Jane’s book wore several coats of tacky, neon-coloured paint vandalistically smeared over the patinaed leather cover underneath. The layers of paint were peeling on the spine to reveal her name written on it with love. Jane held the large book without ceremony and spent almost no time reading it. She had work to do. Producing a pen from her purse, she began furiously scribbling in her book, mumbling to herself.
“There. I never shoulda lost that record deal—and now I didn’t.”
She flipped back in her book to check the results, and a nasty grin grew on her face. Her singing career had taken off. She was rich and famous and fairly successful until …
“No, that ain’t right. What? Why would I do that?”
Jane’s brow furrowed as she scanned through her story. She found that shortly after her career took off, so did her stability. She still felt like a failure, washed up, and sad. She wrapped her Lamborghini around a pole, spent time in jail, and stopped being able to perform …
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would I quit music? I’m HOMELESS?!? Well, I can fix that … Top singer in the USA? Don’t mind if I do. Guess who’s platinum now … I knew I was always meant for something big.”
When she was done tweaking the details of her story to her wildest dreams and every whim, she paged forward to see her future. But she didn’t have one. Only six years after winning her Grammy, Jane would overdose on heroin and die, feeling worthless and alone.
Jane gripped her pen tighter. For hours she paced and edited and rewrote. And no matter what success she gave herself, her end was always equally as sad. Even when she found the right combination of childhood experiences and adult therapy to keep her clean from drugs and STDs—her fame lost its luster quickly when she didn’t capitalize on enjoying it, and her story would still find a way to end up in misery. Tears of frustration carried mascara to paint black stripes on her cheeks. She was defeated, but still she worked at it.
“Okay, Sam, you can do this. If I were my book, where would I be?”
Sam knew his book the moment he spotted it. He could feel that it was his; it was just like his journal that he had at home under his bed. The journal he had at home was full of angsty poems and hopelessly romantic sentiments. But this book was full of genuine stories. Sam’s breath quickened and his heart palpated as his mind raced. He would be able to visit one of his most frequented memories—himself and the girl of his dreams, Beatrice, first falling in love.
They had practically grown up together, having met freshman year of high school and hitting it off immediately clicking as close friends. Bea had a boyfriend when they met, so at first their relationship was platonic. But the moment he knew he was in love with her was just several weeks into their relationship—when Bea’s boyfriend callously dumped her and broke her poor heart. She tapped on Sam’s window that night, having walked all the way to his house through rain. Her wet hair framed her big, green, gemstone eyes, running with tears and raindrops. As soon as he let her in, she buried her face into his neck, thanking him for being there, as he asked what was wrong.
Reading this now, Sam could feel how he felt then. The memory was so visceral, the cool wetness of her clothes, her shivers, and the goosebumps on her arms around him. What Sam hadn’t remembered so well, until he read it from his book, was the specifics of their conversation—or rather, how Bea had mostly just vented about Johnny, her recent ex. Sam comforted her as she cried, assuring her that not all guys were like that, promising her that one day she’d find a man that would treat her how she deserved to be treated; silently promising to be that man.
He’d been in love with Bea since that night years ago. He’d never been able to tell her how he felt. Being in the friend-zone sucked. Sam would fix things.
“She keeps me at arm’s length and goes around and dates all these jerks that break her heart and then comes crying to me. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
Sam fumed about how the whole thing was all one big game of mating displays and flirting. Waiting the right amount of time before texting back, acting dismissive, being impressive and unimpressed, being mysterious, and making it clear that you had plenty of other romantic options. Sam understood the principles well; he had even read a book or two on the art of attraction. But it was too late for that; he had forever ruined his first impression with her by being her dorky, emotional friend in high school. Bea liked having him as a friend too much to ever risk having him as more. And so, Beatrice was swept away by every guy that was better than him at playing the game. And, it seemed, the worse they treated her, the more obsessed with earning their approval she would be. There was an inverse correlation between a guy’s pickup skills and his abilities as an actual loving boyfriend. Somehow, Bea never saw what was so plain.
The thought crossed his mind to find and read Beatrice’s book and see what or how she really thought of him; he knew she was in love with him. They’d always been in love. But soon it wouldn’t matter what was in her book, because he’d put them together. It wasn’t right that they weren’t already together.
“Ugh. Girls …” Sam muttered, reading through all the painful memories.
