If He Had Been with Me

by Laura Nowlin

I was quirky and odd and I did not have

any friends besides Finny. He could have had other close friends if he wanted; he was good at sports and nothing was odd about him. He was sweet and shy and everyone liked him. The girls had crushes on him. The boys picked him first in gym. The teachers called on him for the right answer.

I tell myself relationships are hard work. No one is perfect. There’s

I go to my favorite chair by the window to start one of the books I got. I have a nice pile I am looking forward to working through in the next week we still have off.

the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever. I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again. I sigh and look out across the backyard. Today is the

For the rest of your life, no one will ever treat you as well.”

I’ve loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn’t change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child.

And I know that winter is supposed to end, but things are not always the way they are supposed to be.

Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life;

Books take me to another world!