Paper Towns

A character in a book falls in love with the reader.

Black. And white. And black. That's my life. The only colour I've ever seen is the people who peered into me but decided I wasn't good enough to spend time on. Brown, white, red, black. Politically incorrect, maybe, but the only way to describe it.

Until you came along. You, with skin so beautiful, so rich, a beautiful colour that touches my soul and yet I can't describe. Yo and I, we're so similar. We both like our room better than the outside, yet we hate the place we live in. Can't wait to get out of this paper town. Except for me, it's true. Literally.

Yes, I am that girl. The one in the pages? That's me. The one who knows everything about you? Me. No! Don't you go on and think of me as some crazy stalker, because I'm not! I only know what you told me! And you told me everything. And it's so beautiful.

That irrational fear you have? It's beautiful too. Walking at night and suddenly feeling as though someone is walking beside you and you want to run so so far away and hide forever? Me too. But here's the difference - I run away, I run so so far away and hide forever and no one ever notices. I run on the black and white road and jump off the page to the next one and use another as the blanket, but nothing happens. The feeling doesn't go away. Until you come along.

You tell me everything, yet sometimes I wish I could jump into your head and take a swim there. How many colours must it possess? I only get a glimpse of it from your daily narrations. The reds and the blues and the greens, how must they look?

I think your mind will be so colourful - colours that flood me, colours that absorb me, colours that become me. Or is it a paper town like mine? No, it cannot be. Because the way you talk to me, the way you care about people more than yourself, how can your mind be anything but the most beautiful place in the world?

I love you. I live in pages, and you're my only light. My only colour. My only world. You're all I've ever known. Please don't leave. Do you know how every minute, every second of my life passes when you shut the book and leave me all alone to face the darkness? That's when my demons come out. They're the same ones you have, aren't they? Never being good enough, wishing you didn't exist, the usual.

But I sit here, pinching myself to make sure you weren't a dream. You don't know what it feels like here, it feels as though the world is a void, and you got sucked into it, like a long piece of string you're flat and two dimensional, and this'll go on forever, and light was just an illusion, a hallucination, and the only reality is this darkness that you'll never be able to escape.

Imagine the only light you'll ever have. It's like a ball of light, that comes in one second, luminates your world, your very being, and floats away and disappears in the blink of an eye, and there's no sign it even existed, except the paper town you live in seems a little more paper, a little more flimsy, because you have experienced euphoria, pure bliss, and you don't even know if it was real.

Please don't go. If you didn't exist, who'd open this book everyday, how would I see light of day? Life is darker than a black hole everyday in here. You come in to rescue me. If you didn't exist, who'd open the book and rescue me from the clutches of this paper? These flimsy lies? You're all I kave.

I love you so so much. You matter more that the world to me. You are my world. This book, this paper, it's all lies. It's only you. You are the truth. You are the universe. You are everything. Everything.

Don't leave. I know this is the first time we're speaking, and it'll seem a little unnatural to you, but trust me, you make all the difference in my world.

I love you more than anything else. You might want to know who I am. I am the one in your diary. The incarnation of your worst fears, your wildest dreams, your prettiest smiles.

I am you.

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