Page 252 - The Midnight Library
P. 252
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difficulty was that there was no first page. ere were no words in the entire
book. It was completely blank. Like the other books, this was the book of her
future. But unlike the others, in this one that future was unwritten.
So, this was it. is was her life. Her root life.
And it was a blank page.
Nora stood there a moment, with her old school pen in hand. It was now
nearly one minute aer midnight.
e other books on the shelf had become charcoal, and the hanging light
bulb flickered through the dust, vaguely illuminating the fracturing ceiling.
A large piece of ceiling around the light – roughly the shape of France – was
looking ready to fall and crush her.
Nora took the lid off the pen and pressed the open book against the
charred stack of bookshelves.
e ceiling groaned.
ere wasn’t long.
She started to write. Nora wanted to live.
Once she’d finished the inscription she waited a moment. Frustratingly,
nothing happened, and she remembered what Mrs Elm had once said. Want
is an interesting word. It means lack. So, she crossed that out and tried again.
Nora decided to live.
Nothing. She tried again.
Nora was ready to live.
Still nothing, even when she underlined the word ‘live’. Ever ywhere now,
there was breakage and ruination. e ceiling was falling, razing ever ything,
smothering each of the bookshelves into piles of dust. She gaped over and
saw the figure of Mrs Elm, out from under the desk where she had been
sheltering Nora, standing there without any fear at all then disappearing
completely as the roof caved in almost ever ywhere, smothering remnants of
fire and shelf stacks and all else.
Nora, choking, couldn’t see anything at all now.
But this part of the librar y was holding out, and she was still there.
Any second now, ever ything would be gone, she knew it.
So she stopped tr ying to think about what to write and, in sheer
exasperation, just put down the first thing that came to her, the thing that
she felt inside her like a defiant silent roar that could overpower any external
destruction. e one truth she had, a truth she was now proud of and
