Nau — Paige Turner

Paige grew up surrounded by the scent of old paper and the quiet rustle of dust jackets. At sixteen, she could recommend a perfect book for any ailment: Jane Eyre for a broken heart, The Hobbit for a lost sense of adventure, Gatsby for disillusionment with the rich kids at school. But Paige herself had a problem she couldn’t solve. She was, as she put it, “tectonically shy.” She lived between pages, not among people.

That night, Paige didn’t go back upstairs. She sat on the floor of that impossible library, reading her own untold stories. The fear she felt before every job interview. The way she’d memorized her father’s breathing patterns to know if he was angry. The novel she’d written in secret for three years and deleted in one night because she was afraid it was bad. paige turner nau

The first page was a table of contents, but the chapters weren’t numbers. They were dates. Her dates. Page 1: The Day You Were Born, 3:47 AM. Page 14: The First Time You Lied (to Mrs. Crandall about the missing brownie). Page 32: The Day You Almost Kissed Leo Feng. She flipped to Page 32. The page was blank except for a single line of text that seemed to be writing itself as she watched: She hesitated. The moment passed. Leo went on to study in Prague and marry a violinist. Paige grew up surrounded by the scent of