Feeling as heavy as if I could sink right into the earth, I numbly started shelving books at what was once my dream job. Somewhere along the way one bad apple had fallen in my path, and now it seemed only the latest entry on a resume written in blood.

        I felt myself tumbling back through the years to my fifth grade classroom. Trying to keep the outrage out of my voice, I told Mr. Smith that the boys had been ruthlessly bullying my best friend, who was too nervous to say anything. He listened seriously enough, but in the end, I can still hear his last words, his incredulous scoff.

        “What are you, her lawyer?”

        When one of these days I’ve left behind the library and the coworkers I love, once again I’ll be telling on the bully on behalf of true friends who are afraid to speak up themselves. The only real difference between now and that afternoon fifteen years ago? This time, even less justice will be served…

        Scanning the shelves for the next book’s home in a library that never felt so cold, suddenly a familiar title stared me in the face.

        Mostly Harmless– however sacrilegiously, my library’s only trace of Douglas Adams. I am one of many hardcore fans who will rave about the genius of his first three books in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, yet utterly slam the last two in the same breath. Mostly Harmless isn’t even my 3^rd favorite of his books- if anything it’s my second least favorite. In that moment it didn’t matter- without thinking I snatched up this relic of an author who is one of the reasons I’m still writing- still here- and held it tight to my chest. I’d relied on the Guide to survive hostile alien worlds from my backwoods hometown to the Golden Gate to the land of the rising sun. My library on rainbow island was about the last place I ever thought I’d cling to it, but here I was holding on in the most literal sense.

        What do I do, Adams? What can I do? I found myself asking him as if he hasn’t been dead twenty years to a cruel and ridiculous twist of fate; as if he himself didn’t firmly believe that when we’re gone, we’re gone- fade to black, the end. I feel so helpless… What can I even hope to do for anyone in this mean world?

        Staring through the familiar green flying saucer on the cover and into the void, I thought about the copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide I’d clutched in relief when I found it in a West Portal bookstore, unable to believe I hadn’t brought my own worn volumes. About the chapters of Last Chance to See I’d read again and again until I felt myself begin to thaw in those foggy nights by the bay. About the copy of Tablo’s Pieces of You that I’d clutch to my chest in my darkest Nara nights with no care for the snowy white mold that made it look like the book itself was graying from worry. About the days when listening to Epik High’s albums on repeat somehow kept me on the train every day instead of under it.

        And an answer came to me. About all I can do for anyone is what Douglas Adams and Tablo and so many others have done for me both on and off the page. I can support those suffering around me just as I’ve been doing. I can be one of their reasons to keep going- by writing, by listening, just by being there.

        I don’t like this answer, much like the beings in the Hitchhiker’s Guide who asked for the answer to life, the universe and everything and got ’42,’ but it’s all I’ve got.

        I’ll take it.