And so he did it. He went back and twiddled the little details. He made himself perfect at it, at least so far as he knew how from the books. He reached back into the events of his history and tweaked it all. Conversations with Bea were now laced with false coolness; he undid all the dorky and desperate things—calling late at night, writing cringy poems, smothering her.
But in doing this, he watched as their whole relationship and his whole story was altered. She had never come to him that night after her breakup. He had lost his very most treasured memory. He was losing her. It wasn’t enough to just be more charming, he needed fate on his side.
And so he didn’t only alter his behaviours to line up with his pickup artistry skills, he also played with chance. He had read somewhere that any two people can fall in love given the right circumstances, so certainly he needed only to give Bea, his soulmate, the right circumstances to fall in love with him. He put himself with her as lab partners, ran into her in the hall, put her on the same shift at work, gave her a flat tire on the highway just in time for him to come save her, and even got her stuck at his place in a snowstorm once.
And it worked. He was shaking with excitement as he read about their first hookup in that snowstorm—even better than the night in the rain he had foregone, as now himself, and not her ex-boyfriend Johnny, was the sole object of her attention and affection in that moment. He wanted to go back home right now and kiss her for real. But, he knew how fragile this was, and he knew that this Library was a once in a lifetime opportunity. He had to secure this thing. So, he scrolled forward to make sure that nothing catastrophic came in between him and Beatrice living happily ever after, and it was a good thing that he did. Because, sure enough, their relationship only lasted a couple months. She broke his heart and left him to go back to her jerk ex, Johnny.
“Why? We were so happy together; I don’t get it. I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Sam went to re-touch things. Perhaps he had taken not being needy to the extreme, and he was too emotionally distant once they got together. He threw in a couple extra romantic gestures and wrote Johnny into a lethal motorcycle accident for good measure. And, at this point, Sam didn’t even feel like reading around looking for where the wedding was; he was gonna write their marriage right here and now, before anything else could ruin their happily ever after.
And it was beautiful, the best day of Sam’s life. He had everything he ever wanted, living the life of his dreams with his soulmate, Beatrice. He couldn’t help but flip forward to get a glimpse of their future and children, but what he read cut him like a sword.
“… You … cheat on me? And divorce me, and … fight me for custody over our baby?”
Sam read out loud with a rock in his throat and tears rolling down his face. How could she do this? He sat and cried in his broken heart.
“This doesn’t make sense. You were my soulmate … Why would you do this?”
“No, honey.” The librarian walked up behind Sam. “She wasn’t your soulmate. She’s just kind of floundering around with men. You’re not the first heart she’s broken, and you won’t be the last. Sam, you’re seeing Beatrice through rose-coloured glasses, because you’re in love with her, but she can never be what you want her to be. I know you want her so badly, but you’re not going to find what you need in her.”
“Then I’ll fix her.”
Sam cleared his throat, stood up, and wiped his tears. With his book in his arms, he took off down the halls of the Library with a purpose.
“Sam, don’t, you can’t. Please, let her go …” The librarian was ignored.
Sam stomped along the shelves, looking left and right for the book of his soulmate. He couldn’t tell how long it took him to find it. Hours? But there it was, covered in pink sequins. He held the two books side by side, his and hers, and smiled at how perfect they were for each other. Opening up Bea’s book, he knew exactly what he needed to do. Erase every boy that ever broke her heart, make it so that he was the only guy she’d ever be with. He needed to tweak her, so that she truly loved him, and would never leave him. And it was hard work; every change he made had its effects. Removing her heartbreak made her more secure and confident, and therefore less dependent on him. Then he had to go back to his book and readjust his whole strategy to winning her over. Back and forth Sam went, toiling over the two books.
When he had a result that somewhat resembled himself and Bea living “happily ever after,” he wasn’t himself, and Bea wasn’t Bea. Not the one he knew and loved. He was infatuated with her for her rebelliousness, but he had taken that from her so that she might not rebel against him. He obsessed over her for her wildness, but he had tamed her so that he could keep her. She became something he found boring. And sure enough, they stayed married and faithful into old age and death … It was ever after, but it wasn’t happy. He had manipulated and contorted Bea into something that desired him, but what a sad thing that was. And so, he twisted and contorted himself into something more desirable, but what a monster he had become. He no longer recognized Bea. When she was something that wanted him, she wasn’t still something he wanted.
