Jonathon didn’t know how he felt about the whole thing, the robbery, was it a robbery? Yes, they had taken the kid’s money. But a kid like that, he had a river of money behind him, a gravity where money hung everywhere, money that would not be missed. No, he didn’t feel bad about that. He felt bad because he taken the book, the kid holding onto it so tightly, as if it was the last thing he believed in. Yet, it was taken anyway, ripped from his hands and torn much more than paper tears, the look in the kid’s eyes like he wouldn’t live without that damn book.
And there it was, on the bed, bent where his hands once were, the title East of Eden and an author that didn’t mean a thing to Jonathon Simms. Why would it? Nobody read that he cared about anyway.
But as if by some force he couldn’t control, maybe shaped by the look in the kid’s eyes, he reached down to his bed and grabbed the book, weighed it in his own hands. Light. Meaningless. Just a book.
But then he opened it.