Teenagers always think they know much more than they do, even if they do— really— know quite a lot.

So I’m 18 and living in Chicago and I have maybe 5 friends. One of them, a boy I’ll call H, had a membership to the science center and planetarium that allowed him to bring along a friend for free, and sometimes if I guilt tripped him hard enough he’d drag me along for the day. We’d run around for hours. Staring at the whale hanging from the ceiling and the dinosaurs on display. We’d get lost in exhibits about ancient Egypt and spend ridiculous amounts of time reading placards about machines created half a century ago.

This was one of those weekends. It was early winter, when it gets dark much earlier than you think it will, even though the days get shorter every year just like this.  We had just left the planetarium and we were sitting on the grassy hill out in front. He was showing off— pointing out stars in the sky and telling me their stories; the myths and legends, the tales that people told. He was explaining one story, I don’t remember which it was, but about 30 seconds in we hear a man clear his throat behind us.

“That’s uh, not right” the man said. You could tell he felt kind of bad about it, but also that he couldn’t bear to let us be so ill informed.

“That’s not a star. That’s the tip of a cell-phone tower.”

As he said it, the light that H had told me was a star blinked red. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe for nearly three minutes. I laughed until I was on the ground in tears.

Sometimes I still text H. If I’m walking home alone late at night and I see a cell phone tower glow. I say hi. I tell him to make a wish on our favorite star.

There was a bookstore near my apartment in Chicago that had stacks from floor to ceiling of books that were older then I was. I’m not sure if there was really a system of organization—some hand lettered cardboard signs haphazardly balanced on edges that jutted out in to the tiny aisles. You had to squeeze around corners, and duck under arches and step over stacks. It wasn’t a shopping experience as much as a rugged scavenger hunt.

There was only one employee, as far as I could tell. I never knew his name, and he refused to tell me. He went by Sir and that was fine if not a little strange. He knew where every book in his shop was—he was the owner, not just the man working the register—and he would wave you in the proper direction with an eye-roll and a sigh and a few encouraging words.

There’s a quote from Good Omens, one of my very favorite books, about an angel- Aziraphale- who owns a used book store. “Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it.”  I thought about that quote and that description a lot when I weaved my way through the shop, searching for new things to read.

This wasn’t a store you would go to with a specific book in mind. You’d come with a vague idea—a memoir maybe, or something about Latin American history, and you’d wander until you found what you wanted. And you always found what you wanted. Or, if you didn’t, you found something even better. Because that’s what used bookstores are—treasure troves or strange discoveries, new things to learn and novels to read. Strange places with strange people and weird pricing that doesn’t exactly make sense, or seem to have any basis in actual monetary value. It’s confusing. It’s delightful.

The owner of that store was mean. His politics were bad and his attitude was worse, and he would glare at me as I walked in and judge my purchases when he rung me up. It didn’t matter though. I would pass by his cash register perch-- elevated just a touch, so it seemed like he was always looking down at you and on you-- and lose myself in the walls and walls of books waiting to be discovered.

I didn’t live in Chicago very long, and I wasn’t very happy while I was there. But I loved that little shop. It was a good place for me, and I think about it often. I don’t know if it’s still open—small, independent bookstores aren’t exactly the most profitable of all businesses—but I hope it is. I hope it’s there for someone else, the way it was there for me when I was 18 and scared and living in a city I didn’t know, surrounded entirely by strangers.

Books are comforting. Even when they challenge you, books are safe. They’re there when you need them, and they wait for you to come back, and there’s comfort in the way they never really change. The pages might yellow a little, on your favorite paperback. If you drop it the tub the ink will run and the pages will stick together. But you know it’s the same book you curled up with on long and late nights, and that can’t be changed by age or water or stains from dirty fingers.

I’ll find a new bookshop one day. One in New York or one in Maryland, or one somewhere else I end up, somewhere I haven’t discovered yet. It’s shelves will feel like home, and it will let me discover some new, well loved, well-worn pages. Because books are everywhere, and so are the people who care about them. In the little stores and the giant chains, and the libraries right down the block. That’s comforting. That feels good.