Average At Best.

Chapter 21

When I had my first heartbreak at the tender age of thirteen, my dad taught me a valuable lesson.

I had just found out that the boy I'd had a silent crush on for years had a girlfriend which, at least for my teenage self, felt like the world was about to end. 

I was crying my heart out when my dad came to pick me up, but he didn't say or ask me anything. Instead, he drove us to a bookstore.

"What are we doing here?", I wanted to know as soon as I realised that we weren't going home. I really wasn't in the mood for more surprises.

"You'll see when we go in", he said as he opened and held the door for me.

The inside of the bookstore was no different from any other bookstore I'd seen in my thirteen-year-long life. Just books over books, some neatly shelved, some openly displayed on carefully arranged tables.

"I don't see anything", I told my dad, starting to get impatient. I just wanted to go home and cry my heart out in peace.

"Of course you won't", he answered. "At least if don't look inside the books. Why don't you have a look around? I'll wait here for you while you do."

"Right now? But why? Sorry dad...I don't think I'm in the mood for book shopping right now."

"Look, Y/N."

He bent his knees a little bit and lowered his head so he and I were on eye-level. There was a gentle seriousness in his expression that I had rarely seen before.

"I know it doesn't feel great when things don't go your way. And the sad thing is...this is not going to change even as you grow older, no matter what you do. It'll just happen time and time again."

I didn't understand what he was trying to tell me. How was any of this going to help me in this situation?

"That's just the way life is", he continued, unfazed by my visible confusion. "Well, real life at least."

"What do you mean?".

"Look around you." He gestured at the shelves. "There's thousands of books in here. Thousands of stories. Thousands of possibilities. Life may not always be what you want it to be, but that's why books exist: They allow us to catch a glimpse of how life could be. And unlike in real life, you get to choose how you want it to go. You just have to find the right story. So...maybe you do want to have a look now?".

It took me a while to process what my dad was trying to tell me, but as I went through the bookshelves, searching for something that would catch my eye, I started to understand. I'd been stupid. All those years of pining after something I could never have had in the first place - they weren't worth it. I could have had it so much easier if I had known what my day told me that day. And from that moment I knew: I would never waste my time on real life's unfulfillable hopes again.

-

I flip through the pages of Sense and Sensibility in reverse order until I land on the first one, the one that has the bookplate with my name written in a 13-year-old's squiggly letters. My first set of bookplates was a gift from my dad on that day of my first heartbreak, just like the book itself that has been a loyal companion to me ever since. I remember that day so clearly now...so how could I have forgotten about the one thing I learned back then when it was the most important?

How could I let myself get caught up in all these...complicated feelings for a guy I didn't even like in the first place? And completely miss out on the fact that my own brother was planning to run away from home?