Sam tried everything he could think of under the sun. No kids, multiple lovers, terminal illness, he even tried making himself and Beatrice stepsiblings at some point. But it was all just as miserable. It seemed that the things he loved about Bea were the very things that broke his heart. And Bea, when she was herself, seemed to Sam to be just not a very good person. He grew to despise her, yet he needed her all the more. And still he hacked away at it.
Barnacles had spotted his book through his fishbowl while Chris was carrying him around, and after sufficient convincing, Chris pulled it from the shelves and sat down. It was an easy book to find; a huge, plasticky hardback, supplemented with graphics, like a school textbook on history.
“See here now, Mr. Chris, let us see how my contributions to science have changed the world, and if I’m to receive the recognition I’m due.”
“You’re a … science fish? Nothing surprises me anymore.”
Chris helped the English-Fish read through his book, up to the end, where Barnacles read about his funeral. Barnacles had been a rather influential, well-educated entrepreneur. Not a small number of significant innovations were attributed to him. This was a fish with an incredibly gifted mind. But it would seem that his life was a small drop in the bucket of all technological advancement. Flags weren’t flown at half-mast at his death, dignitaries didn’t visit from around the world to attend his funeral, and his life’s work culminated not in the bang that Barnacles had wanted, but a fizzle which he turned his nose up at.
“Well, it seems as though things hadn’t quite taken off in my life as I had hoped, but I’m sure my two cents will be worth a pound when I’m dead.”
But it didn’t happen. Barnacles’ own great grandchildren didn’t know his name.
“No. I have certainly got to be remembered for something. This just will not do. Mr. Chris, be a good man and write something for me, yes? Yes, very good, see, we must go back and give me sole credit for my big discovery; my partner certainly hadn’t contributed quite so much as me. I would have done very well without a partner, yes, and he certainly never would have done without me. Let’s do away with him, yes?”
Chris rolled his eyes and did as the fish asked, crossing out Barnacles’ intellectual partner, and crediting the work entirely to one man, or rather fish. After reading forward, this had the immediate effect of proving Barnacles’ partner rather necessary to Barnacles, as the discovery had never been made.
“Preposterous, I daresay. What an absurd idea that is, that I wouldn’t have come up with it on my own. Why, of course I would have. Oh well, Chris, good chap, I suppose you need to supplement something of this obviously defective book. Have my previous partner, umm, contribute to me inadvertently, as a friend, without officially working with me. I suppose we can let him give me just a little nudge in the right direction, if that’s what I needed.”
And now Barnacles had remade the discovery, and been credited with it solely, and indeed, his fame increased slightly. Chris thought that Barnacles really overestimated the importance of his discovery. And Barnacles was clearly unsatisfied. He asked Chris to give him a couple other accomplishments. He started with small things, like graduating Valedictorian, and became increasingly more ambitious. Re-writing history, so that it was Barnacles the fish that achieved some of society’s most significant advancements. But he couldn’t quite go down in the history books like he wanted. No matter what, it seemed, even his own posterity forgot him like a vapour in the wind.
“My intellect is just unappreciated, Mr. Chris. Men don’t recognize genius when presented with it, and if ever they do, they respond to it with jealous bitterness. They should be making statues of me. Let us give them something that they cannot forget.”
Chris didn’t know why he went along with Barnacles’ changes. Perhaps it was morbid curiosity. He enabled Barnacles to do drastic, twisted things in the realms of science and politics. Such extreme ideas, innocuous ideas when explained by Barnacles. “It’s for the greater good, of course.” Barnacles rationalized some truly abominable things which did, indeed, assure his place in the history books—as a villain. His grandchildren remembered him. They were ashamed of him. They made public apologies on his behalf. There were no statues of Barnacles, but monuments to his victims.
Barnacles chuckled. “Ha, and they still have no appreciation for it. They recognize my greatness but see how afraid of it they are! Delightful fools. They don’t know what I did for them. See here, Mr. Chris, this is the fame I deserved, but it seems my genius was a bit too much for them to handle, now, isn’t it? Ha, see them, Mr. Chris? They all, the lot of them, are like children to me …”
Chris backed away slowly in horror, leaving Barnacles there to monologue in his fishbowl alone, evil British cackles echoing throughout the halls of the Library.
Chris was shaken; Barnacles’ sick laugh rang in his head. He didn’t know what to make of it, and he hoped that the people that had been killed, had somehow only been killed in the book. He tried to put it from his mind and went on looking for his own book.
