Dara, Page, and the Secrets of the Multiverse

▷ 12.1

Page joined the stream of people trickling out of the lecture hall. This section in the syllabus was a little challenging, but he'd pull extra hours studying it during finals. Midterms weren't bad, so he'd have enough leeway to take it easy in the semester's final stretch. The professors were bound to give extra credit later on anyway.

He stalked across the hallway, shouldering his school bag. From the sea of undergrad and graduate students milling about, he was the only one who looked like a high school kid. Backpack, round, silver-rimmed glasses, and hair as thin and clumpy as paper on his forehead—it was the perfect combo. Some of his friends told him he walked like one too with his head forward and a carefree attitude about his grades, the outputs he needed to produce, and the tests he needed to study for.

Overall, studying wasn't hard for him. He made it a point to make the most of any educational institution he was slotted into, and that included, of course, studying. Most of his peers were here for other reasons—mostly to get connections, relationships, or the experience of lugging around binders and crying when receiving a bad mark. Not Page. He came here to learn, to dig deep into the minds of his favorite classic authors and maybe, hopefully, write his own novel someday.

His parents were against his choice of a program. His father's favorite line was, "Literature? Literature? You won't get fed with that unless you're freaking James Patterson!", with the name being the only author his father ever knew by name. None in his family were big readers, and most of them wouldn't even care to read an essay of his for 500 words. The most his sister read was a thousand-word children's book about a talking car.

If he was asked about how he turned out like this—someone able to read a five-hundred-page installment in four hours or less—he'd answer honestly: he wouldn't know. He picked up his first book at five and has never stopped since then. Words were his companions, and the worlds they described between themselves were enough to get him to forget about looming deadlines and the grimness of reality even if just for a few hours.

Classes ended for him this afternoon, and the way home was littered with all kinds of shops, each willing to bait particular types of people with their shiny wares. One particular shop caught and would always catch his eye whenever he made it in this part of town. Macy's Bookshop was a cozy nook in the middle of a busy city with bustling roads, crowds of flitting people, and the never-ending droll traffic and mindless commute. He discovered it when he was in highschool, desperately looking for his next read.

With a skipping heart, he punched through the glass door polished everyday by the same person manning the counter. A bell dinged as a signal of his entry, the high trill echoing to the death behind him as he tramped to where the cashier was. Behind the splintering wooden counter with peeling green paint, a woman with huge, red-rimmed glasses, bobbed apricot hair, and a lopsided smile looked from counting the coins in the registry. The eyes behind her lenses sparkled with recognition.

"Page! Nice of you to drop by," Iris, the shop's owner said. "Anything you're looking for today?"

He ducked his head at her, unslinging his back and resting it on the series of boxes lining the counter. They were unopened deliveries, each one bulkier than the last. The rest of the shop was in complete disarray, with stacks of books with the spines facing towards the average customer strewn about in dusty tables, moth-eaten couches, the sides of the creaky staircase, the alcove below the stairs, and even the mantle and firebox of the fireplace.