Page-Turner

by Nick Rossi

  “Hello, Darcy,” Marina said, her voice calm. She was wearing her signature red bun and flowing purple dress, and her perfectly applied lipstick.

  “Ah!” Darcy screamed at being startled, sending her books flying. She had always been teased for being so easily frightened, and this was no exception to the rule.

  “I did not mean to surprise you,” Marina continued as she bent down to gather the fallen books.

  “No, it’s ok. I’m just a jumpy girl,” she replied. Once she picked up the books and placed them in a tiny pile, she noticed Marina’s grave look.

  “Marina, are you ok?” she asked, stepping closer to the store owner. Inexplicably, and all at once, Marina did not seem to have any make up on. Her eyes were red, almost bloodshot. Her impeccable trademark bun then seemed to begin to unravel and become loosened right before Darcy's eyes. The soft red hair fell upon the woman's diminutive little shoulders. She instantly felt like giving the tiny woman a big bear hug, and moved towards her to do just that, but Marina shrunk away.

  “Sit down, my girl,” Marina said, pointing at the chair that she had hastily stood up from minutes before. Darcy, unsure of Marina’s state of mind, did as she was told without hesitation. Marina pulled the chair that sat beside her and sat down. “There is something we need to talk about.”

  ***

  “You come here every Friday, looking for books,” Marina began, her voice now more typical, a touch more Southern than European tonight. She grabbed a book from Darcy’s pile and smiled, and slowly returned it.

  “You know I do,” Darcy replied, unsure of situation was unfolding before her. Marina was never serious – in fact, she was always infusing joy and laughter into every situation. To see her so morose made Darcy feel extremely uncomfortable.

  “You read these books with heroines who worry about finding the right boy or buying the right car,” Marina continued. “You want to live in those worlds where things do not matter and everything is resolved by the end. You want to worry about what prom dress to wear and which table to sit at lunch, not paying for rent or preparing lunch to bring to work.”

  Darcy couldn’t help but smile, imagining and sincerely wishing that it could come true. She would love to only worry about things such as trivial as those that Marina had just spoken of. She would wholeheartedly immerse herself into a life where she was taken care of, where no matter what she ate she still looked like a model, and where her boyfriend was better looking than Channing Tatum and Bradley Cooper combined.

  “Who wouldn’t?” she finally answered, the smile still on her lips. Marina smiled back. “You and I have talked endless times about why I love those books. They make me feel innocent and understood. I feel like I get to live vicariously through these girls. I can be a blonde one weekend, with a rich dad and a bad boyfriend, and the next weekend I can be an identical twin who just woke up from a coma and can’t remember a thing about how she got there.” If she could live in the Sweet Valley High World, she knew that Jessica Wakefield would be shaking in her boots because Darcy would be the coolest and most beautiful girl in town.

  “This is good news,” Marina whispered, glancing around to ensure Griffin was not looking. She followed Marina’s glance, equally intrigued and concerned as to what the woman was up to.

  “Marina, what exactly is going on?” she whispered back, looking deep into Marina’s eyes that were now no longer blood shot. In fact, they now seemed to be gleaming.

  Marina smiled, her perfect teeth shining bright. She brought her hands swiftly up to her hair and without Darcy even knowing or realizing how, created her signature bun with not one hair out of place.

  “Oh Darcy,” Marina finally said, inching closer to her. “My dear girl. What if I told you that you could become one of these girls you read about all of the time?”

  Darcy laughed loudly, causing Griffin to look at both women and smiling. She’s losing it, she thought. The dust from these books has finally gotten to her head.

  ***

  After noticing Marina did not return her laughter, Darcy stood up from her seat, and adjusted the shawl around her shoulders. She had gotten a chill all of a sudden and was glad she brought the shawl for her reading event that night.

  “Marina – things like that don’t happen. That is precisely why I read those books – because I can’t relive those days. I can’t become Bella Swan. I can’t put on a pair of magical jeans that fit all of my girlfriends,” she said.

  It was then she once again gathered her belongings but in her haste left behind the pile of books she was about to buy. For some reason, she was not enjoying the energy that had filled the room. She began to walk towards Griffin when she felt Marina’s urgent hold on her shoulder.

  “Darcy,” Marina said, her voice serious and firm. Darcy stopped dead in her tracks. “If you say yes to me now, I can put you in those books you dream of. Just say yes and that is all.”

  She would normally think that Marina had completely lost her marbles, but the woman seemed serious. A thousand thoughts flew through her mind: I’d be stupid to say no. But I’m also incredibly stupid to think that this could actually happen. Should I just entertain the old lady and say sure? Do I say no, which means I would probably be never to come back here? Have I completely gone off the deep end? Have I watched The Neverending Story one too many times?

  Without missing a beat, she swallowed, and turned towards Marina, who now looked as ravishing as she always did: flawless make up, vibrant red hair and a dress of emerald green that had been a pale purple just moments before. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, there seemed to be wind ruffling the long skirts of her dress.

