044

A year and three months flew by. Adam was already 11 and about to turn 12. Birthdays, however, felt pretty empty: he had no one to celebrate them with.

Adam hadn't seen his father for almost 2 years, and he didn't feel like going to visit him either. I always hoped that his father would one day regret abandoning him and look for him in the cave of the old man without eyes, however, that never happened .

Adam's classmates celebrated his and their birthdays in the traditional way librarians do: say hello and goodbye.

Adam didn't know why his friends saw that as normal. But Adam, who had grown up alone with a society-insulated lunatic for a father, had a totally different view of the normal librarians' party standards.

Luckily, Professor Achilles gave Adam a birthday cake, the old man with no eyes gave him a good speech for heroes and his godfather wrote a happy birthday song in his biography.

However, all this does not mean that this was the worst birthday of Adam's life ... (for now).

Like every day, Adam was waiting at the doors of the stairs while he studied; however, it would seem that this strategy of passively waiting for a shelf and not going to look for them was not working. It had been a long time and Adam never came across a booklet that wanted to talk to him, he did come across a few, but he only saw them moving on the floor and not looking for him.

Despite all that, today was a very special day for Adam because he had just celebrated 60 pages of reading. The celebration was a gift from his teacher and a few words of encouragement to get to 80 pages: which was the next big goal.

Unfortunately the gift did not last long, since it was an edible book: its pages tasted like mushrooms from the cave, its cover tasted like a fruit that Adam used to buy in the market and its spine tasted like paper, it seemed that this Some of it was not to be eaten, but the boy did not notice.

Adam studied and studied. Little by little his waiting time was running out, and it was time to go back to the cave, but by surprise for him someone he knew was coming out of the stairs, and it was Franco.

Adam was surprised to see his friend walking up the stairs; Since his friend lived upstairs, he didn't have much reason to go downstairs other than to browse the bookshelves. A thing that would not be very strange on Franco's part.

Franco looked at Adam curiously about the meeting and came over to greet him:

—What are you doing waiting at the stairwell doors? Does your father pick you up here?

—Yes, yes—Adam answered a little nervously; luckily his friend had given him a good excuse.