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CHAPTER TWO

The reasons I'm not heroine material, based on genre:

* Sci-fi—I'm afraid of heights. I have trouble even crossing bridges and would pass out if forced to, say, go to the top of the Space Needle (ask me how I know). There's no way that I could explore intergalactic regions and interact with extraterrestrial intelligence from a spaceship in actual space.

* Western—I'm allergic to horses. I found this out the hard way one year in sleepaway camp. I was so excited to flex my inner Annie Oakley only to find out that if I got within ten feet of a horse, my eyes would swell shut and I'd break out in a rash that would give me the nickname Blind Ketchup Girl for a week. A little on the nose, as far as demeaning names go, but nine-year-old bullies aren't particularly bright. The point is, you really can't have a compelling western without horses.

* Mystery/Thriller/Suspense—A search-and-rescue team had to get me out of a corn maze once. Also, I've never been able to win even a single game of Clue. Being able to puzzle out scenarios seems like a pretty basic prerequisite for the genre.

* Fantasy—Sadly, I have no magical powers with which to save humanity.

* Historical—Automatically disqualified by being born in the current century. Also, I'm kind of partial to breathing deeply and thus would refuse to wear a corset. There's also my love of indoor plumbing.

And that leaves romance. This genre took me a little longer than the others to realize I also didn't qualify for a leading role. My ex-fiancé, Brett, was the first to let me in on the secret, although I missed the clues to begin with because, as I've established, I'd never make it as a mystery-solving sleuth.

But looking back, I can see the hints along the way even before he sat me down for the big reveal.

The ebbing interest in his eyes when he looked at me. The loss of touch that coincided with the loss of my hair. The tie of attraction that had at one time bound him to me unraveling, until one day it just wasn't there anymore. At least for him.

At first, I convinced myself Brett's actions and words had nothing to do with my heroine status and everything to do with demoting him from leading man to villain. I mean, it was classic villainous behavior for him to have such a shallow depth of feeling that he was no longer attracted to me and stopped loving me when I developed alopecia, an autoimmune disease in which my T cells sound the bugle cry to attack my hair follicles like the swarm of bees that kept Winnie the Pooh from the honey in the tree (that's probably a strange analogy, but I subbed for Martha at story time yesterday and the toddlers and preschoolers made buzzing sounds when we came to that page, so it's still fresh in my mind).

That reflects on Brett and his character, not me. If it were true love, then when my hair fell out—first in patches, then at an increased rate that I ended up shaving the remaining valiant strands that had resisted the attack—he would've still run his fingers over the soft buzz of fuzz around my crown, kissed the widening spots that were as smooth as a baby's bottom, and tried to convince me that I was still beautiful, hair or no hair.

But Brett's rejection wasn't a quiet confession in an empty room. It was more like a kid at the top of a mountain shouting into the wind so his words bounce off the range in an endless echo. The same words reverberating over and over and over again.

There's a study someone conducted somewhere about how a person can disbelieve something told to them once as a lie, but when that same thing is repeated x amount of times, they accept it as truth. I can probably look up the study in the reference section, but I really don't want to.

The point is, Brett might have been the first voice to tell me I'm not heroine material, but it wasn't until I kept hearing the echo from sources all around me that I began to believe he might be right.

Echoes like the ones from romance books themselves, in fact.

I pick up a stack of books from a basket at the end of the AE aisle of fiction. Books that people have taken off the shelves to look at but ultimately decided not to check out. Instead of reshelving the titles themselves, we encourage patrons to place the books in the baskets so we librarians can reshelve them properly. You'd be surprised how many people will just put a book willy-nilly on a shelf instead of paying attention to alphabetical and numerical order. Melvil Dewey would roll over in his grave.

I shuffle the trio of books, looking at their covers. Romances, all of them. And all proving my point. The first is a bodice-ripper from the early 2000s, with a Fabio-esque cover model. His luscious locks flow in the breeze, and the woman in his arms, décolletage on full display, has a head of hair that Pantene would be privileged to put in one of their commercials. The next is a book with a contemporary setting. The military man with a black past has a high and tight crew cut, but the woman he's staring at broodily has a mane of curls running the full length of her back. The third is much the same.