Tiffany had been uncharacteristically quiet since they'd gone upstairs. Or, at least, Karyn assumed this was uncharacteristic of her. Although Karyn had gotten to know her better in the last hour, she still didn't really know Tiffany Sanders all that well.
But she was definitely a friend. So Karyn turned to her, in part to distract herself from her own choice of outfit, and asked, "Hey, Tiffany, what are you looking at?"
The only other blonde in the room turned away from the bookshelf and towards Karyn. "I was just checking out your book collection. I know some of these, but I've never even heard of a bunch of them. What's The Dragonriders of Pern about?"
Karyn thought for a moment, trying to figure out how to best summarize it. "Well, it's this planet where, once every 400 years, these balls of, like, solid acid fall from the sky, and they have to use dragons to get rid of them before they touch the ground. And the last cycle was a leap year or something, so the acid never fell, so some people think it's stopped entirely, and it's kind of about, like, office politics but what if office politics revolved around dragons that stopped acid from falling from the sky?"
Karyn wasn't sure what she was expecting, but certainly she hadn't anticipated Tiffany's animated response. Eyes popped open, mouth agape, arms gesturing, Tiffany exclaimed, "That sounds amazing! Can I borrow it?"
A few minutes earlier, Karyn would have likely said no. But if she was already letting Melissa use her swimsuit, then she may as well let Tiffany use her book. Karyn shrugged. "Sure."
"Oh, thank you! What about these?" Tiffany pointed to a boxed Lord of the Rings collection. "I've never even seen the movies, but I feel like it's something I should know about."
"Um, okay?" Karyn had read those books already. It would be good if Tiffany used them.
Why was using everything so important to Karyn all of a sudden? It didn't matter. It was important, somehow.
After a few short minutes, Tiffany had practically cleared out Karyn's bookshelf. What was left were a stack of magazines, Paris Hilton's "Confessions of an Heiress," "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens," and one of the Twilight books.
All things that Karyn had not yet read.
When the girls were gone, Karyn would have to get started on that particular reading list. But that was okay, as long as Tiffany made sure to get started on her own.