There were so many books, endless, and no two were alike. But they were all very intentional, purposeful, meticulous, artistic. They all had names specially laid into the spines. He turned corners and wandered halls aimlessly for a while. He couldn’t decipher any organizational scheme that might help him find his own book. And then it was there.
Chris opened his book, and when he did, he knew that this whole thing was real. Well, maybe not real in the sense of causal events taking place in his universe, made up of matter and energy and following Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics. He doubted that was the case. But this Library was real in that it was legitimate, valid, true. He read about things in his past that he had long forgotten, read details he couldn’t have known, and saw connections he never would have made on his own.
“Now, let’s see what sort of things we will set straight.”
Chris had been wronged a great deal in his life. It seemed everyone was out to get him. Chris knew exactly what he wanted to change first. His uncle had left him, and only him among his cousins, out of the will, and he meant to rectify that. But he thought it would be prudent to first experiment with a smaller matter. (He was still quite shaken by the events he observed from Barnacles’ story.) Perhaps appeasing his decades-long feud with his villain of a neighbor would be innocuous enough. It had gotten quite nasty—trash thrown over fences, trees poisoned, and even a lawsuit, in which, of course, the biased court sided with his neighbor, who had put on an incredibly convincing pity-party and innocence act.
Chris considered using his new authorial powers to burn down his neighbor’s house, but then, he thought, he is a man of reason, and perhaps if he could only make his neighbor not be so inept and quarrelsome … Chris pondered the things the librarian had said, and he thought, as he was a man of reason, he could satisfy both parties. It might be possible to go back and resolve the issue in its infancy. But then Chris couldn’t help but laugh at himself upon realizing that he didn’t remember what they had been fighting over in the first place.
“I suppose it might be worth investigating the book of my neighbor. Perhaps I ought to do that.”
And so Chris did take his book and go to find the book of his neighbor’s, so that he could set things straight. When he had found it, he opened up to the part where his neighbor moved in next to him—except it wasn’t there. His neighbor had lived in that neighborhood since before Chris had. Chris felt sure that was wrong until he realized that he didn’t actually remember his neighbor moving in. Only that for the first while there was no conflict, and he took no note of whoever had lived in that house. Prior to the conflict, Chris had assumed that a more peaceable person lived in that house. What had been the original source of contention then?
Chris discovered that the previous owner of his own home, who had passed away, was a dear friend of their neighbor. They had lived in those houses most of their lives, and they had each gifted one another trees, planted in each other’s yards, right on their shared fence. Chris couldn’t imagine why anyone would do such a sentimental thing. Chris had cut down the late owner’s tree almost as soon as he moved in—a thing that deeply saddened his neighbor. It seemed as though Chris had been outraged at his neighbor’s tree dropping pine needles in his yard. Chris had an aha moment as he finally remembered why he had hated his neighbor so much—that blasted tree was half in his yard. Chris responded by raking up all the pine needles and dumping them over the fence into his neighbor’s yard. Then it came about that Chris began dumping other things into his neighbor’s yard out of spite. Eventually, he sued to have the tree cut down. But as Chris read on—the book gave him a different perspective: his neighbor never wanted to go to court, he just wanted to keep his friend’s tree. He had been willing to cut the branches or come over and rake the needles … Perhaps the neighbor had been a bit daft about it, (he was dealing with the loss of his friend, after all) but Chris had been outright spiteful. A sense of guilt enveloped him as he read.
“Is this what it looks like from the outside?” he muttered to himself.
Chris had an intellectual grasp of the concept that there are two sides to every story, but this hit home for him. For the first time in his life, Chris stopped to consider— “maybe I was on the wrong side.” He had always seen his neighbor as a bad guy in his story, only to realize that he himself was the bad guy in his neighbor’s story.
A gut-wrenching conviction gave way to a sound resolve. Chris knew what it would take to make things right. He wrote an apology to his neighbor. He went back and replanted the tree.
“There. My debts are settled.” Chris was pleased with his work.
Chris shook his head to move on and turned his attention to his uncle’s will. He would make it fair. He only wanted his share, what was rightfully his. To change his uncle’s will, he’d have to find his uncle’s book. And so, he set out to do so. It took a good while (it was a big Library after all). Chris was especially shocked to see his uncle’s name when he finally did—sure that it was the wrong book. The cover of this book was vibrant and playful, full of energy and life. Chris raised an eyebrow at how the book he held in his hand contrasted so drastically with the uncle he knew. He remembered his uncle as a hollow, shriveled sort of thing, with nothing much to do except be sick and die. But when he opened his uncle’s book, he read about someone he had never really met.
