HanEul  and I sat side by side at the back of the library, the both of us consumed by our own books. She read with interest while I read halfheartedly. My book couldn’t hold my attention with her sitting beside me. I took quick glances at her each time she did something other than flip the page. The way her lips quivered as she read something funny yet didn’t want to laugh out loud, or the way her eyes fell as she read something sad. It was all so much more interesting than the pages of this book.

        She turned to me, noticing I hadn’t moved from the first page, “Do you not like it?”

         I avoided her eyes as I played with the book in my hands, “No, it’s just not what I want to read I guess.”

        “Do you want to look for another one then?” She shut her book and was about to stand up when I took her hand, “No.”

          HanEul looked at our hands and slipped hers out of my grasp before handing me one of her books, “Read this, then.”

          I paid no attention to the cover but at her hands. They were small but so soft. I finally met eyes with her and asked, “How do you know it’s the one?”

         Her face grew questionable as she stared at me, “What do you mean?”

        “I mean how do you know you found a good book?” I rephrased it with a chuckle as I understood what she thought I meant.

         She fiddled around with her book thinking my question over in her head, “Well, like I said before you just know. Then while you read it, you can’t put it down and you have to keep reading. You want to know more about the characters and what happens to them. Then, while you’re not reading it, it can sometimes be all you think about because you want to keep reading. Then when it’s over…You just can’t seem to forget about it and if it’s really a good book, you reread it over and over again. Oh, and then when you read other books you compare it to that one and just can’t get into it.”

         The way she talked about it, I could tell the one she was holding was her favorite. I snatched it from her with a playful smirk, “Let me see this one then.”

         “I don’t think you’ll like that one.” She argued reaching for it when I leaned back farther as she leaned over me to get it.

          Our chests touched as I leaned back completely so my back was on the ground with her on top of me, “If you want me that much, all you had to do was say so.” I teased, looking at her hand on my chest.

          HanEul's cheeks grew red. She backed away from me and hid her face, “Take it then, if you want to read it.”

           I looked at the book and it was the same book she had before, A Walk to Remember.

           “This must be your ultimate favorite book, huh?” I questioned as I read the back cover like she told me too.

           “Yes, it is,”I felt her eyes on me and when I looked up I was right. I sat with my back against the shelf and patted the space next to me, “Let’s read then, shall we?”

           She moved next to me, taking another book from the stack and opened it up to the first page. I did the same and decided to actually read this. Not because it held my interest, but because it held hers. If she liked this, I wanted to know why. This was the key to finding out more about her.

          The story was of young love. The bad boy falling for the nice girl, the girl is sick, the boy takes care of her and loves her like he’s never loved anyone before only to end up with the girl dying. What kind of sick twisted fairytale was this? And why did HanEul love it so much?

         But she was right. I sat for what felt like hours reading this book. It held my interest because I wanted to know what happened between these two characters. I hoped for them to be together because reading their story, I felt like Landon and I felt what he felt for Jamie. As I flipped the page to the next chapter, a light pressure came upon my shoulder. I looked down to see HanEul's head and smiled seeing for the first time that she had fallen asleep while reading a book.

        “I guess it wasn’t the one, huh?” I took the book from her hands and turned back to the one in my hands.

“You're a wonderful person, Jamie. You're beautiful, you're kind, you're gentle...you're everything that I'd like to be. If people don't like you, or they think you're strange, then that's their problem.”

-From A Walk to Remember

           I thought that this girl beside me was strange the first time I saw her. I thought of how could anyone find such joy from a book when life was going around you? But I see now the joy of reading or just books in general. They are life in a way; the difference being they come across as ink scrawled across a piece of paper.

I reread the line to myself as I leaned my head on top of HanEul's. I placed my lips on her hair giving her a small kiss before continuing on with the book.

I think I’ve found the one…

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A Walk To Remember is one of my favorites for sure!!!