I remember my first day quite clearly. I was pulled out of a box along with several other varying in shape and size, color and image. We were set on a cold, hard table, then taken one by one to have stickers placed tightly on our bindings and opened to be marked with a property of stamp that was low in ink, leaving a fuzzy red mark with barely visible words. They separated us onto different carts I was taken to the teen/young adult section. I was then placed on a shiny rack labeled NEW. For two days I sat there watching girls and boys walk in and out in a variety much like the books themselves. Eventually a girl dressed in black with red hair and bright blue eyes checked me out and took me home. For several days I watched her. The first day she sat on her bed and read me with a twinkle of curiosity in her eyes. The next night she came in crying, I had heard her parents yelling. She lay down to read more of me, but after a few minutes she lay face down on me, soaking my pages with tears. The next day she came but wouldn't read me. Instead she picked me up and threw me at the closed door when her mother rattled the locked knob, screaming 'leave me alone and ripping some of my pages in the process. The following morning she picked me up off the floor and finished me on her way to school. She tenderly turned the few pages that she ripped as if I were and injured animal. After her classes and her particularly interesting conversation with the blonde boy with the emerald eyes and the brunette with the blue streaks in her hair, she returned me to the library. There she showed them my ripped pages and explained that it was an accident. They fixed my pages and put me up on a different shelf with other books, the ones who had seen much more than I had. Now I rest among other, younger books who with soon have their own adventures as I have and see the world beyond the shelf.