Untitled
By: misterjunior
It’s not the best thing i’ve ever written but it’s not the worst thing i’ve ever written so here goes nothing. I’m cheating here cuz i wrote this for a class but i’m gonna try and make this a monthly thing #resolution2k15
The first time Rosemary laid eyes on me, I knew we’d be inseparable. She practically begged her mother to let her take me home, and all the way there she wouldn’t put me down. She hopped into her mother’s car and opened me up right then and there. Her awkward, pudgy hands held me firmly as her eyes darted rapidly across my crisp, white pages.
The first reading was as exciting for me as it was for her. I didn’t mind that her hands were almost always covered in chocolate smudges or that she kept her place by crumpling my corners. The smudges became tracks on the pages, like a trail that let me feel her journey through me. She read so often and without pause that she hardly needed to deform me. And I was so young, I felt like I could take it. I thought, why let something else do for her what I can do myself?
She was overly emotional, Rosemary. Or extremely sensitive. I could never peg her as one or the other. When the prince fought the pirate, she gripped me tighter, breaking by back. She laughed so obscenely when the pirate and princess first met, I felt it right down my spine. When the end came and the pirate died in his love’s arms, she silently cried and let her tears dampen my pages.
When the first reading ended she didn’t even put me on her shelf.
She never put me on her shelf. To her, I didn’t belong there. I belonged always in her hands, in her bag, under her covers with her flashlight on me, on her lap under tables.
She opened me up so many times.
Rosemary was my first. She ravaged me, but I could not escape the high that someone finally read me.
Anna was Rosemary’s friend. I was ‘borrowed’. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, so I thought it was going to be another first read.
I was so naïve.
There was this thing called a ‘report’. I had no idea that I could be used for such a thing. It was nothing at all like readings with Rosemary. I don’t even think I was read. Anna just flipped through me, looking for things to copy. She flipped right past the bit where Rosemary laughed at the pirate’s jokes, and the part that made her say, ‘What?’ She flipped right past the page where Rosemary fell asleep reading the pirate’s plan to rescue the princess.
Anna used her word copier nonstop, only glancing at me occasionally to see what part of me she hasn’t imitated on her click-clacking machine. Not once did I get to feel her hands against my back or see her eyes take in all that was happening inside me. I only got cold glimpses of those grey eyes. She used the tips of her fingers to hold me open, flat against the table, nothing more. She sneezed on me. Twice.
If Rosemary was a flower, Anna was a rock. Hard, steely, unfeeling, and just disgusting overall. There’s no way for me to get her misted snot off of me.
The whole week I was with Anna, I was merely a prop in her life.
I wanted to throw myself into a fire.
Mike was a strange one. He drove around in his car bringing Rosemary to places like ‘school’. On the rare occasion when she left me on the seat he’d pick me up to read. His hands were much bigger than hers, and his brown eyes didn’t bore into me as much as hers did. Even still, he wouldn’t put me down. His huge hands held me comfortably. His eyes danced across my pages without hesitation. He, too, enjoyed the story of the pirate and the prince battling over the princess, of the giant and the magic man. Though outwardly he thought the story inconceivable, I could feel him following the chocolate trail left by his sister with just as much intensity, but never more.
I spent years on Rosemary’s shelf, gathering dust with the rest of her past companions. Some of them were even more beat up than I was. Some had no faces and were fully exposed. Where others lacked firm spines, there was tape. One had no spine at all, reduced to a pile of loose pages. I wasn’t in her company long enough to warrant those battle scars. Why didn’t she love me like she loved them? The thought often crossed my mind.
I began suffering my own little autumn. My rips and folds began to soften. On the outside, dust settled in the dents in my cover as I lay facing the ceiling. If only I’d been placed upright, hugging the others, being each others’ eternal crutch. I might’ve been paranoid, but I felt like the dust was suffocating me. I was going to suffocate on Rosemary’s shelf forever.
A hand reached out and grabbed me. I don’t know how many years it’d been since I’d been held. I gave up keeping track.
The tiny hand was smaller than any I’d been with before. I think I was twice the size of it. It clumsily brushed the dust off my face and spine. When it turned me over, I saw Rosemary. But it wasn’t Rosemary. She had her eyes, and a similar face, but I didn’t know her.
“Momma,” the girl said. “What’s this one about?”
“Bring it here, Emily!” A voice from another room called out. It sounded familiar.
Nestled in her tiny hand, I galloped into the other room. I hadn’t been moved in so long. The world was spinning, rocking, bouncing, and I didn’t know what to make of any of it.
Suddenly, everything stopped.
“Oh, this one was one of my favorites,” said the voice.
I saw her. Rosemary. Her hair was longer. Her face looked aged, though it still showed fewer wrinkles than my pages. But her eyes shone at the sight of me as if she were seeing me in the shop for the first time, bright and new.
“Can I read it?” The little one asked eagerly.
“Hmm.” Rosemary was tentative, as was I. As fantastical as I was, I don’t think the little one would appreciate the pirate’s clever wit or the giant’s loveable bluntness. Rosemary thought the same.
“Not yet, sweetheart. When you’re a bit older,” she replied.
Something soft brushed against me. A tail. It knocked me off the shelf. I landed in a poof of dust. I heard footsteps coming in from the other room.
“Are you knocking things over again?” It asked.
Something leaped down. The cat attached to the tail.
Rosemary walked in and struggled to bend over and pick it up.
“What’s this?”
She blew the dust off and scrutinized me through a pair of glasses sitting on her face. I didn’t know she needed glasses. Her brown eyes stared at me underneath a mop of grey hair. Her eyes lit up with recognition.
Rosemary placed me in her bag. I heard a car engine starting but I didn’t know where it was heading. When it finally stopped there was the sound of more footsteps, a doorbell, chatter. I was jostled in the oversized bag. It reminded me of the backpack she used when she was fourteen.
Suddenly the noise was everywhere. I was pulled out and placed into chubby hands.
“Take good care of this one,” Rosemary said.
I looked that the face and the pale green eyes staring back at me. It had traces of her in it, but not many.
“Thanks, grandma,” it said.
I never saw Rosemary again after that.
Violet opened me gently. She ran her fingers over the aged paper, the folds and wrinkles. she turned to the first page.
She may not look like her grandmother, but she does read like her.
Violet was my new first.
