.” “What do you like about it,” he says. “Everything,” I say. His mouth curls. “Fascinating.” “I like that it feels like I can live as many lives as I want,” I say.

“What about audiobooks?” I say. “Does that count?” he asks. “Of course it counts,” I say. His eyes narrow. “Are you sure?” “I’m a librarian,” I say. “If anyone gets to decide whether it counts or not, it’s me.”

We joked I would thrive in an apocalypse, because I was kind of scrappy, already used to living on noodles, and could probably be pretty happy talking to no one for days on end, if I had enough books around.

You can’t force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don’t. Trust people’s actions, not their words. Don’t love anyone who isn’t ready to love you back. Let go of the people who don’t hold on to you. Don’t wait on anyone who’s in no rush to get to you.

“A good librarian makes all the difference.”

“I actually think I like it,” I say. “I’m just not good at it, and it stresses me out feeling like I’m making someone wait on me.”

“I guess it’s nice being around people who’ve made it through shit, you know?” He shrugs. “Like probably all their worst mistakes are behind them, and they know who they are now, and how to be who they want to be.”

“A part of me is just waiting,” I rasp, “for the moment when you see whatever it is that drives people away. And I don’t want that. I don’t want you to stop wanting me around. I think it might break my heart to be someone you don’t like.” “Fuck. Daphne.” His hands come up to my face. “Do you want to know why your dad doesn’t stick around?” Tears sting the back of my nose, but I nod. It’s the question I’ve never been able to stop asking, no matter how badly it hurts. “Because you see him,” Miles says. “And he can’t stand it.

“You make the people you care about feel like…” He pauses. “Like you want all of them. Not just the good parts. And that’s terrifying to someone who’s spent a lifetime avoiding those other pieces of themselves.”

Someday I’ll be okay, someday.

All those moments throughout the days, weeks, months that don’t get marked on calendars with hand-drawn stars or little stickers. Those are the moments that make a life. Not grand gestures, but mundane details that, over time, accumulate until you have a home, instead of a house. The things that matter. The things I can’t stop longing for.

The same universe that dispassionately takes things away can bring you things you weren’t imaginative enough to dream up.

“It’s how Daphne and I got together.” Miles’s arms tighten around me. Elda claps her hands together. “Oh, I love a good meet-cute. Let’s hear it.” I crane my neck over my shoulder to look at him. His dimples sink into his beard, and it feels like my heart is unzipping, stepping out of its calloused skin, a glowing, sunlit thing. “Funny story…” he says, but he doesn’t go on, just watches me and waits. He knows how much I love to tell it.