When We Were Young Book Novels & Stories

Inside the Archive, the shelves moved with my breath. I passed by a book bound in velvet dusk. Its title: The First Time You Chose Softness Over Safety. Another: How You Loved When No One Was Looking. I reached for a third. It burned with light before revealing its name: What You Became When You Stopped Trying to Be Understood. I wept then—not from pain, but from reunion. The guide touched my shoulder. “There’s one more,” they said. They led me to a door I hadn’t noticed.

Now, perhaps there will come a time when I want to move on, but till then I am happy here. When I was younger, I always had my nose stuck in a book, and because of it I was not popular. But one day, when a new girl came into town, I finally found a friend. Since then, we have been best friends through thick and thin. Even after she found out that she was pregnant with Billy Jones’s baby.

She admired the colours each one had and how each presented itself with a unique quirk. Noticing one that seemed to have worn off more than the rest she pulled it out of the rack. Flipping it over to see its cover she smiled at the title written in bold letters the words read Greensburrow. It was a children's book about a young boy and girl who arrived at an orphanage together and became good friends. The girl, Anna was an adventurous soul who would often get herself in trouble but had Eliot, the boy always there to save her.

They wandered through the aisles, running their fingers along spines that held countless worlds within their pages. Emily's eyes sparkled with excitement as she plucked a weathered book from the shelf. "Liam, look at this," she exclaimed, her voice filled with wonder. "It's a collection of love letters from different eras. Each page holds the raw emotions of someone's heart."

Jayne said excusing herself Eva stood up and walked around the room for a while, the bookshelf was filled up with books, she picked up book ,an odd one, others had a smooth cover with dull colors but this one was covered with something that looked like glass, with the book inside but it didn’t really hide the fact that the book has been here for a while She opened it and it was Jayne when she was younger with her mom, her dad and a boy who stood beside her putting his hand around her neck

What I got was a blessing that deserves to be cherished, it was a gift from above that needs my pure care, love and attention. Seconds later, I decided to do my night routine, took a half-bath and applied some skincare to my face and body. Once all done, I sat on the bed, leaned against the headboard and took the children’s book Hail gave me earlier, it was originally her niece’s favorite bedtime storybook but then, her niece eventually lost interest in it and gone invested into playing games in her iPad instead. That’s actually saddening. Oh, growing kids nowadays… “That’s why when you come out, little muffin, please don’t grow too fast. The world is cruel when you’re old enough, you tend t

The title, in my careful twelve-year-old printing, read: "The Adventures of the Pebble Beach Gang." I sat back on my heels, a lump in my throat. It was a thinly-veiled chronicle of my summers here, of scrappy kids building forts and imagining pirates. The "gang" were my childhood friends, their names changed. The central conflict was a grumpy old man who wanted to fence off "their" beach. Arthur gently took it from my hands, flipping through the clumsy, heartfelt pages. "You were a keeper even then," he said softly. That evening, we brought the booklet to the Salty Dog. The sight of it, this artifact from a life before the fight, before any of us knew each other, cast a spell over the table.

Staring at the cracks on the totem, she sighed and suddenly smiled. Putting the totem in the box, she reburied it. A plane rumbled as it tore through the skies overhead, and Lisa left, starting her new life after putting behind the old memories they shared.

"For a kid, it's forever." Louis laughed. "He's got a point." "Whose side are you on?" "Yours. Always yours." Will rolled his eyes. "You guys are so gross." "And you love it." "Unfortunately." He grinned. "Love you, weird parents." "We love you too, weird kid." He went back inside. Louis and I looked at each other. "Our life," I said. "Our life," he agreed. We kept writing. --- The book took a year. When it was done, we printed two copies. One for Katie. One for Will.

Can’t you see? She didn’t finish her thought, but instead, turned and made her way to the house behind her. Her movements were of a defeated woman. There are different ways to lose everything. Our great-grandparents feared typhoid or diphtheria, to which they would surrender all their children, all their little chickens. Now we surrender all that is good in our lives to an addiction. And I, Millie Backhouse, the precocious brat, with all the clever answers, am absolutely useless.