The Girl Who Left Her Heart in the Library

There was a moment when I thought that I could leave bits of myself in a thousand locations across the world. My heart could be broken into pieces, each piece carefully kept in a location that was meaningful. I did not realize it then, but one of those bits was left behind in a surprising location: the library.

I remember my first experience strolling through those old wooden doors. The smell of dusty books lingered in the air, and the silence wrapped around me like a shawl. It was summer before my last year of high school, and I had recently moved to a new town. I didn't know anyone, and I was a stranger, trying to find my place in a world that seemed to be moving ahead without me.

The library was my haven. It wasn't much of one—just a small quiet space between a coffee shop and an antique bakery—but it was mine. I'd stroll down the aisles for hours, tracing the spines of books that I didn't even know I required. It was my escape, the place where the world stopped and I could breathe.

That was when I saw him. A disheveled-haired boy wearing glasses that were too big for his face, slumped over a notebook in front of the window. He wasn't boisterous or attention-seeking. He just was there, caught up in his own world. There was something about him, something calm and quiet, that attracted me to him.

I don't know when I started paying more attention to him, but I did it gradually. Our lives would cross in the aisles and we'd exchange awkward smiles, nothing more. But each time, it was as if something was shifting inside of me. I didn't know what it was, but I couldn't keep myself from being attracted to him.

I sat at the table beside him one afternoon, pretending to read a book, but with him on my mind at all times. He was writing in his notebook, and I thought, "What if I could just talk to him?" It was a crazy thing to think, but I did it anyway. I gathered up all of my courage, approached his table, and said, "I see you here a lot. I'm Emma."

He looked up, surprised, and for a fraction of a second, I thought I would melt into the earth in shame. But then he smiled, this small little uncertain smile, and said, "I'm Elliot." And, just like magic, we started talking. Talking about books, talking about life, talking about nothing and anything.

We became regulars at the library. We’d sit in silence, each lost in our own worlds, but somehow, together. It wasn’t love, not in the grand, dramatic sense. It was simpler than that. It was two people finding a quiet connection in the midst of everything else.

But time, as it always does, moved on. Senior year passed, and graduation loomed. I had to leave home to go to college, and the library would no longer be my sanctuary. The last time I saw Elliot, I promised him I'd be back, that nothing would ever change. But other plans were made, and I never did return.

Years later, I went back to that library, hoping to find the same sense of serenity. The shelves remained the same, but something was different. The quiet had turned into nostalgia, and the books no longer whispered the same comfort that they once did.

Then, and only then, did I realize where my heart had been. It hadn't been with the grand, the showy moments, with the broken promises or the half-promises. It was with the unspoken moments—those shared silences, that occasional look, that little thread of connection between Elliot and me. I'd left part of myself between the pages in that library, and though I left it behind, it would stay with me, kept between the books, waiting to catch up on a story someday.

-Amzad Rahid