And there it was, but it wasn’t the movie. It was one of those videos that aren’t even really videos. It didn’t have any pictures, but some nice reader had set up a camera in front of herself and read that whole long and complicated book out loud.

I found the link for chapter one. I tapped play.

The kid in the story liked to run, and he had a lot of sisters, and he lived on a farm. There was pretty much nothing about us that was the same, except that it sounded like his mom got real tired, too, sometimes. I wondered if his mom ever went into her room and shut the door for a long, long time.

I half listened as I spun. I liked the sound of the reader’s voice, even if the words were crowded up and kind of old-fashioned-sounding. I thought about maybe pausing and changing the book for a different one tomorrow. Ms. G. probably had tons more golden-sticker books on her shelf.

I could tell her I’d already read this one—yeah, that’s right—and once I started it, I remembered how it was about two lonely children who created a magical forest kingdom.

But then something happened in the story. A new kid showed up.

I could have told that new kid she was going to have a real hard time. She did everything wrong. She didn’t try to blend in or fade out at all. Instead, she basically stood up in front of the whole class and said, “Here I am. Look at me.” And the other kids weren’t very welcoming, not even the farmer-brother-runner, which was weird because I kind of thought those were the two who were going to be friends.

Chapter four seemed like a good place to stop. If you come back to school on your second day and you’re already at the end of a long and complicated book like that, teachers notice. And either they get suspicious, or they give you an even longer and more complicated book to read.

I looked for something to use as a bookmark. Usually I fold over the corner of the page I think I should be on. And sometimes you have to crack the spine a few times, so it looks like you’ve had it open for a while. But I didn’t want to hurt Ms. G.’s book. Some of the pages had tiny rips in the edges, and the paper was soft and not quite white, more like desert sand. If I cracked it too hard, it felt like the whole thing might fall apart. And I didn’t want Ms. G. to think I was the kind of kid who brought the books back all broken.