I peaked when I was twelve. Not so much in a “middle school was the greatest time of my life” sense, but in a literal one: I hit my peak height of five feet and seven inches in the seventh grade. I stood eight inches taller than my twin brother, five inches taller than my best friend, and three inches taller than the next tallest kid at my tiny Connecticut Catholic school. Because of a self-imposed ban on physical activity (a result of the Nasty Kickball Incident of Third Grade), I was not only the tallest kid in school, but also slightly overweight. This paired with an unfortunate combination of genetics that required special order, extra thick glasses, five years of braces, and endless bottles of anti-frizz hair cream, I could safely say that I was not, what my mother called, a looker. The words of my classmates were not kind.

            Nevertheless, I loved them. Words. I loved the way they could sound so different when my mom and dad spoke. The way they rolled off my tongue in Spanish class. The way they looped and connected when I practiced cursive. The way they could surprise me when my best friend Maddy and I passed a bright red Moleskin back and forth underneath our desks during class, taking turns writing pages and pages of nonsensical poetry, hiding the journal beneath our plaid skirts when our teacher looked to investigate our stifled giggles. When words were ours, they were wonderful.

To avoid words that were not my own, I joined as many clubs as I could during the recess hour. By the time I graduated eighth grade, I was an active member in band, choir, Math and Science Olympiad, student council, and my personal favorite, Young Librarians.

            We met every Wednesday after lunch in our tiny library filled with books approved by the Archdiocese, our pastor, and, as our teachers would have us believe, Jesus himself (which is to say that we had four whole shelves dedicated to different editions of the Bible). As an esteemed member of such an important club, I had certain privileges: Mrs. Marks, the librarian, let me check out more than the maximum four books at a time, I got to sit and read in the library whenever I pleased, and because I knew the Dewey Decimal Classification so well, I was allowed to re-shelve returned books. Pacing back and forth between the shelves, sliding my fingers along their spines, pushing the books back into place, making the rest of them on the shelf stand up just a little bit taller. Who needed fresh air and sunshine when I had a room full of books? Truly, every middle schooler’s dream.   

 The only job better than re-shelving was using the school’s blue laminator. I had the honor of laminating documents vital to the running of an academic institution: hall passes, signs, copies of the Our Father; nothing satisfied me more than finishing a laminating project. Something about the warmth of a freshly laminated sheet of paper. How the plastic always shined and the page never wrinkled. The permanency of words that would never be smudged again. Those words were meaningful. Those words were important.

            One day, as Maddy and I were re-shelving books, we left our little red Moleskin out on a table and open to one of our poems. Upon finding it, Mrs. Marks typed it up and set a copy of it in the pile of papers to be laminated. Taken from the confines of a cramped, lined page, our once incoherent scribbles looked almost foreign against a stark white background. Maddy and I hadn’t even realized we laminated our own work until Mrs. Marks pulled it from the pile and presented it back to us. Our writing looked so official. Powerful, even. It was hard to believe those words were mine. 

          After I graduated from St. Mary’s, I shrunk by way of everyone else finally hitting their growth spurts. My vision finally balanced out enough for me to get contacts, my braces were removed, I bought a flat iron and discovered the magic of cardio. The words of my new classmates were not unkind. Yet, I longed for Wednesday afternoons among the Bibles, for Mrs. Marks and Maddy, for the quiet certainty of the library’s rituals. The little red Moleskin Maddy and I used to share was quickly joined by companions, each making those before it stand up just a little bit taller. Each of its new companions offered what I longed: the familiarity of an empty page, the sense of comfort brought by shiny ink drying on paper, the security of my past self inscribed in paper. 

            I supposed I don't really long for that feeling of home anymore. I've found it in other parts of my life: dance, my friends, my family. Yet despite how much I've changed and grown (figuratively, not literally) those blank pages will always hold a sense of wonder for me. Wonder that something can come from nothing more than a girl in a plaid skirt and her best friend looking for anything to call their own.