Silence For the Dead

by Simone St. James

“I’m not educated,” I said. “I just read books.”

Books were a means to an end, even novels; for the more a person knew, the less she could be taken in.

My mind was very good at this, at moving my hands and feet and working while the rest of me shut down. My life, for a short time, was happening to someone else, and so I got through one moment, and then another, and then another.

I liked to think of a girl meeting West, falling in love with him, caring for him, making the depression go away. But I’d lived too long in the real world for that.