There was no way that this was the right guy. Well, it had to be, but Chris was absolutely shook. His uncle Ronald had been in a traveling quartet—with a beautiful soprano. Music was his passion, but when he got sick, he couldn’t sing anymore; so, he learned the piano instead. Chris had never even heard him play. As Chris read, he didn’t read about the shrewd uncle he knew; he read about a sweet, caring old man who was stricken with sickness and discarded by his nephews. He read about an uncle that was used, someone whose value as a person was overshadowed by his value as a monetary asset. And how Chris was the worst offender of them all—and how, despite all of it, his uncle cared deeply for him.
Chris read about how Ronald had made the tough decision to not leave money to people whom he knew would be torn apart by it. Which wasn’t Chris alone—Chris was shocked to learn that his cousin, his uncle’s own son, received only the estate and a condition that it would never be sold—nothing in the way of monetary assets. And then Chris recounted that he actually had received things, a trust fund for college for his children if he ever had them, the piano (which Chris now regretted pawning), and some other small, sentimental things. Chris began to weep softly as he read.
He thought about what the librarian had said, and he decided to let it go. It was hard, letting go, admitting wrong, accepting defeat to his own goals … But it was also so easy. Chris let out an audible sigh of relief as the immense burden left his weak back. He felt as though he could breathe easy now.
His whole life was like this. He had viewed people either as enemies to his goals, or as tools to be used by him to achieve his goals. Never had he thought of those around him as people, characters, equally as valid and deep as himself, with their own story, struggles, hopes, fears … And so, for this, Chris repented—he went through his life and apologized and made things right. He didn’t just undo the wrongs he committed; he took steps to appease. Where he had swindled, he repaid twice-fold; where he had lied, he confessed the truth; where he had destroyed, he rebuilt better. And when he had gone through his entire history up to the present—he thought to himself that he ought not go further. For he had everything he needed to see things differently now.
Elizabeth’s book was elegant, Victorian era, a burgundy hardback with inlaid gold designs. She opened it to find meticulously hand-painted typography; you know, the kind of calligraphy where the very first letter of the chapter is twelve times too big and barely legible. She furrowed her brow because she felt as though this style of book was unfitting for herself. It wasn’t.
Elizabeth was a mother. If any mother were handed a book such as this, one of the first things she would do would be to go back and savor precious moments which had been lost to time. A first and a last for everything, always bittersweet. First words, first steps, first time riding a bike—and a last time breastfeeding, ever, a last time her kids wanted to hear a bedtime story, a last time the family is all together for Christmas … There was a time in her life when she set down her eldest son to let him run off and play—never to pick him up again. Pictures only do so much. But reading her story, Elizabeth was able to really relive precious moments, reading about things she had forgotten or never even knew about in the first place. Going through these memories, she lost track of time; like one does when reading a good book. (By the way, don’t forget to do that thing you have to do.)
Not all was pleasant; reliving certain events broke her heart now as they had then. So many times, her children asked for things she couldn’t give them. Explaining to them that it wasn’t because they were naughty that Santa Claus didn’t bring the bicycles and iPads that other kids received. Assuring them that second-hand clothes were cooler than new clothes because they had character. Having to scold them for touching the thermostat because she knew that degrees meant dollars. And all the hard days and long nights—double shifts at the diner, overtime, second job at the coffee shop. Always juggling more than she could handle, always exhausted, always aching, always drained of energy. Memories fueled the fire inside her.
Sometimes it was easy to blame her children. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, she would have finished college, gotten a decent job, and been financially stable. Then she could have started a proper family. But Elizabeth had seen enough episodes of Twilight Zone to know that she dare not try to mess with what was most dear to her. She wouldn’t trade her kids for the world. She just wanted a break. She just wanted to give her kids what she never had.
And all it took was the simplest change. The littlest thing. She didn’t have to go into her bank account and add zeros, she didn’t have to win herself the lottery. All she did was sway a job interview in her favor. Right out of her second year of college, when she first found out she was pregnant, she applied for a secretary position at a law firm, but never got a call back from the interview. It would have paid triple, been so much easier on her, and had nice benefits and security. That is all she did—one simple change to fix everything forever.
