No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

Author:Erica Bauermeister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

Which meant another bleary-eyed morning in English class. Nola had, regretfully, left the scarf behind in the shed. She would have liked to have brought it. She’d worn it the whole night, its scent accompanying her as she followed the boy’s story, watched him grow and fight both his father and himself. But she could only bring the boy with her to class, his thoughts mingled into hers until she wasn’t sure where the division was.

It had always been that way for Nola, those days when she was caught deep in a book and the character lingered with her even when she wasn’t reading, her dreams someone else’s story, her vision that of someone else’s eyes. Nola’s mother used to joke that she was an Octopus cynea, a species that changed its colors to match its surroundings, its skill so subtle it could even mimic the passing shadows of clouds overhead.

“You go so deep,” her mother said when ten-year-old Nola surfaced from her most recent book.

And Nola had imagined a sea of words, an ocean of possible colors.

In the years after the accident, reading had changed for Nola, the characters becoming lifelines. Karana of the Island. Meg Murry. Francie Nolan. Melba Beals. Beryl Markham. Katniss. Lisbeth. Escape hatches turning into flight plans. Their words, hers. Their lives, hers.

Her life, hers.

As long as nobody found out what that really meant.

“Oh my god, I explicitly told them soy milk,” Tina announced as she entered the room, a white to-go cup raised in her hand like Lady Liberty’s torch. “Idiots.”

Nola considered Tina. In the spectrum of natural survival techniques, Tina was less Octopus cyanea and more Arapaima gigas, an Amazonian fish with scales so thick not even piranhas could chew through them. Tina’s protection was made of iron-clad truths: hair products really did make a difference. Only losers ate gluten. Only unintelligent people were poor, or baristas. A simpler way of interacting with the world, although it did make the gray areas of literature and life a bit trickier.

Ms. Hildegrand had once floated the idea that Nola and Tina could study To Kill a Mockingbird together. Trade some ideas, she’d said hopefully. But that was last year, when Ms. Hildegrand was still new to the school.

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