  “I have to go,” she whispered to Marina and made a beeline for the front door of the shop. Her usual reaction to a situation where she felt uncomfortable and unsure how to proceed was to escape. Within seconds, she was crossing the threshold from the shop to the world beyond. Once outside, she took in a fresh gulp of the cool autumn air, her heart feeling like it would pounce of her chest, her cheeks flushing.

  She did not know why she was having this kind of reaction to Marina’s absurd question. She didn’t know if it was because Marina seemed to actually believe that she could do what she was offering her, or because on some weird, secretly hidden level beside her self-assigned faults, she thought the woman possibly COULD do that for her and make all of her dreams and wishes come true.

  She shook her head in an attempt to clear it of its crazy thoughts and flagged down a cab to take her home. In her state of mind, riding the subway was out of the question. With the type of night she was having, who knows what would happen to her on the train.

  Chapter 5

  When she opened her eyes the next morning at a semi-indecent time, she immediately felt the painful nag of a headache. She wasn’t one to normally play the headache card, let alone actually get them, but the general pulsating feeling resonated in her temples made her feel both nauseated and annoyed at the same time.

  She turned around slowly in her luxurious bed, one of the few truly extravagant things she owned (she had justified the purchase with the fact that she spent so much time in there anyway – reading, of course). The artillery of pillows that flanked both sides of her looked like a little fortress, which sort of added to her intention of wanting to stay segregated from the general public that entire weekend.

  Suddenly, as though literally out of nowhere, she was forced to recall and remember what had transpired the night before. It seemed like a dream, all hazy and sepia toned, but she knew it had really happened. Marina had made her a ridiculously unbelievable and impossible offer to enter the fictional world of a teen novel.

  She always had the distinct impression that Marina was a unique character with always something a bit off always bubbling beneath her poised and coordinated exterior. It wasn’t an ever-constant feeling, just a random impression and feeling she experienced from time to time when in the presence of Marina, usually when she was spending the majority of a random Sa
turday in the shop she called her second home.

  However, the supposed proposition that Marina offered just a few hours ago was certainly something that catapulted the aura and mystery of Marina to a whole other level. She knew the bookshop owner well enough, or so she thought, to know rather firmly that she was not an unrealistic or flighty individual. In fact, Marina always managed to dispense just the right dose of advice at the literal spin of a dime and Darcy always commended her for this. It was no small feat to listen to a sometimes blubbering thirty something year old woman going on and on about something completely meaningless only to interrupt with a one word turn of phrase that not only resolved the issue at hand, but also made the speaker realize that there was never really an issue to begin with.

  Getting up out of bed was what she thought would be the best way to deal with the headache, that and popping a few Tylenol that comprised the only real first aid kit she had in her tiny apartment. It was one of those things she always had meant to replenish (What would happen if she cut herself accidentally and didn’t have a band-aid on hand? This was a strong possibility as she wasn’t exactly known as a coordinated person). Swallowing the tablets with last night’s tepid water atop her nightstand, she thought better of starting her day and decided to get right back into the safety and comfort of her bed.

  She attempted to close her eyes and fall back asleep but her mind kept racing about last night’s reveal. She had so many questions she wanted to ask but could you really ask questions about something that could NEVER HAPPEN? Wouldn’t it be like debating the moral compass of a vampire in a Twilight novel when the story itself is entirely fictional and unreal?

  Nonetheless, the questions filled her mind something fast and furious. Where was that deep, angry, male voice coming from at Marina’s, obviously amidst an argument of some kind with the apparently meek woman? And why was she the only one who seemed to hear the muted whispers and slamming doors, Griffin looking on as though it was just another regular evening at the book store? Why did Marina looked so disheveled post-argument with the imaginary, disembodied voice but seemed to instantly transform into her usual well-put together self during her short but world-changing conversation with Darcy?

  The number one question that she felt both simultaneously embarrassed and excited to actually entertain was the possibility of entering the world of one of her revered teen fiction worlds, complete with stereotypical teenaged characters, suburban settings, perfectly temperate weather and neatly wrapped plots that always managed to reach a positive solution by the end. If the rational part of her mind could wrap itself around the possibility of that actually happening, she honestly and truly did not know what her answer would be.

  Part of her would happily and blindly enter this fictional realm without any qualms. It was no secret that the reason she exclusively read teen fiction was two-fold: she loved the apparently simplicities of the narratives and worlds created, replete with guaranteed resolution, but it was also because she was not what one would call ‘content’ in her real life. Sometimes she felt as though she was depressed, crying at the most random of events, but she often attributed this to her hyper-emotional hard-wired settings. But she was lonely. Reading the novels she read successfully managed to take her constantly racing and over-analytical mind from her self-titled humdrum existence into a world where there was never indeed a dull moment.

  What would she do if she were thrust into the life of suburban America with the sun always shining and friends that were all bronzed and beautiful? What would she do if both the ‘bad boy’ and the prized school athlete both attempted to vie for her attention? What would she decide if the popular girls tried to peer pressure her into doing something she wasn’t comfortable with doing, like trying drugs or getting drunk, or the school nerds tried to recruit her because deep down they knew they weren’t really at all different from one another?

