“Gallico’s story feels like winter to me. It’s like the purity of falling snow melting on your tongue—the serenity you get from that coolness and ephemerality. It has that same beauty and desolation to it.” Tohko sighed with pleasure as she flipped through a collection of Paul Gallico’s stories.
We belonged to the Seijoh Academy book club, which met in the western corner of the school’s third floor.
As the day ended, the sun lit the room with a beguiling golden light the color of honey.
An old oak table stood in the middle of the tiny room, which was mainly used for storage and smelled of old paper and dust. Cardboard boxes were stacked to dizzying heights along the walls. There were also two steel bookshelves and a locker. That filled the room to bursting, so we stacked old books we had no space for on every available surface. If there was ever an earthquake, the towers of books would probably topple over and bury us alive.
Tohko was perched on a metal folding chair, her knees pulled up to her chest. It wasn’t a very modest way for her to sit. Her pleated skirt was almost wide open—but not quite. If she moved her legs even slightly she would be flashing me.
She rested a pale cheek on her bare knees and wound one arm around her legs so she could turn lovingly through the book with her slender fingers.
Her dark bangs fell across the white skin of her forehead and trailing braids fell over her shoulder to her hips. The whiteness of her skin made the black of her hair, her eyebrows, and her eyes stand out.
When she was quiet, Tohko seemed incredibly refined. Like a living doll.
But then… she slowly tore a page out of the book, stuffed it into her mouth, and started chewing it like a goat.
God, she’s eating it… That never gets any less surreal.
R-r-rip, crinkle, flupp.
Nom-nom-nom—gulp.
Her slender throat made an adorable sound as she swallowed the page. She ripped out and ate another page, her placid expression transforming as her eyes closed with joy. She beamed.
“Gallico really is de-licious. Did you know he was born in New York? Everybody knows him for the movie The Poseidon Adventure and the Mrs. Harris series of children’s books, but if you ask me, his best story has to be The Snow Goose. It’s all about the poignant connection between two quiet souls, a lonely painter named Rhayader who lives in a lighthouse next to a marsh, and a girl named Fritha who appears one day carrying an injured white goose. Words are powerless to describe the deep affection they have for each other. Ah—their love is so pure!
“Got that, Konoha? You shouldn’t just ramble on and on. You have to carry the truly important emotions with you to the grave. It’s the struggle to not speak of things that gives them poignancy and beauty. The last scene makes me cry every time I read it. Gallico’s stories are like an exquisite sorbet, soothing your burning passion. It feels amazing, sliding sweetly down my throat! You’ve got to read Jennie and Snowflake, too. And if it’s not Sumiko Yagawa’s translation, don’t bother.”
I was at the lopsided table writing an improv story in a notebook with a mechanical pencil.
Words were spilling onto the page, so I kept my eyes down and coolly interjected, “It tastes like sorbet? Tohko, you’re a goblin. Writing is the only thing you can taste. How can you compare it to anything?”
Tohko pouted at me for that.
“Why not? I can imagine it just fine! I can say, ‘Oh, sorbet must taste like this!’ Besides, ‘goblin’ is a slur. I’m just a book girl: a pretty high school student like any other, who loves all the stories and literature of the world so intensely that she devours them.”
“I don’t think most high school girls rip pages out to nibble on, though. Or at least, you’re the only weirdo like that I ever heard of in the sixteen years I’ve been around.”
Tohko puffed her cheeks out even more. “You’re awful! How can you call a girl a weirdo to her face? That hurts. You look so nice on the surface, like you would keep roses at home and name them things like Nancy and Betty and take really good care of them, but I think you’re lacking a little in delicacy toward your elders.”
“Wait, you think I lack delicacy?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tohko grumbled. But her mood recovered almost immediately. She hopped out of her chair and leaned forward with a coy look in her eyes. “Well, never mind. My compassion is as vast as the Andromeda Galaxy, so I’ll overlook one or two rude comments from an upstart kid. More important, is my treat ready yet?” she asked excitedly.
She was such an uncomplicated person. If she were a cat, she would have been purring.
One year my senior, Tohko Amano is the president of the book club—and also a goblin who eats stories.
Instead of eating bread and drinking water, she gobbles up pages from books and any paper with writing on it.
One year ago, I don’t know how, this book girl with the long braids dragged me into the book club, and ever since then as soon as classes were over, she would pester me. “I’m hunnngryyy,” she says. “C’mon, write something. Pleeease?” And I slap together a poem or an essay for her.
Even now that it’s May and I’ve moved up to the second year, Tohko and I are still the only two people in the book club. Just the other day, Tohko was upset about the fact that not a single first-year student showed up.
“Take these, Konoha. This is a direct order from your president!”
And, lagging behind the times a little, she shoved some recruitment flyers into my hands. I passed them out, my face burning the whole time I stood outside the school gates, but it didn’t look like any new members were going to come.
I wonder if I can stay with this club if it’s just me and this freakish president.
Why am I in the book club anyway, of all things, after I swore I would never write another novel? I was supposed to be through with writing of any kind.
And now writing little snack stories for my weird goblin president isn’t even strange anymore. It’s become totally normal.
Tohko took a silver stopwatch from her pocket and showed it to me.
“Look, you only have five minutes left. Write an absolutely delicious snack for your beloved president. Gallico had a restrained, refreshing sweetness, so now I want something dripping with sugar. A poignant story would be great, too, but love stories should have happy endings, after all. Don’t do anything where the love interest dies from leukemia or a weak heart or in a plane crash or from choking on a strawberry mochi or anything like that.”