No one, she was convinced, had ever been happier than her, to read about herself being able to just … buy diapers, and not have to worry so much about it. She smiled to see herself being able to keep a full fridge and take a trip with her kids every now and again. Furthermore, as it would seem, the position in that law firm turned out to be a much better opportunity than she could have hoped. It was a gateway to send her back to finish college—and come back as a paralegal. She was able to buy a real house with a reasonable mortgage and give each of her kids their own bedroom. When her oldest was starting high school, she was able to take a break from work to go to law school. She didn’t get to see as much of her kids for those years, but when she came back—she had a security for them that was like a financial burden burned away to smoke.
Now, it was the other kids who were jealous of her own. High school friends would end up asking their mom for a car like Elizabeth’s kid had. There wasn’t much left to want. Work became more demanding, and so did her children. One day Elizabeth came home early from a work trip to find her teenage son throwing an absolute rager of a party in her house. She was livid. Vomit in the hot tub, penises drawn on the family portrait, drugs, and garbage everywhere. So stressful.
And then Elizabeth stopped and wondered how it had come to this. In the Library, she sat up from writing in her book, tapped her pen on her chin, and wondered exactly how much money was enough. She had thought that she just wanted her kids to have what she never did, which is true, but more fundamentally than wanting her kids to have—she wanted to provide for them, and when her kids had, it so happened that they no longer needed from her, and it left her in an endless cycle of always striving to give them more and more. And the satisfaction of it all was completely lost in her simple acquisition of the thing by penning in omnipotence. She felt like how a baseball player would feel if you went to his house and handed him a box full of trophies that he in no way earned. She didn’t want the stuff, she wanted to earn.
She went back to writing. Back to work.
Lily sat down cross-legged with her book in her lap. She ran her hand across the cover; it was hard bound in a dark cyan dyed flax canvas. Quite a pretty sort of oceanic deep blue-green, like the colour of her beanie. She carefully lifted the thickly woven, textured cover to reveal stocky, off-white pages, and beautifully typewritten courier font lettering. She gently turned the pages, reading about her childhood. Some things she remembered; some she didn’t; some that she remembered differently.
“I don’t know who would write something like this.”
Lily took her pencil in her hand, a classic yellow #2. She would give changing things a test run. But on what? Then Lily found the perfect mistake to undo. When a child, Lily was given a lovely sea-foam green dress with swirly brown designs, reminiscent of tree branches, or maybe roots. It had belonged in her mother’s childhood before her, held on to for decades to be passed down one spring Sunday when Lily was seven. She loved the green, but she wasn’t so fond of the brown designs. So one day, her silly little self decided to try to fix the dress. She had learned in school that blue and yellow make green, and so she carefully mixed the paint—and began to cover the brown designs. But almost as soon as the brush touched the dress, she knew she had made a mistake. So, she remixed the paint to a better blend. She only got halfway through covering the brown before she knew she was in trouble. She tried washing it in the sink, which just bled the paint everywhere, she tried scrubbing it, which seemed only to set the stains worse. At a loss and in a panic, she turned to bleach, knowing only about it that its job was to unstain fabric. Before she had given up on saving the dress, it was a sopping, blotchy, foul-smelling mess. And so, she did the only thing left to do—she hid the dress under her bed, (which bleached the carpet, mind you). And when her mom found it, how Lily cried.
Rolling her eyes at her seven-year-old self, Lily began to re-write that part of her life. No more paint, no more mess. And to her delight, it worked. She wore that dress until she grew out of it, and it stays in her parent’s house to this day, waiting to be gifted to a grandkid. Lily was happy, and ready to begin to make serious corrections to her life.
Still reading and writing, Lily cringed at some of the things she had done and said. She was mean to people she liked, and nice to people she hated. So painfully insecure. Lily couldn’t help but be thoroughly surprised at how different she was year to year—day to day even. She had always thought of herself as a constant, the control in a system of variables, but it wasn’t so. Lily wasn’t as concrete a thing as she had thought. There was seven-year-old Lily, and thirteen-year-old Lily—neither of whom existed anymore, except for in the mind of present-day Lily. There was happy Lily and sad Lily and hungry Lily. There was the Lily that existed in her dad’s mind, and the Lily that existed in her friends’ minds, and there was the Lily that had existed in her own mind—none of which captured fully the same as the Lily she read about now. The Lily in this book was made up of many different ages, and decisions, and thoughts, and viewpoints and reactions to her circumstances, big and small … All of these things came together in a grand mosaic to create Lily, the character in the book.
