Hello Stranger

by Jade West

The glass is always half full in my world, even when there’s no water left to drink. After all, you still have the glass there ready for some more…

As I flicked open the pages, I found myself wondering if she’d read the Mikhail Bulgakov masterpiece. I found myself wondering if she’d sunk into the same scenes that I’d sunk into a hundred times over, just as deeply as I’d sunk into them, and if she’d pondered the same thoughts over the same words.

Reading time was the only time I ever truly allowed myself. The only time I slipped out of my own world into someone else’s and left the heaviness of mine behind. My only escape.

“That’s the curse of the most powerful stories, isn’t it?” he said. “They never let you go.”

But this was it. This was always it. Disorganisation, and lateness, and not getting to sleep on time. I’d been like this since a tiny girl, battling my parents constantly over reading past bedtime, and I’d never stopped. I’d never stopped but I needed to. Right now, I needed to.

I promised that when I got on the train in the morning I’d walk right the way through from beginning to end, and if I saw him there, the beautiful bookworm stranger, I’d sit by him. As close as I could get. Then one day, maybe – maybe even that same day, I’d ask him the question. What is your favourite novel?