My Story Orphanage

Half Price Books: a gold mine for a voracious reader. In grade school, those aisles filled with used books were my weekend getaway. I never knew what I would find, and that was what made it so fun. I would peruse the YA section, ready to read any genre I found intriguing on that particular day, from romance to thriller. With every book I picked up, I could feel past love for this story through the bent corners of the cover, juice stains in the pages, and sloppy initials written on the back. If I were lucky, these novels’ past owners would even leave me messages.

The first time I found a note written in my book, I didn’t see it until I had finished the story. After going through shelves upon shelves of books that day at my local Half Price Books, I settled on a mermaid fairytale with a sandy blue beach on the cover. That afternoon, I read the whole book, letting my mind indulge in the fantasy of magical fish-like people. Once I finished my tale, I noticed markings on the inside of the back cover. I flipped it open and saw a handwritten note left for the next reader: “MERMAIDS ARE REAL. NEVER STOP BELIEVING!!!”, written in all caps. This reader's message was like a time capsule of a young kid with an active imagination and the ambition to spread that creativity to others. Questions loomed large in my head about the former owner of this book. How many people read this book before me? Why did they give this book away? Do they still believe?

The following weekend, I went to Half Price Books with a goal: find more stories inside of stories. I scoured the pages and cover of books looking for hidden notes from strangers, each a message in a bottle waiting to be uncorked. Over the years, my bedroom filled up with inscribed used books. The top of my dresser became a sort of safe-haven for orphaned stories: once loved, now abandoned. With every book came another past reader’s life to ponder on. I have read messages of friendship, love, grief, and so much more. Still, a note on an inside cover never gave me the complete picture of a person; it was simply a piece to the puzzle, and I got to make up the rest of the pieces myself. My imagination stretched to fit these notes into elaborate story lines. If I wanted my pen pal from the past to be a firefighter going into a burning house to save their favorite book, the princess of Genovia, or Tinkerbell, they were. With every new made-up story, I felt I was fulfilling the mermaid book owner’s wish: never to stop believing.

In the past few years, each book has slowly left me. Through gifts to friends and donation boxes, my story orphanage was disbanded. As my time started to fill up with schoolwork and after-school activities, my ability to read for pleasure dwindled, and so did my trips to Half Price

Books. Now, as a soon-to-be adult, my imagination is not as robust as it was when I was seven or eight, but I can still let my mind wander on occasion. An engraving on a bathroom stall may not be from Tinkerbell, but it could be from my future college roommate, a distant relative, or just a stranger I understand a little better now. I know that time may rust my imagination, but I will always try to hold on tight to a little bit of that storytelling magic that made little me so eager to observe the world around her.