I peruse the aisles of books, pulling one out every now and again, when the title on the spine catches my attention, but there aren't many of those. I've been such a picky reader lately, and nothing can hold my interest for the entirety of the first chapter. Sighing loudly, I round the corner aisle near the library's front desk.

"Did you not find anything?... Again?" Mary asks without looking up. She licks her finger and flicks to the next page of her book.

I lean against the end of the shelf lightly. "There's nothing good -"

"There is, you're just being awfully particular for no good reason at all."

I blink, slightly taken aback by my baby sister's answer. Perhaps Mary has been spending too much time with me lately… "Is there a rule that says I can't be particular?"

Mary gives an annoyed sigh. Closes the book she's reading. "No. But you're getting annoying, Lizzy. This is, what? The fourth day in a row you've come to the library? Do you know how lame it makes me look if it seems like I hang out with my older sister all day long? Even at work?" Mary just turned nineteen and got this job, and is apparently taking it very seriously. The look she gives me then, with her black hair in braids, reminds me very much of Wednesday Addams.

My fingers rap against the counter. "What? Am I not fun, Mare?" I grin a little at her.

Mary sighs, scooching back in her chair.

I drop my hands from the counter, adjusting the strap of my bag on my shoulder. "Alright, fine. I have to go back to school, anyway. I'll see you later."

Mary gives me a two-fingered wave, opening her book again.


Jane is beaming up at me from the small, two-person table at our favourite coffee shop. "How was school?"

I sit down in the chair opposite her. "My Professor didn't show up to give his lecture so I went to the library and read."

My older sister laughs, tilting her head back a little. She's the prettiest out of the five of us - with her pale blonde hair and shining blue eyes, her symmetrical face - but I like to think I'm a close second.

"I went to see Mary earlier, though," I tell her.

Jane sighs, props her head up on a fisted hand. "She was thrilled?"

I roll my eyes. "I don't think anything has thrilled Mary, ever." I eye a passing server with a tray full of coffee, wishing it was mine. When I look back at Jane, she has that look on her face - the one she gets when she wants to say something but she's not sure if she should. "Spit it out," I raise my brows at her.

She bites her lip, and when she talks, her voice is lowered to a whisper. "There's this guy…"

I perk up. Jane, interested in someone? "Go on," I encourage.

"He's the architect working on the new school." Jane's cheeks are getting pink. For how popular her looks make her, my sister has always been painfully shy - except when dealing with unruly kindergarteners.

"Well?" I demand. "Details. What does he look like?"

"He's...he has blond hair and the lightest eyes…" She stares dreamily at her mug of steaming tea. When she looks up, she's chewing at her bottom lip again. "And he asked me what I think about the plans for the new elementary school."

I'm smiling at her. "What did you tell him?"

"I said that I thought we needed a bigger library because I was...thinking about you, when we were little."

A laugh escapes me. "There never were enough books in that little library." Jane works at the elementary school we attended together what feels like so long ago, and I think I must have read nearly every book there was. I take a deep breath. "Did you talk about anything else with him?"

Jane blushes profusely, taking small sips of her tea. "No, no - no! It was strictly professional."

"He probably wishes it hadn't been," I say to my sister with a raise of my brows. She looks like she might have just choked on the tea in her mouth, and then, once she's composed herself, reaches across the table to slap my hand.

"You're awful!" She whisper-yells.

I have to laugh again. "That may be true, but you still love me."


Jane drives me back to our apartment afterwards. She pulls up to the curb outside our building and lets me out and heads for Target. She says she needs more pens and only the ones from Target are any good.

When I'm in the elevator I pull out my phone, noting the lack of calls or texts. Usually George texts me, if not only to tell me he'll be busy and won't be able to call me. But there's nothing, no matter how many times I squint at the screen. When the doors ding and I arrive on the sixth floor I pocket my phone.

I unlock my apartment, toss my keys on the table and kick off my shoes. I sigh, knowing I need to buckle down and work on my thesis, but wanting nothing more than a shower. Shower first, I negotiate with myself, and then thesis for an hour, then dinner.

However, before I've even got a towel wrapped around myself after my shower, my phone rings in my bedroom. I rush to get it, hoping it's George - and it is. "Hey," I answer.

"Hi, Lizzy."

"How was -"

"Fine, Lizzy. Listen, we need to talk."

I frown. "So talk. Isn't that what you typically do when you call someone?"

"I'm breaking up with you," he says. The words jar me into silence, and I stand in the middle of my bedroom, staring at the wall in surprise. I must stay quiet for quite some time because he starts, "Lizzy? Are you there?"

"I'm here," I say.

"Oh, good, I was worried you'd hung up on me there." Why, George, that's a good idea. Before I press the End Call button, he says something that catches my attention. "See, I'm now engaged to someone else and it just wouldn't be right for me to carry on with you, my dear."

Now I do hang up on him. And I stand in my room with my phone in hand, and say "Engaged? Engaged?" until the word makes sense in my brain. How could he possibly be engaged to someone else? Has he been engaged to someone else this entire time? Or has he been cheating on me?

I mechanically pull on whatever items of clothing I happen upon first and sit on my bed and try to work on my thesis. This is how Jane finds me half an hour later, blankly staring at the pages in my notebook.

"Hey, I brought dinn - Are you okay, Lizzy?"

I glance up at my sister, dumbfounded. "George got engaged."

She breaks out in a brilliant smile, coming in for a hug. "You got -"

"No," I say sharply and she stops on the spot. "George got engaged. To someone else."


I'm still reeling the morning after. George, engaged? Out of thin air, apparently.

But I make myself focus on my classes, take meticulous notes in all of them. I have one less thing to occupy my time and that, plainly put, means I have more time to study and make sure I do well on my exams next month.

A week passes like this, and that's when Jane confronts me in that quiet way of hers: "Did you love him, Lizzy?"

I narrow my eyes. "I don't think so."

"Then why are you letting him affect you like this?"

Because it hurts, I want to tell her. There must be something horribly wrong with me for him to be so unhappy that he asks another girl to marry him out of the blue. But the architect - whose name I've learnt is Charles (he tells me to call him Charlie, Jane says) - has asked her on a date tonight, and I don't want to spoil her good mood right before, so I tell her, "We can talk about it after."

And she agrees, but not without a firm look in my direction. She's stubborn like me so I know she won't let this go, and perhaps that is the one good thing we got from our mother.