The Bookworm.

                      

Lizzie likes to read. She reads all the time. She likes books where she can get lost in a world of make believe, because she thinks it's better than her real life. Lizzie reads in school, she doesn't like to go and play with the other chidren. She prefers to sit in the library, where it's quiet, she reads and reads until the teacher who runs the library wonders if she might run out of books to give her. She reads until the bell rings, sending her back to the other children, harshly reminding her that her life does not exist on the pages of a book.

Sometimes there is a class in the library at lunchtime, so Lizzie has to read outside. The other children make fun of her, they throw her books in bushes, or sometimes in the stream. When she fishes them out, the pages are wet, and the words are blurry, just like her eyes, from unshed tears. She cannot let the other children see her cry.

One day at break, Lizzie is worried about what the other children might do to her, so she walks out of school and back to her home. She takes the path that runs along side the river, so that no one will see her out of school. She hides behind the chimney of her house, and reads her book, no one can take her books now, but the words are still blurry as she tries to read through more tears.

Lizzie stays at home in secret, no one even notices that she's not in school, and no one even cares, the other children dont care for the bookworm that is not there to pick on, for they will find someone else to belittle in her place. Lizzie is safe from them here, behind the chimney, safe in her world of make believe, where she never gets tired of reading the words in the books she treasures so much.

One day Lizze gets caught, though her parents aren't angry, they send her back to school. She doesn't want to go back to that place, she wants to stay safe in the pages of her books. Where no one laughs at her or tells her she's a teachers pet, no one pushes her over or makes fun of her glasses. Where no one writes her horrible letters, telling her what an awful person she is.

Lizzie goes back to school with a heavy heart, for a while everything is calm, but after a few weeks things are back to the way they were before. The children can make fun of the bookworm once more, they can push her over and tell her she's terrible. She feels like a nobody, useless and alone. She wonders if there's another way to end her suffering, perhaps if she didn't exist in this life she could go and live forever in a book.

She begins to write her story, she writes to her parents, and tells them she is very sorry, for not being a better daughter, for not being able to find the strength to stand up to the people who were mean to her, for not being as courageous as a hobbit, even though she felt as small as one. She writes how she wished she had been a different girl, who had friends and a happy life.

One day a girl called Dawn see's her alone, the girl who is always alone, the girl she knew once as a small child, whom she'd not spoken to in years. Dawn asks Lizzie how she is doing, she asks how she has been all this time and says she would like it if they could spend some time together. Dawn has no idea that in that moment, she changed the bookworkm's life and was about to save her from herself.

This small act of kindness, this simple gesture of humanity, melted Lizzies broken heart, she saw a glimmer of hope for the first time in forever, that she too, could have a friend. Someone to share things with, to talk to, and maybe someone to give her the strength to carry on when hers had left her behind.

Dawn and Lizzie became friends once again, just like when they were little girls,and used to share pencils in school. Over the years they laughed together, cried together, shared in eachother's endeavours and made many happy memories together, and even when Lizzie moved away to make her own way in life, and they would sometimes go months without even speaking, their friendship remained.

A friendship just like an old book, where the words may grow old and fade a little, but they still hold the same meaning they were given when they were written.

Mrs Nezbit - 2017