The girl puts a bookmark on the page she's been reading and thinks, the woman in the story is me. I am in the story. This is my story. The valleys and plateaus in the story's plot are the valleys and plateaus of my life. The rivers she almost drowned in, the fires she escaped--they are the same rivers and fires I have survived. The sky that enclosed her world and the stars she gazed at night after night are the sky and the stars of my world.

But the volume is much too thin, she thinks. How will the woman's story end? She is afraid.

She put the book carefully on her bedside table and lays her head on the orange thread-embroidered pillow, knowing fully well that sleep is not about to come anytime soon, no matter that the rest of the neighborhood is quiet and her own room dark as the night outside her porch.

She curbs the urge to reach for the book once more. She is afraid.