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summary of a book that they found on the Internet and wrote a report
based on that. They all complained, however, that the report had been
hard work, and they were glad the assignment was finished.
In the midst of all this activity, Leah sat quietly in her desk, her
report resting in front of her. She still felt proud of it and couldn't wait to
turn it in, but despite her sense of pride, she didn't feel any desire to brag
or to share her sense of accomplishment with her classmates. It was
enough for her to know that she had written a great report. She sat
patiently, exhibiting an outward appearance of modesty while underneath
the surface her ego was as inflated as anyone else's.
After the bell rang and Mrs. Meyer finally got her excited class's
attention, she asked them to pass their book reports forward. Once she
collected them, she then surprised the class by asking them to open their
vocabulary books. No one had expected to do anything other than turn
in their book reports. As Leah pulled her vocabulary book from her
56 | Leah
backpack and opened it to the new list of words, her teacher announced
that there would be a test over the new words exactly one week from that
day. The class groaned, but Leah still felt happy. Her book report had put
her in a good mood and she couldn't wait to learn her grade. For now,
though, she tried to focus on her new vocabulary list. "The first word on
the list," Mrs. Meyer said, "is aggrandize. Can anyone tell me what that
word means?"
S e v e n
BECAUSE she read it for a book report, Leah finished The
Biomechanics of Insect Flight earlier than she had expected. Soon after she
finished writing the report, Leah began reading the final book purchased
from August's garage sale odyssey: the book titled, The Social Construction
of the Ocean. Leah hoped to squeeze at least a couple weeks' worth of
reading out of it, but instead she found herself sailing through the
chapters faster than expected, and the day after she turned in her book
report, Leah was reading the last page of her ocean book. She needed
new books.
She went to her mother and briefly, but directly, explained her
problem. Mrs. Nells reluctantly agreed to take her daughter shopping for
some new books. She had mixed feelings about her daughter's unusual
pastime. From her point of view, Leah's reading was one of the things
preventing her from socializing and making friends. Why bother meeting
people and engaging with the world when you can bury your nose in a
book? On the other hand, it didn't feel right to openly discourage Leah's
apparent love for books. She wanted Leah to do well in school, and all of
the extra reading that her daughter did certainly couldn't hurt. So while
Mrs. Nells hated buying books for her daughter, she never denied Leah's
requests for more. Instead, she tried to discourage Leah through less
58 | Leah
direct means. Mrs. Nells demanded that Leah accompany her when she
went shopping for books; going out and spending an hour among
strangers was the price Leah had to pay for the chance to stock up on
fresh reading material. Leah would have preferred to stay home and let
her mother do all the shopping, but Mrs. Nells wouldn't stand for that. "I
never know what it is you like to read," she argued. Mrs. Nells also
refused to pay for brand new books so Leah's entire collection consisted
of used books bought from garage sales, used book stores, and book fairs
put on by the city's public libraries.
Leah talked to her mother on Thursday, but Mrs. Nells didn't
have time to take Leah shopping until the weekend. This meant Leah
needed to find a substitute book to fill the time while she waited. She
went to her bookshelf and found a book on ancient Greek architecture
that she read last December. As she recalled, she enjoyed the book, and
as she began to reread the first chapter, she felt transported back through
time to last year, two weeks before Christmas. Leah fostered the illusion
by pretending that it was the year before, and she found that she enjoyed
that experience far more than the book itself.
Leah's feelings of nostalgia, though, were replaced Saturday
afternoon by the more familiar feeling of anxiety as she prepared to go
shopping with her mother. Leah dressed in her usual school clothes while
Mrs. Nells, free from the stress of her career and the demands that her
job placed upon her, simply wore an old T-shirt and blue jeans. She
invited her husband to come along, but he declined, saying there was
some work that needed to be done around the house. What he really
meant was that a football game was on TV that afternoon. So the women
of the family climbed into Mrs. Nells' car and went shopping.
This time, their destination was not a local garage sale, for there
weren't many at this time of the year. Instead, Mrs. Nells drove to a
nearby used book store which Leah and her mother had visited a few
times before. Leah didn't really like the store because of its owner: an
older man with white hair who was as cheerful and sociable as Leah was
quiet and reserved. He spoiled her idea of reading as a solitary activity.
The old man seemed to prefer spending his time wandering the aisles of
J.M. Reep | 59
his small store, chatting with the customers, while one of the teenagers
who worked part time for him manned the cash register. Leah didn't
know the man's name, and she was sure that he didn't know hers, but she
still believed though maybe she was just being paranoid that the old
man always remembered her from past visits. The last time Leah visited
the store the old man spoke to her and remarked how good it was to see
a reader Leah's age come in every now and then. Although she tried to
avoid him when she shopped at the store, the old man inevitably found
her and talked to her. He always wanted to know what books she was
looking for or what she had chosen. Shopping for books should have
been an enjoyable experience for her, but the old man robbed her of
whatever pleasure she might have enjoyed.
The bookstore was part of a mini-mall less than a mile from
Leah's home. When she and her mother arrived early in the afternoon,
they found that the parking lot was almost full, but Leah didn't know
how many of those cars represented customers in the bookstore. The last
time she shopped here, there were several customers inside. She hoped
that wouldn't be the case this time.
Mrs. Nells parked the car and they got out. Leah let her mother
lead the way while she followed closely behind. They went inside the
store and the first thing Leah did was look for the old man, but she saw
only a pimpled, red-headed teenage boy just a couple years older than
herself standing behind the cash register and taking money from a
middle-aged woman who was buying a stack of horror novels. Also in
the front of the store was a display of brand new books; apparently, used
books were no longer the only thing the store was selling. Leah's eyes
were attracted to the glossy, colorful dust jackets and the big, bold titles
of the books, but she found they were mostly hardbound editions of
popular novels. Uninterested in the novels, she moved on. The rest of
the small store consisted of five long aisles of shelves that were crammed
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