LESLIE SMITH
The Search The slight woman in a safari vest stood at the mouth of the used bookstore on Mulberry Street, the one with smudged windows, the one that smells like mothballs. She wedged the talon hook on the left door and rappelled past the nonfiction, zinged away from the reference section, swept toward poetry before flinging herself toward fiction. The rope bounced and zipped still. Her fingers clung to a crevice between Tennyson and Hardy. Her stale teacher told her that reading was an adventure, but this girl liked the search, fingers slinking over burgundy and blue bindings. Her forefinger would find the treasure. She’d take it home and mount it on the bookshelf.
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