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Mom had just died.

It was only three weeks since the funeral, and nothing made sense yet. I’d gone back to school because that’s what you do when the world ends—you pretend it hasn't. You smile and nod when people tell you they’re sorry and then go back to your life like you’re not drowning.

I remember the whole class groaning when our English teacher assigned the book. Most people didn’t make it past chapter one.

I read the whole thing in a single night.

Then I read it again the next day. And again the day after that.

It was messy and emotional and wildly dramatic, filled with yearning and idealism and a crushing, aching sadness that felt like it had been carved out of my own chest. Werther was self-absorbed and ridiculous, but I loved him.

Not because he was admirable. Because he made me realize the ache I’d been carrying didn’t have to be my entire world, head, and heart.

I clung to that.

It was the first time I felt understood by something written on a page. Like somewhere, a dead German author from three hundred years ago had felt what I was feeling and found a way to write it down.

I didn’t tell anyone how much it meant to me. It felt too personal.

A couple of years later, I was killing time at the New York Public Library while waiting for rehearsal to start. On a whim, I looked it up in the catalog. Crazily enough, they had a rare edition, one of the oldest English translations—and in circulation, too, which felt insane. What kind of idiot would check that out?

Apparently, one like me.

Scratch that.

Twoidiots. The book was already checked out—by someone named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Or rather, my guess was, someone with a nerdy sense of humor who’d put that name on their library card application.

I placed a request to be notified when it was returned, and a few days later, I got an email.

It wasn’t until after I brought it home—with myownfake-name library card: Fräulein von B, a character from the book—that I found the note tucked inside: hand-written, folded twice, wedged between two pages like a secret.

Apologies for hanging onto this. I didn’t realize there were other Goethe masochists in the city. You have questionable taste, but I respect it.

Cocky. Casual. Just irreverent enough to make me roll my eyes.

But it did make me smile.

So much so, that when I returned it three days later, I left my own note in response.

Is there anything more insufferable than a literary masochist? Also, you're one to talk—you've taken this book out three times. I checked.

The next time I took the book out, there was another note.

Three times? So what? I like to take my time with Goethe. And they have that dumb fucking 3-day checkout limit because it's an old edition. Fucking lame.

That’s how it started.

We started leaving each other notes tucked between the pages of that rare edition. Sometimes we’d take the book home for a weekend, sometimes we’d sneak our notes into it on the shelf.

A month in he admitted he was a guy, though I’d already guessed.

He was smart. Funny in a dry, mocking way that made me want to reciprocate. A few years older. He never signed his name or told me much of anything that identifiable about himself, but his voice came through as clearly as if we were speaking face-to-face.

He made me laugh. He asked real questions. More—helistenedto my answers.

After a few months, he suggested we stop checking the book out altogether. Said it’d be safer to hide it somewhere in the stacks.

He chose the location: a shelf in the back corner of the philosophy section, hidden behind a row of dusty encyclopedias. We moved locations a few times.