The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald Page B

strange like that. They could be completely uninterested in you, but the moment you picked up a book,
you
were the one being rude.
    As soon as they turned out of the little lane which led to Amy’s house, the cornfields appeared again. She couldn’t decide whether they were protective or threatening.
    â€˜Sara who likes reading.’
    For a second, she wondered if he could read her mind.
    â€˜You’ve got a book hidden in your pocket.’ He was sounding more and more dismissive.
    â€˜People are better in books,’ she muttered. She said it so quietly she didn’t think he could have heard her, but when she stole a glance at him, she thought she could see one of his eyebrows twitch. ‘Don’t you agree?’ she asked defensively.
    â€˜No,’ he said.
    She knew that most people would disagree with her too. ‘But they’re so much more fun and interesting and …’ Friendly, she thought.
    â€˜Safer?’
    â€˜That, too.’ She actually laughed.
    But then he seemed to lose interest again, both in the conversation and her. ‘But they’re not real,’ he said, as though that would put an end to the discussion.
    Real
. What was so great about reality? Amy was dead, Sara was stuck here in a car with a man who clearly disliked her. With books, she could be whoever she wanted, wherever she wanted. She could be tough, beautiful, charming; she could come up with the perfect line at the perfect moment, and she could …
experience
things. Real things. Things which happened to real people.
    In books, people were charming and friendly and life followed certain set patterns. If a person dreamt of doing something then you could be almost certain that, by the end of the book, they would be doing that very thing. And that they would find someone to do it with. In the real world, you could be almost certain that person would end up doing absolutely anything other than what they had dreamt of.
    â€˜They’re meant to be better than reality,’ she said. ‘Bigger, funnier, more beautiful, more tragic, more romantic.’
    â€˜So in other words, not realistic at all,’ said Tom. He made it sound as though she had been talking about some romantic schoolgirl fantasy about heroes and heroines and true love.
    â€˜When they’re realistic, they’re more realistic than life. If it’s a story about a meaningless, grey, normal day, then it’ll be much more meaningless and grey than our own grey, meaningless days.’
    Sara thought he seemed to be struggling not to laugh. But then his smile vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
    â€˜The books you got Amy to order arrived two days before her funeral,’ he said, and with that, the conversation was definitely over.
    Just at the same moment, Sara was feeling selfish enough to think: so where are they, then? Her thirteen books wouldn’t last long at all. Especially if she continued getting through them at the rate she had been.
    The Square was a large, bulky building surrounded by empty parking spaces. It rose in lonely majesty above the asphalt. Tom stopped the car and looked around as though he too was seeing the bar for the first time. Then he shook his head and opened the door for her. ‘Maybe I should warn you about Andy and Carl,’ he said. ‘They’re … well, they’re together. Everyone’s very understanding. We don’t talk about it.’
    â€˜I know,’ she said. Tom raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.
    There were only two other customers in the entire bar; one looked as though he was sleeping, the other was eating non-stop from a bowl of peanuts. Sara hadn’t realised that people in the USA actually wore cowboy hats, but when she turned round to comment enthusiastically, Tom looked so unimpressed she decided that now wasn’t the right time.
    He gestured for her to keep going and followed her over to the bar. She climbed