  It was her dog’s notification bark signaling its need to do her business that shook her from the maze of thoughts within her mind. After looking at the large alarm clock on her nightstand, she realized it was already mid-afternoon and she had been entrenched in her mind for the last few hours, which to her, had felt like just a few minutes.

  She had always hoped that there would be something, some momentous life-altering event that would happen to her. She would often walk around downtown and secretly imagine that she was going to be ‘discovered’ as the next greatest and most beautiful ‘IT’ girl by some visiting photographer for Italian Vogue. Or she sometimes wished that while shopping for chick peas at Whole Foods that she’d be pulled into some sort of covert, undercover international drug ring that would bring her worldwide fame and make her lots of money. Because her two left feet were so firmly entrenched in reality, however, these unbelievable, suspensions of disbelief, Darcy Platt never even afforded herself the minute real possibility that something unworldly could happen to her.

  Hoping to help her make up her rather indecisive mind, she decided to just talk a walk in her neighborhood, doing the proverbial ‘clear your head bit’. She threw on her cherished navy blue sweat pants with the rather unsightly stain by the left ankle and a pink hoodie and took her little dog outside. Bending down to put the leash on the little lady, she wished she could just escape the business of her head, which was the other thing that she always wished for.

  While walking down her street, she felt the brisk, cool fall wind hitting her face, immediately causing her to swear indecipherable words under her breath. The streets seemed to be absolutely deserted. Normally, on her afternoon walks with her dog Lucy, they’d run into some of her little pooches buddies, do the typical small talk thing with the owners, and move on. Today, however, in the overcast sky that towered over her, making her feel itty-bitty, she felt totally and utterly alone. And her little dog did too.

  She turned the corner, little Lucy sniffing everything in sight, and briefly contemplated if she should tell her best friend since the proposition she was offered by Marina just the night before. Sonya Maines, the first girl in Darcy’s kindergarten class who handed Darcy that tissue to dry her tears once her mother deserted her in that colorful, toy-filled room all those years ago, could still be counted on to give her that tissue that she needed.

  Darcy and Sonya had been the best of friends forever, as it seemed, and lived only a matter of blocks away from each other, and literally shared each and every little secret with one another, regardless of how seemingly petty or grandiose they were. Sonya knew all about her prescient predilection for reading teen fiction, in fact she even read a fair bit of it herself. The two girls had talked about the plots of those books incessantly through the seemingly never-ending summers in grade school, and then less and less so as the angst of those high school years came upon them. They didn’t exactly talk about it now because Sonya just didn’t read that type of book anymore, opting more for Oprah’s certified book club selection and the current book du jour, but Darcy still read them with the same amount of excitement and fascination as she had when she was just 12 years old.

  Soon enough, she found herself upon Sonya’s walk-up apartment and buzzed up. The buzzer had seen better days and sounded like a dilapidated Oldsmobile, always forcing her to cringe upon hearing the high toned audio assault.

  Lucy looked up, still after all of these years not used to the high-pitched tone that accompanied the old buzzer. She looked at Darcy with her puppy-dog eyes, as though imploring ‘why do you cause me so much pain, mom’.

  Sonya didn’t reply right away, forcing Darcy to immediately think her friend had either already embarked on a day of shopping or was still sleeping off last night’s bar-travaganza. Turning around to resume her walk in the seemingly empty city, she heard Sonya’s groggy voice boom over the buzzer.

  “What?” Sonya said, her voice scratchy. Bar-travaganza, Darcy inwardly confirmed.

  “It’s me. Can we come up?” she whispered, semi-embarrassed at the sheer volume of the antiquated buzzer system in the relativel
y newish apartment building. This was when the whole empty street thing came in handy for which she was thankful.

  She heard the loud, lengthy beep which signaled her approved clearance into the building and bent down to scoop up her little pooch/best friend. She entered the nouveau 90’s era building that her friend had now lived in for several years. The brightly painted purple walls were countered by a deep, plush brown carpet that Lucy just loved (Darcy's own apartment had hardwood floors throughout). The cream colored tiles that adorned the elevator frames shone brightly as though just recently cleaned.

  Inside the pristine elevator, she took a quick glance at her appearance in the mirror-paneled that took up the entire back wall and almost lost her breath. She knew she had probably looked unkempt (which she often described as ‘lounge-y’ though she secretly knew better) when leaving her own apartment just half an hour ago, but her reflection really startled her. Scared her, really. Her hair was in somewhat of a ponytail though most of the mousey-brownness lay on her right shoulder. The stain that she thought was on the bottom of her sweat pants seemed to have now taken over the entire right leg. She didn’t know what caused the stain itself but by looking at it, she knew there was no way to ever find out. She made a mental note to throw out the pants as soon as she returned home, or, if Sonya had something to lend her, she would do it as soon as she got upstairs.

  Her pink hoodie seemed to have become entirely covered with lint and Lucy hair, which was not a good look, especially together. She must have stepped in some dog poop en route as her running shoes were brown from the laces down. She felt gross and immature, briefly contemplating to just take the elevator back down to the lobby and literally run home, taking Lucy in her arms to save time. But Sonya was her friend and had seen her much worse for wear, and the thought left her mind as the elevator door opened.