No Two Persons

by Erica Bauermeister

“You get the world they give you, Alice,” he said, reaching for his backpack. “I’m sorry.” But he was wrong, Alice told herself. He had to be. Books, by their very existence, proved that.

every story—even the most fantastical—is grounded in things we already know, and every book is about questions that have already been asked.”

“The trick for a writer,” the professor continued, “is to take those eternal questions, those known bits and pieces, and put them together in a way that helps us see our world in a different light. That’s where you come in.”

“What is a story if we don’t tell it?” Professor Roberts asked. A secret, she thought.

Wandering is a gift given only to the lost.

But the point of view in Theo basically told you that complete empathy was impossible, while still, in every sentence, yearning for it.

Miranda loved the art that lay in the overlap, the mixing of metaphors and genres.

Wandering is a gift given only to the lost.

Because wasn’t that what art was all about, in the end? Mentally shoplifting your way through the world around you, the thoughts inside you? Looking for the thing that makes it all click. Makes it all start. Makes it all worthwhile and whole and good again.

This new piece was different. Its materials reached back into a past that wasn’t hers, a history she could hold in her hands, solid and unmistakable—and then, through her imagination, the pieces changed meaning, becoming hers, becoming her.

The lives in the books not hers, but the pain and tangled love so often the same, creating a community of sorts. Books answered the questions she couldn’t ask people.