"Sorry," said Jessie lamely as they bumped over the potholes in an almost non-existent dirt road and a pile of thick paperbacks slid from the dash and onto Skies lap. "I'm kind-of a mobile school-room and things pile up."
"I've never been to school," Skies said wistfully as she quickly flipped through one of the books and then hugged it to her chest. "I've read about it though."
"Do you read a lot?" Jessie asked as she pulled onto the main road, utilizing her counseling toolkit that was stored in her mind and starting the assessment process that worked best. "Did your aunt teach you how?"
Skies shook her head. "I can't remember not knowing how to read. Aunt Caroline got lots of books from garage sales and I just read whatever she brought." A vehicle passed and she watched it from behind her sunglasses as if it were a living specimen presented for her evaluation.
"So you read all those books that were in your...room?" Jessie asked, uncertain what to call the space occupied by only walls of texts and a single lantern.
Skies nodded while still staring out the window at the passing landscape which was becoming more populated the nearer they got to the city limits.
"Have you read this one?" Jessie asked, referring to the book in Skies' grasp, Shakespeare's plays, unabridged. They had come to a stoplight near the edge of town and she wanted to keep the young woman talking.
Instead of answering, Skies held out the book to her. "Do you want to see a trick? Pick a page."
Jessie furrowed her brow and mouth the word okay. Glancing between the red light and the book, she hurriedly opened it to somewhere in the middle. "Two Hundred and sixteen."
Skies turned back to stare out the window. "Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more. In what rapt ether sails the world of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them. And the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there learn it." Jessie followed the speech from the middle of the page as Skies recited it, completely forgetting about the stop light.
"So you have read it?" she asked uncertainly, wondering how Skies could know what was on the page Jessie had randomly flipped to. "Do you...you know the whole book?"
"I did read it," Skies said, turning back to Jessie. "And if I could borrow it, I would like to read it slower than I just did."
Jessie stared at her. Surely Skies didn't mean the ruffling of the pages that she'd given the book earlier was what she meant about having read it! She was attempting to frame some sort of question to ask the younger woman that would make sense of the situation, but a blaring horn behind them interrupted her thoughts as an impatient pickup truck behind them indicated the stop light had turned green.
