We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

talks had progressed to makeout sessions in the woods, which was where we were headed when Chad and his bros drove by, pelting me with empty beer cans. It was, as things went back then, a minor humiliation. Except then Susanna suddenly remembered she had to go home and after that she just wanted us to be friends.

“Always a pleasure catching up with you, Chad.” There’s enough sarcasm in my voice to peel the enamel off my teeth, but Chad doesn’t seem to notice. He just grins and bobs his head and refuses to get out of the way.

“So if you’re not here for Beethoven’s Anvil, tell me you’re not here for the Silk Stranglers?” He shakes his head in profound disappointment. “They’re trash.”

“I’m not here to see Silk Strangers or the Beethoven’s Hammer.”

“Anvil,” Chad corrects.

“Them either.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Then what are you doing here?”

“Leaving.” I close the hatch and pull my keys out from my pocket, maneuvering around Chad. “Good seeing you,” I lie. “Take care.”

“Hold up, dawg.” Chad wheels after me. “Why don’t you stick around? Beethoven’s Anvil is high-key cool. And tell you what, if you don’t like them, I’ll pay you back your cover charge.” I step to the right, unsure why Chad is being so insistent, except maybe to prank me. Chad angles his chair to his left, blocking my way. “You’re gonna love them.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, you’re Sandy’s brother, aren’t you?”

I was. But not anymore. And never like that.

“See you around, Chad.” I push past him, forcefully, and get into the car. When I drive away, he’s still on the pavement. I watch him grow smaller in the rearview mirror.

When I get home, I can’t bring myself to stop. When I was younger Sandy told me that the books came to life at night. He meant to frighten me, but I was enthralled by the idea. It’s only now that I’m older, and know it’s not true, that it does scare me.

I keep going, down Main Street, past Jimmy’s, all the way to the other side of town, to the used car lot. The inflatable balloon that dances manically all day is now slumped in a corner. I loop back on Oak Ridge Boulevard, the main commercial drag outside of downtown, where the ValuMart is. It too is dark, the carts tucked in for the night. I keep driving, not realizing where I’m going until I see the hardware store, a small light on in the back.

I park on the empty street and walk through the misty night. It’s almost ten when I tap on the locked door, but Penny Macklemore answers right away, smiling, as if she’s been expecting me all along.

The Rules

My parents met because of books. I exist because of books. Really.

Ira had discovered the miracle of twenty-six letters so precociously that when in sixth grade all the students had to stand up and claim what they wanted to do when they grew up, Ira announced he wanted to read. His teacher told him that wasn’t a job, unless he wanted to become a literature professor. Ira was halfway through a PhD program in comparative lit when he realized that a love of books did not equal a love of academia. He hated the politics in his department, the squabbling, the push to publish. He didn’t want to publish. He wanted to read. Maybe his sixth-grade teacher had been right, and that wasn’t a job.

Ira drove cross-country, hoping to figure out what he wanted to do. He stopped at every thrift store, every estate sale, every library sale he came across, collecting books all the way. By the time he’d reached the northwestern tip of Washington, he had about four hundred books—and no idea what to do with his life. He was on the verge of surrendering back to his program when he saw this woman hitchhiking by the side of the road.

By July, they were married. By September, they’d bought a two-story building on the main street of a small mountain town, with an apartment upstairs and a retail space on the ground floor that they’d sell used books from—those four hundred volumes Ira had amassed would be the inaugural inventory. But right as they were about to open, Mom thought maybe they ought to know a bit more about what they were doing, so she went to what would be the first of many trade shows. That year, all anyone could talk about was a book called The Rules, a sort of retro dating guide that instructed single women how to land a man by essentially hiding all their less-desirable traits until there was a ring on the finger and it was presumably too late to turn back. Mom had a hunch and ordered twenty copies, which sold out almost immediately.

Mom used to joke that she pulled a Rules on Ira, luring him into opening a used bookstore full of dusty classics he could collect, only to make him sell contemporary hits like The Rules and Twilight. But as long as Mom handled all the new books and chatted up the customers, Ira was happy to continue collecting the rare editions and be the human algorithm.

“Yin and Yang,” was how Mom put it.

“Eros and Thanatos,” was how Ira put it.

See?

For some reason, I’m thinking about The Rules a few nights later when I return from the signing at Penny’s office. Probably because it’s pouring rain, as it will continue to pour rain for the next six to eight months. If anything, it was the Northwest weather that Rulesed Ira.

The year he met Mom had been one of those magical summers when the sun arrives early to the party in May and staggers home, the last to leave, halfway through October. By the time the weather showed its true colors—which is to say singular color, which is to say gray—it