On her walk home from school, Amie called her sister. Even when Nina was busy, she always answered for Amie.
“What are you working on?” Amie asked.
“Um, a piece about the airline industry’s response to the strings,” Nina said vaguely.
“Is now a bad time?” Amie could sense her sister’s distraction, her eyes skimming the pages on her desk. Amie wondered, what exactly was the industry’s response to the strings? Perhaps the airlines would suffer, too many short-stringers fearful of a fiery crash. Or maybe the strings would spur more people to travel, to explore the world while they still could.
“Sorry, no, now’s fine,” Nina said.
But Amie was still thinking about planes. “Do you remember when I wanted to date a pilot?”
“Of course.” Nina laughed. “You went on, what, two dates with the guy from Delta?”
“Because I hoped the third date might’ve been in Paris,” Amie said wistfully.
“I’m guessing that’s not what you called to talk about.”
“I’m trying to think of a book for the kids to read over summer break,” Amie explained. “Preferably something historical, but relatable.”
“Hmm, well, what did we read in fifth grade? Something about the Salem witch trials? Honestly, now might be a good time to talk about how people react to something they can’t understand.”
“I guess I’m just a little wary of bombarding them too much with the string stuff,” said Amie. “I know they’re aware of so much more than we give them credit for, but . . . they’re still just kids.”
“I get it,” Nina said, then both sisters fell quiet.
“You, um, you would tell me if you changed your mind, right?” Nina asked timidly.
“Of course, you’d be the first to know. But I probably don’t even have to look,” Amie said cheerfully. “Yours was super-long, and you and I must share the majority of our DNA, so I’m sure mine’s pretty similar.”
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Nina said. “And there’s still no stopping Mom and Dad.”
Amie smiled at the thought of her parents, thankfully still healthy in their early sixties, who had chosen, like Amie, not to look at their strings. To focus instead on the blessings in their latter half of life, filling their weekends with gardening and book clubs and tennis, those simple pleasures made all the more pleasurable for feeling so ordinary in an extraordinary time.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to work,” Amie said. “I’m going to stop by the bookstore and see if any inspiration strikes. Say hi to Maura for me.”
Amie stepped into the bookshop near her apartment, the bell chiming as she entered. The small television mounted overhead was playing an interview with one of the newest presidential candidates, Anthony Rollins, a smooth-talking, good-looking congressman from Virginia who was no doubt pontificating about why he should be the man to shepherd the country through such alien times. Amie was still upset that the shop owner had installed the television last year. She came to the bookstore for relief from the endless news cycle, the stresses of the world outside.
She tried to ignore the man on the bright screen above her and slipped past the table of popular titles up front, where The Iliad and The Odyssey had both taken up residence in recent weeks, thanks to renewed interest in Greek mythology and the Fates, alongside a cluster of self-help books and meditations on mortality by doctors, philosophers, and theologians. The Five People You Meet in Heaven was a bestseller again.
Once she was in the main room, surrounded by the tall wooden shelves and the familiar scent of thousands of pages, Amie felt herself relax. There were few places where she felt more contented than a bookstore. She had a sometimes overwhelming tendency to disappear into her daydreams, so Amie took comfort in being surrounded by the equally prolific dreams of others, preserved forever in print.
When she and Nina were younger, their mother would often take them to the local bookshop after school, where the owner didn’t mind if they spent an hour reading on the carpet before even making a purchase. By then Amie was already pulled toward fantasy and romance, while Nina preferred factual biographies of women like Marie Curie or Amelia Earhart （though her unsolved disappearance troubled Nina for weeks）。 As they read together, Nina developed a habit of pridefully pointing out any typos she found in a published book, which never failed to annoy Amie. She always wished that her sister could just let go and lose herself in the story.