After some reading, Lily came to the first day of her 8th grade—when she had cut her hair short! She shuddered reading it; it was painful to relive. The day before school started, she took clippers to herself in her bathroom, and it was bad. Short short, like a boy. There was nothing classy or fashionable about it. It was her attempt at opting out of the whole thing. She didn’t want to carry the weight of wondering if her hair was as pretty as the other girls’. She was so afraid of being laughed at … that she made sure she got laughed at.
Gripping her pencil—she had at herself. No more haircut. She would be a normal girl. It was a rather small and simple change, but it made her very happy to see that her mom didn’t yell and that her little sister didn’t cry at breakfast that morning, Lily didn’t receive any weird looks or comments at school … It was good. Until Lily remembered her dad sitting down to talk to her about it. Or, now, not.
She flipped around, looking for a conversation she knew wasn’t there, but she wanted it to be there. If her hair had been cut, her dad would have come into her room that evening, despite her insisting that she didn’t want to talk. And he would have brought hot chocolate. And he would have told her how beautiful she was, and given her a hug, and told her that she had nothing to prove to the people that loved her. He wouldn’t have had to ask why she cut it, because he knew; he’d been a teenager once, too. He would have held her as she cried, and at the end of it, ran his hand through her short, hack-job of a haircut and offered to try to clean up the uneven spots. And they both would have laughed, then spent an hour trying on every hat in the house, until her dad dug up an old blue-green beanie …
Lily reached up to the top of her head. Her beanie wasn’t there; it never had been there. She never cut her hair, and never had that moment with her dad. This saddened her, but she was sure that it would be fine. Things would be different, she would be different, but she would be better.
Lily continued on and changed things further. Re-wording things she said to be more clever, erasing clumsy, embarrassing moments and mistakes, until she was at the end of the 8th grade, and she had many more friends. But she also had many more worries; she found herself with new problems to solve. She got asked to prom by Andrew Davis, and she said yes, so she blew off her rebellious friends, who had all made a pact to ditch prom together. They would have driven around that night, being silly, drinking gas station hot-chocolate, talking about how prom was stupid and they don’t need it. They would have sat at the reservoir and looked at the stars, listening to Radio-Head. Instead, she had a fight with them. They accused her of abandoning them for the cool kids. And she accused them of just being jealous, saying they would have gone, too, if anyone had asked them. Lily had to make a choice—she couldn’t both go to prom and not go to prom.
Lily missed all these things. She wanted them to happen. She was afraid of who she was becoming. But still sure that she could fix it, she went on. She undid kisses she regretted, avoided fights she wished never happened, did things she was too afraid to do, said things she was too shy to say … But with every change she made came a cascade of consequences. She had never stopped to consider that butterfly effect thing she had heard explained in some internet video. But this wasn’t that … Uncutting her hair didn’t somehow lead to Soviets ruling America—instead the effects were direct, connected. Not cutting her hair led to her dad not giving her a hat; going to prom meant blowing off her friends; becoming popular meant she didn’t have any time for Fredrick Dinkle, and so he never gave her a lily stem on her birthday; not spilling mustard on her shirt that one time led to her missing out on that tiny shred of humility.
Lily began to panic. She was making a mess of her life. She couldn’t even remember what she had been so eager to change—why she felt the need to mess with it. She tried to change certain things back; she tried to add things to regain what had been lost. She even went back and tried to make sure that the green dress was ruined again, or that Freddy’s flower got smushed. Reality blended with her lies until the two seemed homogenous to her. Her whole past was changed, and her whole future would now never happen. She lost track of time, and became incredibly frustrated as she worked in a panic, until all of a sudden, she caught a glimpse of her own blonde hair and stood up. She was taller now, and dressed differently, but what horrified Lily most was that she was arrogant; she wasn’t close with her family or friends; she cared so much about what people thought; her quirks and passions and all the colours of her personality were smudged into obscurity, she had become a thing she didn’t recognize. And, she thought, a decidedly worse thing. Lily was dead and gone. The thing standing here was, it was, a sopping mess. She felt like her seven-year-old self, playing with paint and bleach.