Paige Turner Nau Today

The first page was a table of contents, but the chapters weren’t numbers. They were dates. Her dates. Page 1: The Day You Were Born, 3:47 AM. Page 14: The First Time You Lied (to Mrs. Crandall about the missing brownie). Page 32: The Day You Almost Kissed Leo Feng. She flipped to Page 32. The page was blank except for a single line of text that seemed to be writing itself as she watched: She hesitated. The moment passed. Leo went on to study in Prague and marry a violinist.

Paige Turner Nau had always believed her name was a cosmic joke. Her mother, a whimsical librarian named Eleanor, had married a stoic marine biologist named Carl Nau. Eleanor had won the battle of the first name (“Paige, for the love of books, Carl!”) and Carl had won the war of the last name (“Nau is short, strong, and unpronounceable in a storm, Eleanor.”). The middle name, Turner, was Eleanor’s secret victory lap. paige turner nau

Paige grew up surrounded by the scent of old paper and the quiet rustle of dust jackets. At sixteen, she could recommend a perfect book for any ailment: Jane Eyre for a broken heart, The Hobbit for a lost sense of adventure, Gatsby for disillusionment with the rich kids at school. But Paige herself had a problem she couldn’t solve. She was, as she put it, “tectonically shy.” She lived between pages, not among people. The first page was a table of contents,