Quid owns very few books due to her almost perfect memory and recall, despite her crippling inability to answer direct questions. She borrows from libraries and reads articles online and spends afternoons browsing bookstores, but she can remember when she was younger the books she desperately wanted to own. The thick, ornately bound, gilt-edged classics that sat on locked shelves behind polished glass. She used to think they had the answers to all her questions and she would have vivid dreams about pulling them down, opening them up and knowing everything. She would have the correct answer to any question and no one would ever laugh at her or call her stupid again.

When she was old enough, tall enough, to read the titles she was disappointed to discover she had already read them – the complete works of Shakespeare and Dickens. She left the glinting books behind, but sometimes she dreams of gilded pages, the smell of old books, and turning heavy pages that hold the answers to all questions.