It wasn’t until my nose was touching the book that I’d realized the sun had gone down. At that point, I finally noticed just how uncomfortable I was: both my feet had fallen asleep, I felt goose bumps on every inch of my body, and the words on the page were starting to look like scattered blotches of ink. But none of it mattered. Nothing was going to stop me from finishing the last chapter.
When I woke up that morning, (which means 1pm in teenager), all I wanted was to just stay wrapped up in my blanket, safe from all of my summer assignments that, of course, I’d left for the last week of my freedom. After spending two months away from anything even remotely cerebral, I figured there was no way I would stay focused trying to read a 400 page book about the history of the United States. So I decided to warm up my brain with something a little easier.
My friend Carli had just leant me a book that she claimed was the best she’d ever read-- The Pact by Jodi Picoult, (she never discovered the Harry Potter series.) I figured I might as well give this one a whirl though, because staying in bed all day reliving all the great moments of the summer in my head was not going to get me anywhere in life. This book that she absolutely worshiped was The Pact by Jodi Picoult. The synopsis on the back told me that it was a love story between two teenagers that wrecked everything when they made a suicide pact. I wasn’t quite ready for breakfast yet, so I immediately went and sat outside on the terrace outside of my sister’s bedroom and started to read.
By six o’clock, it dawned on me that I still hadn’t eaten anything. It pained me to have to put down the book, but I made the sacrifice for the four minutes it took me to run to the kitchen and grab whatever was in sight, and shove it down my throat. It could have been peanuts for all I cared; the throwing up I’d do all night from eating the one food I was allergic to would have been worth getting back to the lives of Chris and Emily as fast as possible. (Luckily for me, it definitely wasn’t peanuts, and I made it through the night without burning my esophagus.)
Never had I been so engrossed in the lives of people that were completely made up. There was nothing at that was more important to me than what the court would conclude happened the night Emily had died. The only things I thought about for hours were the new groups of words presented to me every time I turned the page. The summer, my assignments, my friends… they were all meaningless compared to this other world.
I read every single word from page one all the way until page three-hundred eighty-nine, all in one sitting. It was the first time I ever stayed in one spot as the earth actively spun into the night. I went to bed that night feeling like a different person—someone who for the first time submitted herself entirely into the power of words. And yet, someone who still couldn’t bear to start her homework.