At a large public library, there is a five-year-old boy. He is entertaining himself by carelessly inspecting the illustrations in picture books, rather than reading the words, as he waits for his mother, who is browsing in the next room over, to pick him up. As he makes his way to the back of the children's section, he finds a small area with a bright orange, cloth sofa that starkly contrasts with the light green wall it leans against, and two chairs upholstered with the same orange cloth on either side of a simple, low wooden table. On the table, he sees a stack of books. Some are thicker than he's ever seen before, and some are the same size as the picture books that his mother sometimes reads to him. The number of books on the table is a higher number than he knows how to count to. When he moves closer, he sees something else, hidden behind the enormous pile.

It's a girl. She's sitting on the ground, leaning agaist the sofa, which confuses the boy. If there was a couch, why wasn't she sitting on it instead of on the floor?

She's thirteen, too old to be in the children's section or to be reading picture books, but this doesn't occur to the boy. All he sees is her, leaning over an opened picture book, crying quietly.

"Why are you crying?"

He asks her this. She shifts her watery gaze to him, then back to the book.

It's not fair, she says.

"What's not fair?"

They beat the witch, and they're happy, and it has a happy ending, she answers. The boy is mystified by this.

"What does that mean?"

What about the witch? What if she was actually sad, and lonely, and that's why she acted evil? The characters didn't talk to her or try to understand her. They killed her. That's why it's not fair, she explains. The boy doesn't understand.

"Witches are bad," he says. "They have green skin and pointy hats and they ride on brooms and eat people, so they're scary." The boy quickly catches himself. "I'm not scared."

Really?

She looks back down at the book. The boy reaches out and pats the sofa.

"A couch."

The girl turns to him again.

"Like this." The boy hops up on the sofa and sits down. The girl glances away for a moment, then stands up and sits down on the sofa next to him.

He points to the book she's holding. "Read that to me," he orders. She flips through the pages, closes the book, and opens it from the front.

The boy listens as she reads in a soft voice. He stares down at the colorful pictures decorating the pages, letting her rhythmic words fade into the background. She reads it out loud, the whole way through, until she reaches 'The End.' Then she closes the back cover. 

Do you think this is meant to be manipulative?

The girl rubs the cover with her thumb. "What's manipulative?" the boy asks.

It's....

She pauses, her fingers frozen over the cover.

It's something you shouldn't have to know about yet.

The boy hears his mother call for him from a few aisles down. "Wait," he tells the girl, and he jumps off of the sofa and dashes past the shelves to his mother.

She asks him if he's ready to go. He shakes his head and grabs her hand, and starts to pull her back to where the girl is.

The boy's mother asks him where they're going. The boy pulls harder, and runs back to the place with the sofa and chairs.

But the stack of books is gone.

And so am I.