Her family always seemed to be on long car trips, particularly at night. These were the ones she disliked the most. She would try to read at night, but she would have to do it very meticulously, through the brief yellow dribbles of light and shadows from a passing street lamp or something. The yellow shadows that cast odd shapes on her book were scary, but at least she could see for a second, granted she hadn’t lost her place in the dark. When she would give up, she’d prop the book between the car door and her cheek and doze off. This is why she prefered paperbacks.


She was a reader for all of the years she knew how to do it. She wasn’t a Matilda of some sort or anything, she began at a normal age. She didn’t read to expand her mind or any other reason one could come up with for reading, she just did it to be entertained, like the same reason she watched television. When she was younger, she always read books above her reading level, written for teens or even adults, often about romance or war. When she got older, she began reading the novels aimed for a younger audience, often involving wizards and made-up words. There are two types of teenagers - those who are desperate to grow up, and try to do so by their heightened sense of importance in obtuse things like their love-lives or financial status - and those who are trying to cling to their childhood, to their immaturity, who begin wearing bright colors again and do stupid pranks and read childish books. She was the latter. This is why, as her dad drove her to her college for the first time, she put her book between her cheek and the car door and cried. Life was scary, especially when it was too dark to read.