Chapter Text
I only write when I’m inspired, but I’m inspired every day. An author Adora heard about once said that, and she was greener for it.
Every year since she was eleven she made it her goal to read twenty-five books a year. At first this was pretty difficult, jumping from one three-hundred page novel about Newfoundland fishermen to a two-hundred page book about a group of cats coming together for their secret club, was akin to slow-moving trains giving her whiplash. When she was eleven she spent all of her winter break trying desperately to catch up and complete her goal. It was when she was fourteen that the goal became easy and she was eighteen did she start passing her goal by. Adora read through what had to be at least double her goal when she graduated high school. Everywhere she went, in her purse or in her backpack was at least one book and a dozen bookmarks. In a day and age where students were lambasted for gluing their eyes to cell phones, Adora had it pretty easy reading in class. What teacher was gonna give a kid crap for reading, after all?
But she paid attention to her studies and was a runner-up to Valedictorian but a few other girls from wealthier families petitioned her as a candidate. Not that she didn’t mind, because she still received plenty of scholarships to all kinds of colleges. Even Yale sent her a letter. But, Adora was the kind of girl who liked visiting not so much moving and she picked a school in Texas. Out of a choice between the University of Texas down in Austin or Texas Tech, only an hour’s drive away.
Well, Adora liked saving on gas and sticking around her roots, so a Red Raider she became. She pursued a Master in Library Science and Information which didn’t surprise anyone since she kept her nose in books all the time, and most people thought that Adora would be an old woman with plastic glasses and fake nails at a computer for a university when all was said and done. Adora would agree, except for the glasses and nails part since she had good vision and thought herself too butch for nailwork. What Adora really had in mind was her nose in one of her own stories.
That was the real reason why Adora read all those books. She heard from a young age that a writer must want to write and read a lot if they ever hope to tell a good story. Adora took that to heart and read all kinds of books to find ones she liked and ones she wanted to write like. And, she found her own writing wasn’t half-bad. The problem was she never knew what she wanted to write about. She tried thinking of random ideas but none of them stuck. She went to websites that suggested plots and premises to try out but it wasn’t for her. Adora wanted to write so bad but. It wasn’t gonna come. That was the horrifying conclusion.
All of Adora’s life, she never left her part of the world. She had spent her whole life in West Texas among cattle and oil wells, and never once left the Lone Star State. Hell, she struggled to remember if she ever left West Texas!
And on that lonely day, right at the beginning of Summer when she would be all by her lonesome in the dead hours of a bookstore when hardly anyone showed up, she received a surprise.
She was reading the first book in a series called the Iron King that was supposed to be about French nobles and also the predecessor to the Song of Ice and Fire, wanting to get home when a visitor stopped by. She was Mexican and had long, wild, brown hair brushed back so none of it was in her face, and behind her black aviators was a yellow and turquoise eye. She wore a leather jacket over a tank top, jeans with cut patches on top of a pair of boots. But the first thing that Adora noticed was the woman’s hands, which were covered by leather gloves with the ends of the fingers torn open.
“Yeah, hi. Can I get this or?” she asked after dropping a copy of the first Maximum Ride book.
Adora was shocked that they had a visitor, especially during this part of the day, and didn’t know how to respond. Then she saw the book and felt an aneurism coming on, “Are you sure you wanna read this? It’s kinda a kids book.”
“I haven’t read books since I was five. And it looks cool. It has a girl with wings, what’s cooler than that?” she asked rhetorically.
“Ok, ok, fair,” Adora laughed, “Can I see your Student ID?”
Adora didn’t notice, but the girl’s hand went back to her side, “I’m not a student. Here. Is that gonna be a problem?”
Adora shook her head, “Oh no! It isn’t, I just assumed that you went to school here! We give discounts to students with ID!,” this girl had an effect on Adora. Her aviators were tinted to hide her eyes from someone who wasn’t looking, but with only a table between them Adora could see the look in her eyes. A full glare, and even though Adora stood taller, she couldn’t shake the feeling like she was being looked down upon. She looked down at her gloves again and saw her left index finger tapping the wood with a thud, “Well, that book’s gonna be six dollars. Is that alright with you?”
The girl raised an eyebrow, “If it was alright with me, it would be free. But if you want an answer to your question, then yeah. It’s alright,” she said, dropping bills on the counter.
Adora counted the bills and cashed them into the register. She assumed that this customer had no desire for a receipt and didn’t bother to print one, “I hope you like it, and please take a bookmark! It’ll save you from needing to remember!” she smiled, “And, if you get done with it, maybe you can come back for more?”
She grabbed the book and nodded, “Well. We’ll just see if I like reading before I finish it. Thanks,” she pulled down her aviators and smiled, “I’ll see you around, Adora.”
She watched her walk away and blushed without knowing, “H-how did you know my name?”
Before she walked out of the library the girl looked back and laughed, “It’s on your nametag, dork!”
Adora looked down at her chest and indeed her name was on. She even discovered that it was upside down.
The girl left the bookstore to the small parking lot in front of it. There she expected her motorcycle, a Triumph New Bonneville to be alone. Instead it stood next to a Harley Night Train, and its owner leaned against a nearby tree.
“Going out for smokes?” his voice sounded like he smoked cigarettes since he was born, “Or did you get the milk I asked you for?”
The girl sneered, “Just got something to pass the time. Don’t get up my ass about it,” she dropped the book in her bike’s sidebag and got on her bike and kicked the stand back, “You coming back or are you just gonna try and look cool in front of an empty lot?”
He grunted, “Don’t draw attention to yourself, Cat.”
She rolled her eyes, “Whatever, Kid,” she turned the ignition on and rode off ahead, leaving him behind. She weaved in and out of traffic, ran red lights and ignored the speed limit. She was in complete control of her bike, but her eyes kept going back to that memory of that librarian, “I really hope I like reading like I told her. I would like an excuse to see that face again.”