Novel & Cerita Books Like My Life Next Door

//Chandra Margaret// I immediately put all the snack that I prepared for the boys. My hands are shaking a bit as I go to the living room. There is three boys in total. I dare not to look in their faces. "H-here is the food." I clear my throat. Even my voice is shaking. The boy in the single sofa look at me. He's reading a book in his hand. I know that book! It's Our dawn is hotter than day. A book about two people who keep their night busy while sleeping in the daylight.

“You think I am old? Age is just a number. I still believe I am young. You never know, I might even outlive you.” Shiva’s face tensed a little. He looked down, avoiding the old man’s eyes. They stepped out of the store, filled with their own thoughts, and ambled in opposite directions towards their homes. Shiva carried a short-stories collection in his backpack from the shop. Mr. Ben had told him he could take any book from the shop to read. He planned to read it to his sister at night. She loved stories, especially those with happy endings. She loved to imagine herself as a character in those stories and live the happy lives vicariously. This was the only pleasure Shiva could give her – for

_____________ She thought she was alone. She was wrong. Some rescues come too late - others change the course of two lives forever. Unlock the next chapter.

It wasn't just a feeling though, it was a fact. I earnestly looked forward to our next meeting, but it never came, or at least not as I had expected. However, two weeks after our first encounter, Ms. Ellen appeared at my parents doorstep with a jar of cookies, and a wide smile, introducing herself as our next door neighbour. And then I knew the world was playing tricks on me.

When Rachel heard me say that, she let out a cold laugh. "Defendant, is your son some kind of irresistible catch? Does my client, Daisy, have nothing better to do than rush to ruin her own purity just to frame him?" Daisy immediately echoed her. "I really did see Lucas. When I was heading to tutoring, I happened to see him coming out of his apartment. We took the elevator down together. He told me his name was Lucas Cole and that he was a newly moved-in neighbor."

I get up from the armchair, glancing at Vlad. “I'm going to look for more books.” Vlad nods in agreement. I enter the section of contemporary erotic novels, coming across an endless aisle of books with every theme that could exist. I pick up one named: My Hot Neighbor from the Gym. And I focus on reading, being amazed by the depravity and loving every page I read. I see Vlad approaching and quickly grab a self-help book that was in the middle of the shelf, titled: Tomorrow Will Come Soon and put it underneath, disguising it.

I donated a dozen books from the Barlowe house—stories I wanted other young girls to find: Jane Eyre, Little Women, The Secret Life of Bees, Becoming, The House on Mango Street, and more. Books that had whispered to me when the world was too loud. Books that had taught me what a woman could be. Mrs. Bertram smiled as she scanned the titles. “This will change someone’s life,” she said. I nodded. “That’s the goal.” I stopped at the market afterward for fresh apples and ginger chews. A few people I knew offered kind smiles, congratulations, warm nods. The town had softened. The whispers had quieted. And even when they hadn’t… I no longer let them land.

I take one last look at myself until I strike a pose and say,"Perfect," I hear mom from downstairs telling me to hurry up, so I grab my book bag and put on my glasses and was about to leave my room until I remember my most important thing. I go to my book-shelf and pull out a book that reads, Gone Girl by Giliian Flynn on the front cover. I've always loved mysteries; I can't remember one day where I wasn't watching Criminal Minds or Goosebumps in my room.

We just kept existing in the same space and let whatever was happening happen at whatever pace it decided to happen at. It was the most uncontrolled thing I had done in years. I was surprised to find I did not hate it. Monday he left a book on the kitchen counter. Not a note with it. Just the book. A biography of a woman who had built one of the first female led law firms in New York in the nineteen sixties. I had mentioned her once in a conversation two weeks ago. One sentence. I had not thought he was paying that level of attention. I took it to my room and read fifty pages before I went to sleep.

There was a kitchen, open to the living space, with a worn butcher block counter and pots hanging from a rack above the island, the pots of someone who actually used them, their surfaces the matte gray of regular heat and regular cleaning. I stood in the middle of the room and turned slowly. "You have so many books," I said. "I do," he said. He was watching me take in the space. "Have you read all of them?" "Most," he said. "Some of them I keep for the same reason you keep certain people in your life. Not because you're actively engaging with them but because having them nearby means something." I looked at him.