Required Summer Reading

My grandma kept her pocket paperback romance novels in the scary spare room on the second floor, directly to the right of the J-shaped staircase, the one we’d ride down on the old dishwasher box pretending there was winter snow during summer break, and I’d sneak into that room, the one with the grotesquely large stuffed pink bunny and glassy-eyed dolls, the room where the western sun baked the contents untouchable, and, kneeling on the sizzling, rough carpet, I’d fan the worn pages for two seconds across my thumb, find where I knew it got good, and savor the heat.